BEST OF: Small world at a rest stop

Sometimes, by keeping open minds in unlikely spots, we can learn what a small world it really is.

This time, we’d paused at a Highway 5 rest area. The drive from Sacramento to Paso Robles is a long one, and when you’ve done it more than once …. well, you’ve done it. It doesn’t take long to lose the thrill.

The view doesn’t vary much along most of the way, only from brown back to green when the weather morphs from sizzling hot and dry to doggone cold, windy and rainy.

Heading for home, we’re old horses pointed toward the barn --- we want to get there, get unpacked (ugh) and get on with it.

So those rest stops are tiny oases of relief, in more ways than one.

We walk around and stretch, sometimes chatting idly with others. Lots of other folks are doing the same things. We may all march to a different drummer, but by gosh, we’re in lockstep parading around those picnic tables, getting blood flowing again to our frozen-in-position muscles.

Once in a while, there are delightful surprises, such as the virtuoso violinist practicing under the shaded canopy of trees, or a trio of identical tow-headed toddlers romping in the grass and giggling.

This time, as we strolled, we watched a mid-aged woman showing off her low-slung motor home to a couple of strangers.

We’d seen similar RV models and had mused whether 6’1” husband Richard would fit inside comfortably, or if he’d be forever condemned to walking around in a “Planet of the Apes”-style crouch mode.

“Can we see inside, too?” we asked. “We’ve always wondered about….”

“Come oooonnnn in,” interrupted a couple of other women who were busily slapping sandwiches together in the vehicle’s tiny kitchenette.

We browsed and chatted, but eventually, we had to get back on the road or we’d be unpacking at midnight.

As we turned to leave, the woman outside the rig stared at me. “I know you from someplace,” she said. “I wonder ….”

Richard began to guffaw. There we were, in the wilds of Merced County, where I’d have bet good money I wouldn’t have been able to find a single soul I’d ever met before. It gave further credence to the family joke that he can’t take me anywhere without running into someone who knows me.

Obviously, we all were completely out of context, so we started trading locations, times and occupations and names. We got back to the 1980s, and she began to laugh.

“Of course I know you,” she said. “I’m Rita Nunes. I was assistant to Deborah Weldon,” a former head of Hearst Castle and the State Park areas attached to it. “You two had the bakery then, and you did catering for us up on the hilltop,” Rita recalled.

Dick and I took a quick mental jaunt down a culinary memory lane.

Hearst Castle is historic turf, and before we could serve food there, we had to swear on a stack of Julia Child cookbooks that we wouldn’t do anything to harm, sully or make the castle even the slightest bit dirty.

Then, caterers had to carry everything up at least 20 steps to get to any place where they could conceivably serve food.

Equipment we took up full, we brought back down empty. But after a long day on your feet, somehow empty didn’t feel any lighter. And you took everything back out with you, including leftovers and the trash.

About 4,786 steps later, the night started to get incredibly long.

But, even with angry feet and aching backs, we shared an unquestionable thrill in providing fine food to beautiful people in that one-of-a-kind locale.

We served luxe luncheons in a guest house, appetizers at fund-raisers, desserts on the patio and more.

And Richard and I were proud-as-punch parents at one outdoor charity event, working hard ourselves and watching our chef-son Brian at the appetizer “crepe bar.” He chatted up the guests as his flying hands made hundreds of the small pancakes. He filled them to order with brie-almond pate or tiny shrimp and scallops in a lemony salmon cream laced with dill and fennel.

As the sun set that night, guests toasted their good fortune, and we blessed our own luck at being where we were, with each other.

But that was long ago, in another life, as Rita and I agreed. With a couple of big, shared hugs for good traveling, she climbed back into the motor home with her aunt and cousin.

As she waved a vigorous goodbye, she leaned back out the door and said, “Say hello to everyone for me.”

Rita, I just did.

This column appeared first Oct. 14, 2004 in The Cambrian. It is also available at www.thecambrian.com and under the Opinion/Columns link at www.sanluisobispo.com.