My best friend’s parents had “date night” on Fridays. They were one of those couples who were hopelessly and eternally in love. Whereas my parents were much like the couples portrayed in Woody Allen comedies. They were quirky and funny. It didn’t mean they didn’t love each other, but nevertheless, Romeo & Juliet they most definitely were NOT. Which was fortunate for us kids, because we always got to accompany them to Mullet Inn.

Mullet Inn was the type of place that, even now, maybe twenty or more years after its demise, I can still instantly recall the unique smell of the place. I can never walk into a certain type of seafood joint without remembering the smells of the smoked mullet that permeated the walls of the building. The motto displayed on each menu was, “The fish we serve today, Slept last night in Tampa Bay.”

The fish was good, I’ll admit, but the atmosphere of a one-notch up from a dive fish joint was the key to their success. The place was not just informal, it was more than that. You could go crabbing and stop in there along the Causeway. You could bring your kids, you could get there by boat in the canal in back, or you could get a great fish dinner after visiting one of the “clubs” in the locale. It seemed, for a time, to be all things to all people.

These days there are no local chains around town like Mullet Inn. The only place with local flavor still in operation along the Tampa Bayshore is the Colonnade. I remember visiting the Colonnade as a kid and ordering a Coca-Cola when they put olives in the glass. They had drive-up dining in the parking lot with great burgers and my brothers and I  would love to go there on the one night we ate out when my Dad had gone to his weekly Sertoma meetings.

Nerd Alert! My older brother had a “give-a-show” projector and I would beg him to bring it to the Colonnade after dark and show slides of Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound in the darkened theater of the car.  This was part of the allure of the Colonnade in those days.

Now-a-days, the allure of the Colonnade consists of seeing buses full of little old ladies and men file into the restaurant and finding tables stacked with women wearing funny red hats.  This is the story of the waning days of the Colonnade.  But the history is there on the walls as you walk in the building.

Everyone has a special place for childhood memories and for me, that place is The Old Mullet Inn. It will always exist in a special place recessed in my mind.  My grandfather had a special place that he would recount too.  Whenever we had a great meal and he particularly wanted to pay a grand compliment to the cook, he would add with a twinkle in his eye, “It’s like dining at the Lorraine.”

“Dining at the Lorraine” has become a family saying whenever a meal is particularly good. We will never know the details of the original Lorraine of which he spoke, but the place still existed in his mind. The same holds true for all of the memories held in our minds of past places and restaurants where pivotal moments in our lives and our childhoods occurred. The Old Mullet Inn was such a place for me.

 “Going commando” is a new phenomenon where girls shave off all their body hair.  And another new craze is for tattoos and body piercing. These are just harmless pastimes. That is of course, if you don’t factor in the alarming rise in the number of STD’s in young people.

 Sex and the teenager! What carefree fun.  A recent survey shows how many children as young as thirteen years of age are sexually active.  Could it be peer pressure from other children or even from their parents?  Because not too long ago a survey was done where parents said if they had to do it over again, they would choose NOT to have children!

 I forgot drugs. And there will always be bullies in schools.  And the extreme competition for a dwindling number of placement slots in good colleges.  The sad truth is this.  When kids were shown some old 1950’s films where school kids of the day were taught about personal hygiene, they didn’t laugh as their teacher expected but instead were silent and reflective.  Because, they said they wished for that bygone era when kids could simply be kids. 

 Those days are long gone.  Kids can still have fun and still be kids. But, as Thomas Wolfe said, we can’t go back again.

The dialogue is priceless and is also what makes this a good match for our economic times. After he receives the bad news about his state of financial collapse, Walter Matthau wanders around in the beginning muttering, “I’m poor, I’m poor” in a state of disbelief.

The servants later congregate gloomily as they are confronted with the new reality. “It was a good ride” they acknowledge when they realize they can no longer rip off their employer and bilk her out of everything she rightfully owns. Elaine May is the wealthy heiress at the center of the economic storm. She plays the part brilliantly and timelessly as she trips blithely through each scene unaware of her scheming lover’s nefarious plans for her demise or for that matter of any part of her economic situation.

This is a movie for our time. The economic meltdown is the embodiment of hilarious suffering that we, the American people, can relate to in this fairy tale for today. We can relate as a society to the man who ran through vast sums of money at an alarming rate with no thought of saving for the future.

As a nation, were we not like the servants in a huge mansion dependent upon the largesse of a crumbling, erratic and unmanageable employer that could bottom out and end our joy ride at any moment? And the character of Elaine May to a large extent symbolizes the inept and tunnel-vision focus that America as a whole represents. The argument for this is that we unknowingly and unwittingly create financial havoc because of our basic philosophy of living in the “horn of plenty” with no thought as to how we sustain our lifestyle and to that end, what drives the economic engine of American prosperity.

Americans should check out “A New Leaf” in a new light when next it appears on our small screens. The crisis of 08 may be over for the moment, but the basic human principles of greed, avarice, incompetence and “irrational exuberance” will be with us for the long haul

 My mother had servants to help her with the cooking.  “The help” was cheap and women stayed home and had someone to help with the cooking and the ironing and the cleaning. It was unusual for a woman to cook without the help of servants in many parts of the deep South.  Certainly it wasn’t just the South, as Julia Child’s book can attest, but where I grew up, the maid was the one with the great recipes.

Our maid could make the best Fried Chicken, Chocolate cake, Potato Salad and  many other Southern staples.  She was also a part of the family and the sweetest person in the entire world, but there it was.  We had “colored” help as did many others I knew.

