Winning dreams. Losing ticket.

Let’s review some basic economics:

Cost of a lottery ticket: $2.

Amount of money I’ll ever win: zero.

Value of pipe-dreaming the things I could do if I did win (even though I won’t): priceless.

We picked a fine time to contemplate this gig, since I can’t bear to face my desk today. All I see is a pile of petty administrative tasks. I’m not good at those. Me, I could sooner build the Golden Gate Bridge with my bare hands than file for the permit to get its fence re-painted.

There’s nothing wrong with a pipe-dream as long as you know it’s a pipe-dream, so, with that in mind, here’s my dream of the month: barbecue.

Yep, I’d take part of my giant winnings and start a BBQ place.

BBQ is popular just about everywhere, of course, including Saipan, but its status is without peer in the southern U.S. That’s a broad region with a lot of variations, but no matter where I lived within that area one thing was constant: I always had a favorite local place for BBQ sandwiches.

I don’t just miss the food. I miss the easy and comfortable experience of those BBQ places. They served as snug harbors where I could hide from the demands of the day and get some peace and quiet. There’s an easy tempo about those places that wears like old blue jeans.

After all, everybody, even a newly-minted lottery multi-millionaire, needs to hang out somewhere. I can’t think of any place better than an unpretentious BBQ shack in one of those quiet nooks where nobody is in a hurry to get anywhere because there’s no other place that they’d rather be. Those kinds of places are my kind of places.

I know quite a few restaurant managers, many of whom are burned out from being puppets on a string and always dancing to the tugs of corporate bureaucracies in large restaurant chains. So, were the lotto to endow me with the status of eccentric rich guy, there would be plenty of competent talent to enlist for my scheme.

My pipe dream restaurant will only have two main items on the board. One will be pulled pork sandwiches with a mustard-based sauce. The other will be chipped beef sandwiches with a tangy and sweet tomato-based BBQ sauce. There are probably specific words for this culinary stuff, but I don’t know anything about cooking. I just know about eating.

And as an experienced eater on this front, I’ll mention that the bread part of the equation often deserves more attention than it gets. I would remedy that, and find, or engineer, a bread that could soak up the sauce without getting soggy and weak.

As for the side dishes, well, baked beans are a must. I guess I’ll put one or two other things on the list, but I’ll have to give it some more thought.

Well, so much for the menu. As for the inside furnishings, they will be picnic tables.

Outside? More picnic tables.

Since I have overly simple tastes, and would surely opt for an order-at-the-counter arrangement, I’ll balance that out a bit by calling Saturday nights “date nights” (that’s an old-school tradition) with suitably warm ambience provided by candles flickering from within Mason jars. Come to think of it, I’ve never actually tried putting a candle in a Mason jar, but it’s worth a shot.

Speaking of Mason jars, many BBQ places serve drinks in them. This provides a nice mixture of the retro with the practical. From a logistics standpoint, what with my candle idea and all, this is a tempting play for beverage duty. But I’m going to cast my lot with red Solo cups. After all, it’s pretty hard to argue with a product that’s a player at fraternity parties, and in rodeo stands, and aboard yachting sundowners.

Alas, the sun has set on this dream. I just checked the lotto results and I have skunked again, so I have to face the rest of the day.

Still, it was worth $2 to reminisce about the old, easy days in slow Southern style, and to pretend that I could somehow buy my way back into those memories. Some things are just meant to be savored.