For Father’s Day, we took my parents out to Bookbinder’s. I find it rather strange that the 150-year-old Bookbinder’s chose, out of all the places in the US, for their second restaurant, Richmond, but there it is. (Ours is better than the original, too, because that one’s too touristy, although I haven’t been to the one in Philly for a decade.)

Anyway, we had a lovely, expensive-but-worth-it seafood dinner. On the way home, after saying goodbye, KC and I decided to stop for ice cream. We don’t care about paying the inflated prices at the yuppie Maggie Moo’s/Cold Stone Creamery/Brewster’s places ($4 for a scoop of ice cream?)¹, so we decided to go to Dairy Queen. The closest one to us is located in a gas station out in the country, so we took the Rockville Manakin exit in Goochland County (yes, really) and drove over.

Upon arriving, we found it shut down, even though it was two hours before the posted close time. I was annoyed enough to go in and ask the gas station people what was going on. They said “it’s closed.”

I said, “I can see that, but I want to know why they’re closed when their posted hours say otherwise?” The response was “something happened earlier and the police came and they’re closed.”

I can see that I’m going to have to check the police blotter in the paper tomorrow. Our best guess is that the one person working the ice cream counter got arrested, but who knows? The wonders of Southern suburban life.

¹ I know this seems contradictory, but I don’t mind paying high prices if the food, service, and setting are all worth it. I’ve had some delicious, well-remembered meals that way. Getting some local high schoolers to scoop ice cream while standing in line with misbehaving kids doesn’t qualify.