The Oxbow Incident
In which we go on an adventure and try to hang with the cool kids.
I spent the last few days in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. It’s a college town, a couple of hours north of us, and my husband and I went with no particular plans beyond checking in on old friends and getting out of the house, before I go back on deadline instead of meandering slowly towards the next book.
I had my eye on a local boutique hotel and booked us in for two nights to check it out. The Oxbow Hotel advertises itself as dog friendly, which is always a plus. Our older son stayed at the house with the poodle, who is not a willing traveler. But perhaps, someday she will need a vacation and I want to be ready.
As someone who has fallen off the far side of middle age and into the senior discount, I would describe the vibe at the Oxbow as “Cooler than you.” The furniture is midcentury modern, or what we would have called, hotel furniture when I was going through the actual late middle of the century. Sleek and austere, accented with local art and vintage findings.
While I am a big fan of the hotel, I am not a huge fan of midcentury modern anything. I went through it once. Don’t make me do that, twice. The couches and chairs were only minimally comfortable the first time, people. You are lying to yourself and me if you smile at me from an Eames chair. Get a recliner. Put your feet up. I won’t tell.
That said, there is a nice Chesterfield sofa in the hotel lobby, and I demanded that my husband sit in it and give me a verdict. At some point, I need new living room furniture and am looking for styles that split the difference between Papa Bear too hard and Mama too soft. Chesterfield might do it.
To top off the Oxbow esthetic, each hotel room comes with a portable record player. There is a vinyl library downstairs that guests can pick from. I did not check it, but I assume it has Bon Iver, since that is where they are from. There was a sign above our turntable that explained
HOW TO PLAY A RECORD
When I saw it, a little bit of me died. Or maybe just a little bit more, since a lot of my cells are on the way out. Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, dear. I will see your recordplayer and raise you a rotary phone. I have a big box of albums, somewhere in this house, and any one of them would make you hipsters bang on the wall and demand that I “Turn down that goddamned noise.”
For some of us, Disco never died. And I am not talking about the socially acceptable ABBA playing in the lobby. I’ve got Barry Manilow and it’s a two-disc set.
I didn’t have time to try out the player, nor did we get to check out the restaurant. But the fish fry smelled like heaven and there was a nice terrace for outdoor dining. In winter, you can book a plastic tent for outdoor dining that looks to be decorated with a fireplace, rugs, candles and electric blankets. It is also dog friendly.
I can imagine my dog’s reaction to this.
“You have dragged me from my home. And now, for what you claim is a treat, you are paying extra to eat in front of me while refusing to bring me inside. Have you all gone mad?”
Still, my imagination is occupied with the idea that we could be cuddling in the candlelight with the dog on a cool evening, instead of wandering around on a day that feels suspiciously like summer.
The Lakely bar and restaurant is a supper place, and we were only in the hotel for breakfast. After driving around town looking for a good one, we ended up a block and a half from the hotel, we ended up at The Galloway Grill. The place is primarily a bar, but there are booths in the back and a good breakfast menu. For an additional fee, they will smother your omelet with sausage gravy. I recommend it.
It is also decorated with what I think is called advertising ephemera. Signs of all varieties for hotels, taverns, realtors and anything else you can imagine. The booth next to us had one that said
POODLES FOR SALE.
One more thing to break the heart of our overly dramatic dog.
While we were gone, I told my son, the poodle sitter, to watch Ludwig which is steaming on Britbox. The rest of you should see this, as well. It is a short series about a socially awkward puzzle designer who is tapped by his sister-in-law to help find his identical twin brother, who has disappeared.
Her plan is that he should impersonate her police inspector husband just long enough to search his office. Instead, he ends up going on cases and solving murders.
My son messaged me that it was good, as I expected.
The next message announced that he’d accidentally watched the last episode first and learned about the impersonation plot at the same time as most of the other characters.
And it didn’t matter.
The reveals and commercial break cliffhangers still worked. The murder and solution were still good. It took 14 minutes of the episode before they got into Ludwig’s backstory. Once he knew it, he could watch the first 5 episodes as a flashback and he still liked it.
And thus, unintentional non-linear storytelling was discovered.
He was wondering what other shows could be flipped in this way.
I could only think of ones that couldn’t. Agatha Christie stories? Definitely not designed for it. But a lot of us could have saved some time it they’d showed us the last episode of Lost.