Kidz and dogz welcome

Every time we go to the new neighborhood brewery, there are children there with their parents. It is a barrroooom but it is also a decent place to take your kids for lunch on a Sunday afternoon. It is casual and there is kid-friendly food and drink and space to read or do art prodjects or eat gravel or whatever (as long as the parents clean up the art prodject at the end, ahem).

We did not routinely take our kids out to barrooooms when they were young. I mean, Mountain Jack’s served alcohol but it was also a relatively high-end restaurant and one of Crooked Jack’s faves back in the day. The building is now inhabited by the Quarter Bistro, also a lovely restaurant but I digress. I am thinking of the time we had the Baby Lizard Breath with us at Houghton Lake for the first time and a whole bunch of cFam folks went to the Duck Inn. Yes, we took a *baby* to an old-fashioned, kinda sleazy barrrooom. It was after 9:00 PM, so technically it was illegal for her to be in there, if I have it right.

My baby was a *hit*! Old Bud Duck was still alive then and he waxed eloquently about her beauty and one old coot insisted on giving us $10 just to look at her. (People were wanting to hold her but I held them at bay. This was a barrroooom, after all.)

That was more years ago than I am strong enough to count. Old Bud Duck died a long time ago and the Duck Inn is defunct. The last time I remember being there was on a rainy November Sunday afternoon with The Beautiful Gay when the Moldy Old cFam Cabin had been demolished. There was no bathroom on our property and we had to go and the Twinz of Terror were mucking around doing something on the site, taking forever. I would’ve done woodsP but TBG wanted a real bathroom with a flushy terlet so we went down and snagged a drink and used the icky terlet at the Duck Inn. It was okay. I love TBG and anyway, we needed something to do besides stand around and freeze while the Twinz were kibbitzing.

Today, that old baby and I walked over to the HOMES Brewery to meet up with npJane for lunch and I bought that baby girl a beer. Or two. It was a GORGEOUS day and np had Things To Do this afternoon but we got a second round.

By the way, dogz are welcome at HOMES too, at least outdoors and *leashed*. We lusted after an elegant and very well behaved dog (no, I don’t want a dog). And then someone brought in a puppy. It was leashed and they were being responsible. The two dogs got to meet up and the puppy owners asked for tips about socializing their puppy for public spaces.

We were a few blocks away from little toot’s house and his mama noted that when LB posted a HOMES instragram photo (this one, in fact). He is the cutest baby on earth and we haven’t met him yet but we had finished our second round and needed to saddle up and schlep over to the Plum and home.

And so the baby that I took to the Duck Inn back in the Jurassic Age and I sat outside in the Landfill backyard for the rest of the afternoon. Watching birds and dogz and chipmunks. 55 degrees but felt like 90 in the sun. But we needed that.

3 Responses to “Kidz and dogz welcome”

  1. Margaret Says:

    It does feel weird to go out for drinks with our adult children, but very cool also! Laws were much more relaxed back in the day. 🙂

  2. jane Says:

    oooh – was the puppy’s name Finnegan? if so, he was there Friday night and my friend Pam called him her new boyfriend. 😉

  3. isa Says:

    @jane I didn’t catch his name, but he was a corgi.