 Times have changed since I grew up. Some things changed for the better, and some not so much.  But, the mind-set and the rationale behind our culture and economic hierarchy was not quite a step removed from the days of Reconstruction and the Civil War over one hundred years ago. And that change away from cheap hired help was definitely a good thing.

 Kudos to Julia Child for her independence, her stamina and moxie that inspired us all to learn about gourmet cooking and how to soldier onward in the face of fallen soufflés and curdled sauces.  But she also paved the way for another generation where women worked and made their way and another generation still that has learned how to survive without “hired help.”  We may not be the greatest generation, but each generation, in its own way, has inspired young Americans to go forth and fight the good fight.  Soldier on, servant-less cooks of America, soldier on!

My experience with nausea starts way back in my young adult life.  I remember missing a big football game where all my friends were cheering for our team, while I was hugging the toilet and begging my older brother to come pick me up.  In college, I remember going a week or two during sorority rush without eating in order to avoid the dreaded curse of nausea and stomach cramps.

 In later life, I finally found the root cause of my problems and avoided certain foods.  This has gone a long way to reduce the nausea, but at times my old friend returns.  Last year I was staying at a hotel during a conference and sharing a room with a good friend.  After experiencing a particularly bad bout of nausea and cramping I was lying on a couch looking at the fire alarm. 

 I remember thinking, “Hmmm…I wonder if that thing has ever gone off in the middle of the night?”  Around midnight, of course I found out.  It was hilarious to watch as we stumbled downstairs in a scene reminiscent of “Night of the Living Dead.”  I found myself sitting on another sofa in the lobby facing a group of kids who stared back wide-eyed as we watched a bunch of pajama-clad zombies lurching around the lobby until it was declared a false alarm and “All was well” so we then trudged back to our rooms.

 The point is this.  I prayed that if I did ever make it back to my own home and my own bed and bath that I would never stray again.  Many a sick and weary traveler has turned to the patron saint of “stay-ification” to lead us to the promised land of familiar surroundings.  There is warmth and comfort to be found in one’s own chipped and broken cutlery and torn, ripped clothing we so often happily wear on Saturday mornings.

 Travel is all well and good. But in the darkest of times, one needs the comfort of familiar surroundings when evil such as nausea rears its ugly head.  There are bright spots to be found even in the face of an economic downturn, and “Stay-cation’s” are often a thing of beauty and a joy to behold.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat

 Teddy Roosevelt

Our rocks are crumbling. Long live the King! With the death of Ted Kennedy, we see a part of the American story ending a chapter begun a half century ago with the death of a President.  The truth was that the last of the Kennedy brothers represented a part of the fabric of political life in this country for over half a century. 

 The myth of the eternal flame was dreamed up in the creative mind of Jacqueline Kennedy. The keeper of the flame was the ethereal myth of Camelot with the mystical figure of Jack Kennedy presiding over a mystic region with the contiguous theme of the Once and Future King hovering over the Kennedy legend.

 In truth, the reality became the legend.  The legend became wrapped in Christian and literary mythology as Ted Kennedy’s real-world persona grew and his star burned so brightly and flamed out in so spectacular a conflagration that we all felt the aftershocks as the Kennedy name became so tarnished with scandal and sin.

 But here is the final irony.  Through hard work and sheer slog, with public service and the enduring truth of eternal love, the once and future King has the last laugh as the Kennedy mystique worked its magic and finally managed to close the chapter on Camelot.

 The quote from Teddy Roosevelt seems to fit the bill for Teddy Kennedy to a “t”.  He endured.  In a scene from “Ordinary People”, Timothy Hutton’s character confronts his guilt over his brother’s death by admitting that he “hung on to the boat.”  Teddy hung on and endured and then he prevailed.  With a face sometimes marred with dust and sweat and blood, and though he erred again and again, he strove to d o the deeds and spend himself in a worthy cause.  He failed while daring greatly, and he could never be in a corner of history with cold and timid souls.  This was a man of great enthusiasms and he inspired great devotions.

 While it is certainly true that Ted Kennedy never became President, his aura and his personality shaped a generation of politics in America much more than his brothers nebulous mystique ever could. The American ethics of “good ol’ American know-how” endured in the workhouse nature of this man who was known as the “Lion of the Senate.” Kennedy shaped a fate-filled path into history that allowed him to steer a course that would ensure his brothers’ legacy as well as create a cavernous void where his absence will be felt.

 The song for Teddy that comes to mind is one from “The King and I.”  It seems appropriate for a man who loved show tunes and old songs to think of the lyrics to “Something Wonderful” when thinking of many great men, including Ted Kennedy.

 “This is a man who thinks with his heart, His heart is not always wise.  This is a man who stumbles and falls, But this is a man who tries.

“This is a man you’ll forgive and forgive, And help protect, as long as you live…He will not always say What you would have him say, But now and then he’ll do Something Wonderful.  He has a thousand dreams that won’t come true. You know he believes in them, and that’s enough for you.

 It was Bobby who said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

In the end, he, Ted Kennedy, was the Lion of the Senate, the lost Prince of Camelot, the mythological creature who flew too close to the Sun, the Phoenix Rising from the Dead and the eternal hope of many as a man and as myth.  In the end, he was all things to so many people and his death ends an era and perpetuates the legend that was begun over forty years ago when Jackie invoked Camelot to entice a nation to believe in the enduring myths of America. Americans can survive almost anything but the absence of hope.  We found in Barack Obama a new standard bearer for this enduring myth.  It is hope that ensures “the dream shall never die.”  And it is hope that can lead us to imagine that even in a nation without monarchs there could be a Once and Future King.