[continued: Alamo]
I don't know if Walt has retired or if he's still plugging away, but I am sure the quality of workmanship at his shop remains nonpareil.
Restaurants in Alamo tend to be of delivery mien. If you're hungry and passing through, there's Japanese, Chinese, soda fountain, nouvelle Californian, Mexican, and Korean barbecue. There used to be an excellent Dairy Belle, no longer there. Alamo just ain't a dining destination. For that there's adjacent Walnut Creek and Danville, both full of wonderful restaurants. Although, if you find yourself in town at the breakfast or brunch hour, the Alamo Café (next to the Hay and Grain, two doors down from Walt's) serves a mean waffle.
Which reminds me of the year our kitchen was being remodeled during November, and as kitchen remodelings usually go, ours was behind schedule. We were forced to celebrate our Thanksgiving dinner at Alamo's "nice" restaurant, The Elegant Bib.
I won't go into all the details of the infamous meal, but suffice to say that the mere mention of "The Elegant Bib" brings wrinkles to my father's forehead and stifled giggles from my mom, my siblings and me. My dad's a creature of habit and tradition. Having to order the turkey dinner special at a restaurant for his Thanksgiving dinner didn't make him happy. In fact the tension was palpable. I think each kid spilled his or her milk twice that night, and the wait staff, oh the poor wait staff.
But I digress.
With all the change, the BMWs and Volvos, one thing in Alamo remains the same: today about the best thing you can do in Alamo is grow up there. There's an encouraging level of racial (if not economic) diversity, something totally absent when I was a kid. A major league baseball star, African American, lived just up the street from us, and when I was still too young to understand why, someone drove by his home and blew a shotgun through his front window in an odd sort of welcome to the neighborhood. Fortunately, nothing but Alamo's reputation was harmed by the incident.
Dad was correct in his assertion that the weather in Alamo is nearly perfect most of the time. Today it's the kind of place where the baseball diamonds are taken care of, you see your neighbors at the market, the oak trees are large and gnarled and the swimming pools are always crystal-clear, eighty-two and blue.
By: Dan Marengo
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