Monday Whatever, Whenever, Wherever

One of the colorful local joys is "Coming Home," Sheila Leto’s column in the PCNH every Sunday morning. It’s always especially good because Sheila and I are the same age (well, she’s my brother Walt’s age) and we remember all the same things. We both grew up in St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church with our beloved Father Tom Byrne, the only real Father Tom who ever lived, and like me, Sheila’s husband John Scott is a retired Episcopal priest. Her memories of St. Andrews are better than mine because, although I live here now and grew up around my father’s fishhouse in St. Andrews, and she and John live right across W. Beach Drive down on the Bay, she grew up right here, across 9th Street from this house that my grandparents built here a hundred years ago; while I grew up on Massalina Drive in the Cove. So our memories are a little different. I like hers better because in those days St. Andrews to me was a magical place of bare feet and rough kids in blue overalls heading for the Bay with a fishing pole or a castnet or a crabnet or a pair of oars or a red can of gasoline.

Yesterday she was remembering Mattie’s Tavern. It was a block from our fishhouse on 12th Street at Beck Avenue where Hunt’s Oyster Bar is today. I remember it well, the most colorful thing in downtown St. Andrews on Beck Avenue -- well maybe second to the ice plant that was where Captain’s Table parking lot is today. But I was never inside Mattie’s Tavern because my parents, at least when they were raising us, were teetotalers and we were never taken inside a place that served beer or spirits. After reading Sheila’s column yesterday, I wish I had been there for the hushpuppies and the fried seafood. But if we were eating downtown St. Andrews it was for lunch during the workweek and we would walk two doors down the block to the corner, to Mom’s Cafe, which was directly across from Mattie’s Tavern. I always especially liked Mom of Mom’s Cafe because we called her Mom and she reminded me of my Mom, my beloved grandmother who died on January 23, 1947, when I was eleven, 67 years ago this week. My first, sharpest, most painful and longlasting experience of death and grief. I drop by to visit Mom when I’m near St. Johns Cemetery in Pensacola. Did last week in fact. Mom and Pop and Alfred ...

But Mom's Cafe -- where some strip joint is now. When it was dinner time ("lunch time" would have been putting on airs), you put a slip in the cash drawer, took out 75 cents, and walked down to Mom's Cafe where sitting on the barstool at the counter you got fried chicken, two pieces, new potatoes and a green vegetable, and sweet ice tea. God help you if you took a dollar and a quarter out of the cash drawer and got the steak dinner -- after explaining that little extravagance to my father, I only did it once. Actually there was no "explaning" you just listened. However, I made up for any scolding with the raw oysters I pinched out of the ice case. It wasn't getting even, it was just -- you're leaving raw oysters near Bubba?

But spirits. The only bottle of spirits I remember ever seeing in our house when we were growing up was a bottle of Seagrams 7 that sat high on the top shelf of the built in buffet in the dining room, tucked behind the center board. Once, when I was in high school, I got an idea of making myself some eggnog while I was home alone. I did that with a raw egg, and milk, and sugar, stirred up with the hand mixer, and a hefty splash of that Seagrams 7. It was fine except that I failed to pick out the chalazae, that repulsive slimy white thing in the egg, which drooled disgustingly down my lip and chin, and I never did that again.

It was about football. I am no pro-football fan, not by any stretch of anybody’s imagination. Nor pro-basketball. I don’t really care about any professional sport. Not even soccer, though I’ll watch pro soccer on TV anytime, and enjoy going out to watch the PCB Pirates. The closest I could come would be baseball, only major league baseball is real baseball in my mind, and it can’t be on TV it has to be on the radio, played very loud so it could be heard all over St. Andrews, as was the case when my grandfather listened to baseball when he was the age I am now. But as for football, I couldn’t care less who won the Bronco - Patriots game that Linda watched so intently yesterday during my Sunday afternoon nap, my view of both teams is shaded by my total prejudice as a Florida Gator football fan. My view of the Patriots is colored by the shameful horror of what former Gator player Aaron Hernandez turned out to be. And my view of the Broncos is colored by their treatment of Tim Tebow. My total pro-Tebow prejudice as a Gator gets in the way of my realization that pro-football is even more serious a business than CFB, and if you throw away a Tebow but get a Peyton Manning, it’s good business. My head knows that even if my heart doesn’t. So if I’m choosing, I’m NE.

The Pretender, the faux Fr. Tom