Feb
4
Lyle’s Steakhouse, Part I
February 4, 2007 in Life of Brian
When I was young my father used to take us to Lyle’s Steakhouse just outside of Oxon Hill, Maryland. I think Lyle simply liked the term “steakhouse” because he really didn’t go to any effort to serve up steak or anything edible in all the years we went there.
Lyle’s was really just a seedy bar on the edge of town that catered to alcoholic government workers, suicidal divorcees and Kirby vacuum salesmen.
Lyle’s was lit by a single grease covered 25 watt bulb that hung from an even greasier dust covered electrical cord. No lamps, no shades, no switches. Just the sticky black plastic peg that stuck out above the bulb. Click on, click off.
The walls were stained with yellow tar and the room was filled with haze from chain-smoked Winstons. The light from the bulb was diffused like a car’s headlights in the morning fog of Georgetown. It had all the warmth and ambiance of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, really.
There was a red clothed pool table that had unmentionable (and perhaps even undefinable) stains, dead bumpers, and was missing the ten ball. You would have to pull out the first ball in and use it as the ten ball even though it might have been the thirteen or seven ball. It was fun watching the town drunks keep that straight in their heads especially since the balls would randomly bounce off the dried up cushion and crumbs of food that had dropped and stuck to the table over the years.
The uneven floor was always sticky like a old fashioned movie theater.
The dining tables were wooden and wobbly and all carved up with graffitti and nicks from that game where you fan your hand out flat on the table and take a switchblade and stab it between your fingers as fast as you can before the alcohol kicks in or the blood spurts out.
There was a Redskins’ dartboard in the shadowy corner with a black and white photo of Tom Landry tacked to the bullseye and more holes in the wall than on the picture. Oddly, there were a lot of holes in the ceiling, floor and sidewall as well.
When Bev would come over to take our order she’d give my brother and I the evil eye and look over to the bouncer wondering if it was okay to have kids—or at least kids without tattoos—in the bar. He’d shrug his shoulders and dad would order a bourbon and water… and, oh yeah, a steak. Mom would order something well done… she always made sure that it was very well done. My brother and I would order pork chops and apple sauce and we’d use the sauce to hide the parts of the chop we didn’t eat.
Bev would repeat the order back to us and I’d stare at the cigarette stuck to her dry bottom lip and wonder if the two inch long ash would fall as she spoke. It never did. So I have to assume it fell into one of our plates as she delivered our meals.
They had a jukebox at the back of the room and my brother, Brad, and I would load it full of quarters and punch up, “Fly Like an Eagle” fifty times in a row. It was the only non-country and/or western song on the system and we new it drove everyone who had not passed out nuts. And when those who had passed out came to, they would never know if they were out for the length of the song or if they had been gone for two hours.
Before we would go home, the evening’s entertainment would either feature a bar fight, a police raid, or a wife catching her man in a booth with their neighbor’s babysitter. I can’t knock Lyle’s entertainment.
Anyway, we moved away from Oxon Hill and a few years later after visiting friends from the old neighborhood, we stopped by Lyle’s.
It had been condemned.
Boarded up, shut down and abandoned.
The parking lot and outside walls still smelled like urine and tobacco smoke—which brought back a lot of memories—but mostly it gave my brother and I one of the first opportunities I can remember to say, “I told you so!”, which would become the mantra for my life.
And, yes, it gave us confidence as youngsters that the system works.
Eventually.
But why do I mention Lyle’s after so many years of therapy?
Well, until last week I had always considered Lyle’s Steakhouse the dragging underbelly of the service pig or the cracked dry feet of the quality rat. But last week Lyle’s moved up a notch because I had the bell-curve skewing displeasure of staying and dining at the Atrium Suites of Las Vegas.
Now there’s a story for you…
(Continue on to Lyle’s Steakhouse, Part II)
Tags: Atrium Suites, Fly Like an Eagle, Lyle’s Steakhouse, Oxon Hill
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