Time to Order More Olives
Atlanta, GA
May 18, 2020
Today would have been my grandmother’s 109th birthday. It also is a wedding anniversary for her youngest grandson.
Much as I love and admire that couple, I confess I would not ordinarily remember that. I did so only because, over the weekend – from a basement box and with almost eerie timing – I stumbled upon this…
Chapel Hill, NC
May 19, 2013
Chapel Hill is a dry town.
Not because alcohol is illegal. But because there’s none left.
After a pre-wedding party Friday evening and post-wedding festivities last night, there isn’t a cork, tumbler, shaker, or shot glass that isn’t begging for mercy.
Olives in North Carolina have gone the way of buffalo on the Great Plains…speared, drowned, and on the verge of extinction. The few that remain huddle destitute and homeless, with nary an ounce of gin to soak their weary pits. Unless I were to eat one, in which case it would marinate for days in a duodenal pool of Bombay Sapphire.
And it could have been worse. Jerry’s damaged knee kept my parents from joining us, and doing their enthusiastic part to exacerbate the shortage of liquified fruit and fermented grain. Their absence was about the only sour note from an otherwise harmonious weekend ensemble.
On Friday Rita and I left the boys with their sitter, drove six hours from Atlanta, ditched the car, and checked into the Franklin Hotel on Franklin Street.
We found George in the lobby, clandestinely pocketing some namesake matchbooks and eponymous paper paraphernalia that might lend added caché to nightstands, end tables, and junk drawers from Michigan to Atlanta.
“These things are here for us to take!”, he assured us as he waited for the concierge to avert his gaze before pocketing more merchandise. Molly closed her eyes and shook her head as Rita and I slowly eased away.
There was no time to waste. The party awaited several blocks away. We walked in and were pleased that open space allowed room to socialize and mingle with the armada of Trouts, Breens, Fields, and Franklins that would soon be floating by with barques of barbecue on a sea of Cabernet.
But, alas, some of us charted a different course. I ordered a martini. Five-to-one. Five parts gin…and a moment of silence for the vermouth.
Amid the flotilla of Franklins, Fields, Trouts, and Breens, we made the rounds, acquired some new friends, and reconnected with several old ones.
Inevitably, we bumped into Steve Gersh…which led inexorably to another martini. It was great. Very dry. As if TE Lawrence or Scipio Africanus made it. I blew dust from the olive.
As we continued talking to Steve, another martini somehow snuck into my glass. Soon, like an August afternoon in Pacific Heights, visibility started to fade, and foghorns sounded in the distance. I steered clear of the rocks, and maintained my martinis straight up.
I remember the rest of the evening the way a dental patient recalls a wisdom tooth extraction. I know I was there, and afterward I could feel the results…but I can’t vouch for any details in between.
I recall stopping along our stumble home for a late night burrito that probably saved my life. We returned to the Franklin in the small hours. I made it safely to our elegant room, fell face-first on the elaborate bed…and dreaded what the morning might bring. I was sure that advertising executives for aspirin companies would be waiting in the bathroom, making bids on my head. The foghorn grew louder.
Knowing their audience, Kelly and Hugh were civil enough to schedule the wedding late yesterday afternoon. We had time for Rita to wash her hair, and for me to soak my head. We grabbed brunch, and strolled past and thru some Franklin St shops on an unsuccessful quest for a Christmas ornament. We then spent time exploring a small piece of the beautiful UNC campus.
I had been here only once before, stopping years ago on a trip to DC…where I would stay in the home of the kid who was now about to be married. While on campus, we took note of the Carolina Club, knowing we’d need to find it again in a couple hours.
The facility is stylish, classy. A perfect ornament for this bride, who is an ideal addition to this family. Before she walked smiling down the aisle, we saw her groom’s pregnant sister resting at the base of a staircase, a magnet for my brother’s two daughters, as well as her own. The three girls frolicked on the steps, as if they had springs on their feet. Ashley was happy just to be off hers.
As we sat for the wedding, I regretted not only that my parents weren’t here, but that my mother’s weren’t either. But yesterday was my grandmother’s birthday, and her youngest grandchild getting married seems an appropriate posthumous gift. The sight of her grinning grandson leaving his wedding with his beautiful new wife would have elicited a smile of her own, and more than one tear.
I’m not sure how long she would have lasted at the reception. I have no idea how the wine did. Or the bourbon. Or the beer. Or the vodka. Or the gin. Within the expansive ballroom, the dance floor provided periodic diversion from the bar, perhaps allowing supply lines to be reinforced.
When dancing starts, we are in my wife’s realm. Like discussing particle mechanics at a Georgia Tech physics symposium, I can chime in, but I can’t keep up. So Rita soon drifts toward those with a more kindred sense of rhythm and greater finesse of foot.
Before long, she found the cousins, and was in her element. With Katy, Christy, Steve, Brian, and Ashley (even in pregnancy, you can’t stop her, you can only hope to contain her), she joined Brett and the newlyweds as they commandeered the floor.
As the crowd thinned, the plot thickened. Rita informed that Kelly and Hugh were planning a nighttime raid on Durham, and were recruiting troops for the march. After the previous night, and last evening, I had finished my tour of duty, earned a dishonorable discharge, and decided to remain in the rear.
Probably a good idea. When Rita returned and told stories of more drinks, of Brett being in the mix, a cage (I didn’t ask), and something about Christy and Kelly atop mechanical bulls, I realized I probably made the right choice.
After all was said and done, I think Hugh and Kelly did too.
JD
