Denis Munro from Perth, Scotland is a conundrum with a Sean Connery accent. A cuisine-phobic, teetotaling man-about-the-High Street decked in snappy sports jacket with a neatly folded hanky. “The hanky is sewn into the pocket” he explained as I dropped him off for a ten-day Alaskan cruise departing San Francisco. The week before saw us covering ample city miles trekking up both Telegraph and Russian Hills. Seeing my city through Denis’s eyes lent new perspective to the old and tired. A graying, bearded homeless man at Fisherman’s Wharf, flipping off passers-by with a “Fuck Trump” sign became novel entertainment as Denis raised his camera to record for posterity. The dour-faced waitress with ample caboose at my local eatery came to life as Denis peppered her with pleasant chit chat: “I’m from Scotland and don’t eat a wide variety of food.” .. “Do you live in San Francisco?” .. “How do you get to work?” Content to sit and watch me eat, he ordered an “Americano” and settled for regular coffee. Food phobias are matched only by his fearlessness for polite conversation.
The week was divided by a Lake Tahoe sojourn, stopping in Auburn on the drive up. This Gold Rush town with a history steeped in prospecting and Old West doings is typical of the America that has filled Denis’s cup since first visiting in the early 80’s. Back then he returned from state-crossing adventures with many a tale: Asking a Colorado filling station attendant what they grew in the mountainous terrain and hearing “Son, ‘round here we don’t raise nothin’ but rhubarb and pregnant women.” Denis saved such quotes in a trusty notebook and repeated them in years to come. America didn’t know it, but she had been waiting for this garlic-avoidant man in a snappy blue sports coat to draw her true self out. Denis enjoys bars despite abstaining from drink and logs the graffiti from lavatory walls. Bumper stickers are memorialized in his canon and “Lead, Follow Or Get Out Of The Fuckin’ Way” was preserved from an early Nevada visit. After Auburn we stopped in Truckee’s Pastime Club for a beer (me) and soda water (Denis.) The bartender told us about her “shit-headed girlfriend in Florida” who stuck around for Hurricane Irma. We ambled back to the billiard table and he impressed me with his cue-handling skills. Then it was back on the road for the short scoot to the lake.
No place manages to impress like Tahoe and it doesn’t dwindle with return visits. “Here we go,” Denis remarked, catching first glimpse of the water. Later I grilled two filet steaks on the cabin deck with baked potatoes and salad. He ate every scrap, efficiently and quickly. There is no greater reward for the amateur chef than composing a meal that Denis can address with gusto. I may have become cocky, and after that first night he stuck to porridge with berries three dinners in a row. I’ve never seen someone hover so intently over the fruit and raw nuts section of a supermarket. Then there’s pancakes, a novelty first introduced by my equally Scottish mother who knew Denis when he was a wee lad in Perth. She put a flapjack stack in front of him during his first trip to the States and the rest is history. A rare example of a new dish added to the Munro Repertoire. This and discovering that coffee refills are free in America had Denis looking into job opportunities in San Francisco after a single visit.
Contrasting one’s relative indulgences with Denis can make you feel like Hunter S. Thompson on an ether binge or Rosie O’Donnell stumbling on the all you can eat buffet at Trump Tower. We watched several Coen Brothers films as I ate a Kit Kat bar and had a single malt. Denis declined dessert and flossed filet bits from his teeth. He asked with interest how one knows when a potato is baked sufficiently and commented on “quite enjoying” the whiff of my cigar despite not tolerating the smell of cigarettes. The following morning we headed over the hill to Nevada, a state still operating by its own rules. In a Reno casino, Denis fondly recalled the time he threw caution to the wind and put a second quarter into a slot machine at the Silver Legacy hotel. I played Keno at lunch (“ahhh … pancakes!”) before we headed to Virginia City. There we took in typical mining town attractions — the ‘Suicide Table’ at the ‘Bucket of Blood’ bar and then a biker saloon called the “Silver Dollar.” Denis was too enamored with Toby Keith blaring on the juke box to notice the hundreds of ladies’ brassieres suspended above the mantle or the curious glares from the leather-clad regulars as he ambled by in finely tailored felt.
He’s a good man and I don’t toss the words out lightly. His fondness for my mother would have sufficed in securing our long friendship, but his charms are multiple. We hiked down a steep hill to sit on a rocky perch above glassy-still, deep blue Tahoe water. This was our last afternoon at elevation. We out-drove the edge of an approaching mountain thunderstorm heading back to the cabin. Once more I grilled my dinner and Denis indulged in plain crackers, unsalted nuts and main-course porridge. The sky opened up with a spectacular show: rain, lightning, swaying pines and reverberating thunder. An early exit the next morning and drive down to San Francisco featured my favorite comedian Norm MacDonald on the Audi sound system and brunch (“ahhhhh .. pancakes!”) at the appropriately-named Denny’s south of Sacramento. As the saying goes, “nothing exceeds like excess” but there’s something to be said, too, for a simple routine peppered with strong laughs and good memories.
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