Dining in Arnold’s Favorite Joint, Lucy Shared the Popular Topics in Sacramento

We dined last night at Arnold’s favorite Italian joint, in an airy former garden center a few blocks from Sacramento’s Capital Dome.  There is even a photo on the wall of the governor, proclaiming Luccas as his own personal place when he’s in town, doing his governing thing.

A man named Martin sat beside us, and described the story he was writing for the Daily Mail: An Amtrak trip all the way across America.  “The train has been a wonderful way to get to know American train travelers,” he said. “In the dining car they seat you with someone random, so you just get to talking.”

Martin said that being able to jump off the Amtrak train as it headed west gave him the chance to see many small towns and cities that lie on the cross-country route. At six am tomorrow, he’d be getting ready to board the train again down to San Francisco, about 2 1/2 hours away by rail.

Downtown Sacramento was busy on this Saturday night, at the Citizen Hotel where I am staying a few weddings were already underway when I checked in around 7.

I asked Lucy, our host, about what people were talking about here these days.  She said that a complicated deal involving swapping some city-owned land to build a bigger arena for the Sacramento Kings was being talked about.  She said the state’s recent budget problems are also on people’s minds, since in this city of about 400,000 up to one hundred thousand of the residents work in state government

She has a friend who just retired with nearly full pay at age 55. “I wish I worked for the state,” she laughed. Time will tell and eventually, we all agreed, these gold-plated benefits and guaranteed never to be reduced pensions will have to be axed. Martin said it’s almost worse in England, that today, working for the state is simply a better overall deal than anything in the private sector.