Saturday, November 14, 2009. Country Club. Impastato's. Mary Ann and I both grew up in Kenner. Our parents moved from the old neighborhood (the Irish Channel in her case, Treme in mine) in the late 1950s. Both our families occupied newly built suburban houses. But mine was in the old part of Kenner, just south of the airport. Hers was in Westgate, a new subdivision. Now and then the school bus would take us through Westgate. I'd look at that neighborhood and marvel at what kind of wealth one must have to live in such a place. If I'd known that the people in Westgate had a country club where they could go and hang out and swim and have fun, I'd have been even more jealous.
Mary Ann's father laughed heartily when he heard that story. By then, Westgate was an old neighborhood, with its share of fraying at the edges. He also derided the very idea of the Westgate Country Club as a ritzy place.
But it was magical in the 1960s, when the Baby Boom kids were growing up in large numbers in neighborhoods like Westgate. Those kids have reunions to recall the country club days, at the club--still there and functioning, its pool and facilities modest but quite vital.
They held one of those reunions tonight, and Mary Ann wanted badly to attend. She cooked up a vat of jambalaya, I grabbed a few bottles of wine, and we were off. I shivered in anticipation of my first look inside the sanctum sanctorum of the Westgate Country Club, until this night forbidden to my entry.
Everybody was roughly our age. Very roughly, in most cases. Some reported cancers, deaths of spouses, and the like. But mostly they talked about the good old days, when during the summer all the kids in the neighborhood came here to spend the entire day hanging around the pool and doing. . . well, nobody could remember exactly what, but it must have been satisfying to their souls, because the memory of it brought nothing but smiles to all faces.
Some of those memories sounded less than marvelous, though. Mary Ann pointed out the lane in the pool where, in every one of the many swim races she entered, she came in fourth of four. Why did she do it? "Because in my family we all followed the same program. My brother was an athlete, and he swam in races, so all the rest of us had to swim, too. That's the way my parents handled seven kids."
She was disappointed by the turnout. Not as many people came as last time. She said that not enough people from her exact age group were there to talk with, and there were certain people she didn't want to talk with. At least not all night.
One person I was happy to confront with conversation showed up. She goes by the name of Mr. Lake on her web messageboards, one of which is about food. It was founded as a reaction to mine. On it, she and her cohorts have had a high time attacking me over the years. Even the name of her food board is a reference to me. Any time I'm mentioned over there, the activity level rises. Don't know what about me sets Mr. Lake off, but it's enough that she's even criticized me for sending our kids to excellent schools. Must be E-animus. I'd never met Mr. Lake, and judging by the look on her face she was flabbergasted to have me standing there in front of her. I considered raising the tension level with a few well-chosen words to make her wonder what I meant, but thought better of it.
Almost everybody who came brought food, in most cases enough to feed about a dozen people. But hardly anyone was eating anything. Mary Ann's jambalaya went back home untouched. Apparently not eating is something that people do when they get older.
We left early. Mary Ann was disappointed. I had a feeling, when we were on our way over, that this would happen. Gatherings like this often reach a one-too-many iteration. If only your last one had been the one before that one, you'd remember it fondly for life. Now MA's memory of the Westgate Country Club is tarnished by this evening's dullness. (For her, not for me.)
Mary Leigh, who spent last night in town after going to a volleyball game (her school was runner-up for the state championship), called and said she was hungry, and was thinking about Impastato's. Mary Leigh's wish is my command. Martini, baked Italian oysters, fettuccine Alfredo, and redfish with artichokes and mushrooms for me. I may have had one too many glasses of wine at the country club. (How could I not? I was in the Westgate Country Club at long last!) The girls said I was acting silly and feisty. But they started hitting me with right-wing politics, and that's enough to get me going.
Impastato's. Metairie: 3400 16th Street 504-455-1545. Italian.
