I don’t get out much, and thus was late to the décor change at Ruby Tuesdays when Mary and I hosted my oldest daughter after turning back from the crowds at Sand Spring Saloon, whose steaks sometimes perfume the air about the Hut at the Crest of West.

In typical corporate fashion, someone got the bright idea and paid a consultant six-figures-plus to tell him what he wanted to hear, and the chain dropped all that sports memorabilia, all the neat stuff on the wall to look at, and the boisterous life around the bar, for something suave, sophisticated and straight off HGTV.

A bar-side TV tuned to ESPN was the only hint of what once was. And the volume was turned all the way down.

Their menu’s also different, of course, with the same ribs and steak that drive me red-meat wild and remain the chain’s bottom-line bread and butter, but more refined of entrees, more veggied in their sides.

And I was buying into it, figuring “when in Rome,” even while sporting a rumpled attire more attuned to the Ruby I once knew. Thus it was that I set menu aside determined to complement the ribs with the standard baked potato, but brown rice instead of ‘fries.

Had to ask Mary about the “pilaf,” and was comfortable with the little chunks of whatever that rendered it so, but just wasn’t right with the way they hid the French fries, buried in the midst of cauliflower, grilled green beans and assorted rabbit food. ‘Fries deserve their own category. Bold face at the least.

Yea, Rubys still offers ‘em but pretty soon, as political correctness runs ever further amok, you’ll be forced to take those ‘fries outside, so as not to offend patrons of more cultured taste.

All of which was swimming about the dull gray matter as I threw back a Coors and proceeded to share a father’s wisdom with my child, which Dads do with every uttered word. Shame they don’t write it all down.

When the waitress came for our orders, something kicked in me unexpectedly of protest, so that words flowed which I did not anticipate. Not brown-rice pilaf with my half-rack and buttered spud, but something far more appropriate.

“’Fries,” said I.

Make no mistake, the food’s still great and the beer’s still cold. But I prefer the Ruby of old.

The Tri-State needs a Hooters.

And hold the rice pilaf.

While dinner disappointed in its décor and Hut-lunch was utterly forgettable, the in-between hours of last Saturday afternoon were remarkable for meeting two West Virginians who speak fluent Jersey.

Up Short Gap way, tucked among the rolling, wooded hills of the Potomac lowlands, Mary introduced me to one of those guys who does everything well. Wood worker. Potter. Painter. Gardener. Bee keeper. Wine maker. Retired phone worker.

The lady of the house deftly manages investments, income and outlay. Reborn in 2002 from a lifetime of Garden State grind to life anew in Mountain State retirement, she said with fire in her eyes that the only thing she will not abide is anyone who says anything untoward of West Virginia, or her people.

She is also acutely troubled by the current state of the Stock Market, and the economy in general, lamenting the dearth of qualitative corporate value in a volatile market ruled by the latest by the last quarterly report. She said there’s nowhere safe to park your money these days. But still she played, the only game available.

Hidden in plain view, the two are both throwback and portent, testifying to a self sufficiency four or more generations distant, and forecasting resilience, frugality and resourcefulness that may well come to be required of most of us.

He keeps bees to make mead, enough to last all year, with next year’s supply aging in oak casks. The wine-room floor was lined with onions the size of billiard balls, and a fenced-in garden bigger than a lot of back yards supplied a wide variety and bountiful yield of home-grown sustenance.

They hit yard sales and auctions, and scour the Web for the best price on the latest wood shop purchase approved by “the finance committee.” She’s perfectly content to shop for clothes at Goodwill.

Our forebears would not recognize us as heirs were they to judge alone by all we waste, all we consume. And that is what has come to define us as Americans. Buy, don’t produce. Consumer spending, including health care, represents two-thirds of our economy. But as jobs disappear and move overseas, we can’t spend enough to keep the machine running.

Greed unleashed gnaws at every exposed corner of the economy, and with Washington in Wall Street’s hip pocket as never before, they are all exposed. A recent report attributed 75 percent of record corporate earnings to savings from stagnant worker pay.

Corporate leadership enriches itself at the expense of the very people whose spending fuels the economy. Or doesn’t. As the engine sputters.

And that is but one economic pillar crumbling beneath and about us, awaiting only the domino effect. And far faster than anyone expected, we are bread lines and bleakness. All around the world.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, in voting against lifting the debt ceiling, said we’re no longer running toward “oblivion,” but are now “walking” in that direction.

Despite the vote to raise the debt limit, oblivion remains very much in play.

And there is no way to avoid the chasm, short of fairly taxing the wealth elite and corporate powers in addition to cutting spending. But Republican lap dogs and their Tea Party blowhards will never, ever go for that.  And Democrats, meek and themselves shamelessly beholden to Wall Street for the power they covet above all else, will not seriously contest the issue.

So government is eviscerated, bled pale white at a time of downturn when economic experts and modern history indicate that government spending is a critical engine for growth. And at a time when ever more people are hurting, losing their homes and health care, and in need of the kind of assistance that civilized society is supposed to provide.

Hard times are coming, and Americans need to be about battening down. It ain’t Republican or Democrat. It’s become something else, terrible and destructive.

New York’s two U.S. senators are pushing hard to loose restrictions placed on Wall Street in the wake of the 2008 crisis that consumed billions of dollars in working folks’ 401-Ks, even as the investment firms that sparked the collapse walk away not only unscathed, but profiting from the whole thing. Both senators are Democrats.

Once upon a long ago Americans could count upon one party or the other to represent the interests and fight for the rights of the working class. Those days are gone, and a dark storm looms of breadth and menace unprecedented, set to devour the future.

Fill the cupboards and stock the ammo. Buy survival guides and edible-plant books from Amazon. Plant a garden, not for victory, but survival.

Preacher man of May missed the mark in calculating end times to an act of God. It is by his own hand that man will fall.

Or not…