All I wanted to do was stop at the tiki bar for a cool, refreshing drink by the lakeside so My Darling B and I could unwind just a tad after a stressful day at work, taking a moment to relax and let the cares of the day pass away from us.

We’ve been driving past the East Side Club on the commute to work and back almost every day for six years. In the summer, the sign out front very often has the message “tiki bar today” on it at the top of all the other announcements and, time after time, one of us has made the comment that we would have to stop one day to see what that was about.

Well, yesterday was that day. My Darling B was right in the middle of a story about some fresh hell she’d been thrown into at work. Out of the corner of my eye the words “tiki today” caught my eye. I slowed down abruptly, cranked the wheel around and pulled into the lot. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt you,” I apologized. “Let’s go down to the tiki bar and you can tell me the rest of that story.”

We followed the signs around the parking lot and down a short hill to the back lawn where the path turned back on itself like a hairpin and ended up at the front corner of the lawn where a guy at a folding table sat with a small cash till and a roll of tickets. “Are you here for the show?” he asked.

No, we’re just here to check out the tiki bar, we told him. He seemed a little disappointed and tried to hustle us for a couple tickets to the show, a live band that wouldn’t start playing until about a half-hour later. We kept refusing as politely as we could until he let us get by him, pleading, “If you decide to stay for the show, please stop by to leave a donation.” Sure. Okay.

The tiki bar, it turns out, looks like a teeny-tiny clubhouse, or maybe the outbuilding where they used to keep the lawnmowers and other groundskeeping equipment. Now they’ve got a couple refrigerators and blenders and whatever else they need to prepare slushy drinks with little paper umbrellas in them, and it’s well-stocked with snack foods. B ordered a slushy brandy drink that had to be scooped out of a bucket with an ice cream scoop. I was okay with a bottle of beer.

A couple dozen of those plastic Adirondack chairs that must have come over from China on a container ship by the millions this summer were arranged on the lawn in rows. We slouched into a couple on the end of the back row out by the edge of the lake and began playing The Stupidest Thing Happened To Me Today, a game that B won on this particular occasion. While we were trading war stories, the band that would be providing the evening’s entertainment began doing mike checks, playing short riffs on their guitars and asking the sound man to turn up the volume way too loud.

“Are you guys here for the show?” It was a big guy in a hoodie with the name of the band emblazoned front and back on it.

No, we’re only staying for a little while, we told him.

“Cause there’s going to be a live band tonight, and if you’re going to stay it’ll be ten bucks,” he went on.

Well, what time does that start? we asked.

“Six o’clock.” It was five-thirty.

Really, we’re just going to go after we finish our drinks, we said.

“Well, if you decide to stay you can pay the guy at the table up front,” he said one last time before he shuffled off to harass the people trying to enjoy their drinks in the seats in front of us. So much for a relaxing after-work drink by the shore. Next time we see the “tiki today” notice on the sign out front, we’ll check to see if “Live Music” and “Buy A Ticket Dammit” is also on the sign before we stop.