Love, Sex, Tacos, and the I.R.S.

Martha makes a point of studying the local newspapers out here, scouring them for events we might want to attend - that's how she found about climbing the Bodie Island Light Station last week - and she found two events in Manteo today.  The first of these was the Second Annual OBX Taco Cook-Off, which sounded right up my line after running eight miles this morning.

The Taco Cook-Off raises money to help sent underprivileged children to summer camp at Jennette's Pier and it was attended by about 400 hungry taco lovers.  We showed up early at Ortega’z, where tickets were being sold, and watched several local restaurants set up taco stations in a little lane beside the restaurant.   I ended up sampling somewhere between eight and ten small tacos, filled with everything from duck to grain-fed beef to pork barbeque to meatballs, and even one featuring turkey, dressing, and cranberry sauce (my least favorite).  All the rest were delicious! 

In the background a little band was playing reggae music, and overhead a bright sun shone down through clouds that had drifted into little ridges, like sand does on the dunes.

Next came the rest of the title for this post - Love, Sex, and the I.R.S., a play presented by the Theatre of Dare (as in Dare County, or Virginia Dare), just across the bridge at Roanoke Island Festival Park.  It was a farce, fast-paced and hilarious, and the players, many of them debuting in this performance, were flawless. 

Jon Trachtman and Leslie Arthur are out of work musicians who room together in New York City. To save money, Jon has been filing tax returns listing the pair as married. The day of reckoning comes when the Internal Revenue Service informs the "couple" they're going to be investigated. Leslie masquerades as a housewife, aided by Jon's fiancee, Kate. Complicating matters further Leslie and Kate are having an affair behind Jon's back, Jon's mother drops in unexpectedly to meet her son's fiancee, and Leslie's ex girlfriend shows up demanding to know why Leslie has changed and won't see her anymore.

After everybody had ended up in the clothes of their proper gender, Jon's mother had been revived with "smelling salts" consisting of limburger cheese, true love had found itself, and the I.R.S. agent had been disposed of intact, we drove out to the Elizabethan Gardens and browsed in the little garden shop at the entrance.

It's a beautiful place and we have toured the gardens in past years, but it was growing late so we limited our visit to the garden shop.  I remember from a past visit, though, that there is a live oak tree here that is thought to have been alive when the first colonists arrived on Roanoke Island in 1585 - four years before Shakespeare wrote his first play, The Two Gentlemen of Verona.  It would have been a strong young sapling when Hamlet stood on a stage and said these words:

"What a piece of work is a man! 

How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! 

In form and moving how express and admirable! 

In action how like an angel, 

in apprehension how like a god! 

The beauty of the world. 

The paragon of animals!"