Sunday, October 2, 2011.
Saints At Impastato's.
We attended a midday fundraiser on behalf of a young (fortyish, young to me) man who died suddenly, leaving his family in less than secure straits. He worked for many years at Impastato's, so Joe Impastato footed the whole bill for the party. It seemed like a good deal at $60 a head.
Mary Ann knew that if the essential Saints game would be shown in any open restaurant in the world, it would be at Impastato's. When we arrived the place was nearly full, with overspill onto the parking lot. Joe had a trailer parked there with screens on one side and a tent over lawn chairs. Of course, this is where Mary Ann wanted to watch the game.
Wine, some good little meatballs and Italian sausages were circulating. The sauce on the meatballs was unusually thick and spicy. Joe told me that it was a mixture of marinara sauce and barbecue sauce, both made over at his brother's place, Sal and Judy's. That put an idea in my mind that I would use three days hence, when I returned to host an Eat Club dinner.
The Saints led through the whole game. Not a good game, said MA. A good game, she claims, is one during which you feel as if you're going to have a stroke several times. I don't get as excited as most people do at a football game, but I know what she means--if not how this is in any way pleasurable.
Lots of food. Penne pasta with Alfredo and spicy marinara. Joe's fettuccine, a descendent of the unbeatable recipe from Jimmy Moran, for whom Joe and Sal used to work. Fried catfish and fried calamari, both crisp and light. Pecan-smoked filets mignon.
Mary Ann was getting worked up now. Not about the game, but about the amount of food she was consuming. And two beers! At halftime, she wanted to leave. Too much edible temptation. And too hot and bright out there. Well, let's go inside, I suggested. No, she countered. It's too cold and dark. Hunh?
So we hit the Causeway for the return home, where she turned on the game and saw that the Saints had pulled more or less safely ahead. Damn!
Thus it was that I had a narrow escape from losing my Saints-game virginity. I still have never watched one in its entirety. If MA had wanted to do so, however, I would be right there with her.
We each returned to our works. Mary Ann is nearing what she thinks is the end of compiling a book. She used to write a weekly column for the St. Tammany News, a standard small-community newspaper. Her sole topic was her life as a stay-at-home mom. Which with two young children was in high gear back then. The columns were funny and poignant in turns. For some reason, the newspaper ran it on the editorial page with the headline "Column." They published it for six or seven years until, in a cutback, they decided they couldn't afford the ten dollars a week they were blowing away on the project.
Mary Ann has always wanted to pull these together into a book, but stay-at-home moms have no undistracted time for anything like that. Now--to her great sorrow--her children have gone away. But she can finally get on with the book.
She believes that it can be made into an e-book by Christmas. She doesn't know how e-books work, exactly, but she figures that our son Jude does. (Don't twenty-somethings know everything about electronic matters?) Also, she believes that the columns need not be re-read or edited in any way before becoming a book. And that she does not want my involvement in her book at all. What do I know? I've only published nine books over the years.
