Dream Log: Tri-Tip

 I had a tri-tip yesterday, and I eated it.

 I knew I shouldn't eat the whole thing, but it was really good. Then last night, for the second night in a row, I dreamed that my Mom and I were on a search for something. In this case, we were searching for pieces of the story of my Dad making a big business splash by founding a chain of West Coast steakhouses, whose speciality was tri-tip, while AWOL from the US Army after the end of WWII.

My Dad was never in the Army, and at the end of WWII he was 12 years old, and he was never a cook or an entrepreneur. In real life, he was drafted in the 1950's, was a conscientious objector like most members of our Protestant denomination, the Church of the Brethren, and spent 2 years as a laborer in Europe with the Marshall Plan.

That wasn't the only chronologically unrealistic aspect of this dream. It was the present day, but Mom and I were much younger. I was about 20 and Mom was in her mid-40's. Dad was not around. His whereabouts were never discussed. Everyone apparently knew where he was and what he was doing. 

Mom and I went around visiting universities in the LA area. Dad's steakhouses had literally made history. Professors and other researchers were glad to talk to us, and knew a great deal about Dad. He had been a private in the Army, in the Philippines when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and they surrendered, ending the war. Without waiting for his discharge, Dad had talked his way onto a plane flying to LA. The first people he talked to about his dream of steakhouses were not restauranteurs, and not beef ranchers either, but Hollywood producers. Dad was looking for investors, and it seems he talked a very good game. He got the producers to pay to have the steakhouses built and to have movie stars photographed dining in them. His steakhouse chain was built on Hollywood star power. Its now-legendary culinary appeal was an afterthought. 

Academics in their offices filled us in on the details, in history departments, drama departments and business departments. These offices were mostly new and slick, with big windows and desks which looked like hardwood piled high with books and periodicals, as academics' desks tend to be. 

Another unrealistic detail is that I was smoking cigars most of the time, and nobody minded. In fact, many of the academics were also smoking cigars. There were ashtrays everywhere, as if it were the 1980's. In real life I smoked cigarettes until the 1990's and never smoked cigars.