After I ran errands in Santa Rosa I stopped in Railroad Square to have Thai food for lunch. Khoom Lanna is at the west end of the square, close to Depot Park. I parked and swiped my credit card, listening to two men in the park talking to each other in high volume about a third party somewhere who didn’t appreciate them. “F-it, man, it’s my F’in art! It’s my f’in art, man!” was a recurring theme. A family group of tourists who had stopped to take selfies with the Snoopy and Woodstock statues folded together and hurried away.
Anyway, the manager of Khoom Lanna used to manage the Thai place near where I worked. This place is slightly more upscale. I got one of the two window seats.
I ordered Pad See Yiew and a Thai iced tea. The lunch comes with a salad of fresh mixed greens and a house dressing. The dressing was pretty spicy, with a bit of mint aftertaste to cool it down. My entree was almost what I expected. I had forgotten the this dish has scrambled egg in it, so I added chicken. That was not necessary. The surprise, though, was the presence of the fried won ton. I associate won ton with Chinese food, not Thai food. They were crispy and had a filling (not just the quick-fried skins you get so often now) with a hot and sweet dipping sauce. A surprise, yes, a pleasant one.
The only real disappointment in my meal was the book you see there in the upper right. I bought Rocket Girl about a year ago, in Mendocino. It was in the Biography section, and I mistakenly assumed that it was the biography of Mary Sherman Morgan, a woman rocket scientist who made a discovery that, as one colleague of hers put it, “saved the American space race.” The book’s been on my list since then, and today I started it.
First up is lackluster introduction from Ashley Stroupe, a robotics engineer at JPL, who extols Morgan for toiling quietly and “letting her accomplishments speak for her.” Oh, gag me. Then Chapter One opens; not about Mary Sherman Morgan, but about a son (the author) who never felt sure of her love. About how he was asked to write her obituary. About how he did. About how he got in a fight with the LA Times and wrote a play called “Rocket Girl” in revenge. About what a success it was. About… I’m sorry. Did I doze off?
I’m on page 43 now. George D. Morgan, the author, is talking about how hard it was for him to track down one of his mother’s coworkers. He is a successful playwright, apparently, but not a great prose stylist. It’s only page 43, and if I don’t get totally irritated and put it down, it might actually get to something interesting like (like, maybe… Mary Sherman Morgan?) and be good.
To be fair, I think the problem is in categorizing it, and possibly the title. “Rocket Girl” sounds like a great title for a play about his mother. Rocket Girl, the memoir of her son’s attempt to write her life, isn’t. It would have done better as The Search for Rocket Girl, or something, and a nice niche in the Memoir section.
I’m just saying.
I’ll stick with it a bit longer, and report back on my progress.
The food though? Yummy.