Bud Collins’ widow posted the other day that it was the 10th anniversary of her husband’s death. People who follow tennis remember Bud as the man with the colorful pants, yet he was sweet and unassuming; he let his knowledge of the game (he wrote the Tennis Encyclopedia) and his loud trousers do all the talking. When I was at the Sun-Sentinel he’d send me travel stories he would write while driving to tournaments (that spring-summer migration from Rome to Paris to London) and then, every March, he’d get me a one-day press pass for the Miami Open (in those days it had a corporate name) and I’d join him and his wife Anita in the media center. Watching matches with Bud – a man who had watched thousands of matches – I always wondered what he was seeing that I wasn’t. Yet more impressive than his vast knowledge of the sport was the fact that he called everyone in the cafeteria by their name.
Last week at this time we were busy washing sheets, cleaning the apartment, and stocking the fridge for our friends from Philly who were coming for the weekend. We loved seeing them, and very much enjoyed showing them around, and it occurred to me that hosting guests is like having a colonoscopy - only the preparation is unpleasant.
Though of course it depends on the guests.
A few months ago, a couple we’ve known for a long time invited us and a few friends to dinner at the Biltmore to celebrate their wedding anniversary. It was a lovely evening except for the fact that I failed to order the “thousand-layer lasagna” which a number of people raved about. We made plans with the couple to return sometime, perhaps around the holidays.
So Saturday night, Hania and I drove to Coral Gables. We arrived early and stopped at the Portuguese Bakehouse for four pasteis de nata, Motek for some hummus to go, Bulla for five takeout gazpachos, and finally Graziano’s for some last-minute Christmas presents.
I found a prime parking spot in the hotel lot, and we met our friends in the lobby.
“You know you have to pay for parking now?” Mark said. “It’s $4 an hour.”
I rushed out to my car, which, thankfully, had no ticket, and, after some searching, found a sign on the opposite side with the zone number.
“When did they start charging for parking?” I asked an employee as I returned to the hotel.
“Monday,” he said. “The city owns the lot, and they decided to start charging.”
Making my way to the restaurant, I found everybody sitting by the fountain in the courtyard. It was a gorgeous South Florida evening; looking up, one saw the sky framed by arched terraces and feathered by palm fronds.
The waiter arrived and announced that they were out of lasagna. This was greeted with a loud moan, and the news that we had driven from Fort Lauderdale. I noticed on the menu that the name had changed from “thousand-layer lasagna” to “Biltmore lasagna.” I ordered the spaghetti with clams.
“Do the clams come in shells?” I asked the waiter.
“No,” he said, which was also disappointing.
The spaghetti and unhoused clams arrived in tomato sauce. My third disappointment of the evening. Taking my first bite, I had my fourth disappointment. Hania and Cecile were equally unenamored of their risotto.
The soft trickle of the fountain was soon drowned out by the pounding music of a party in the ballroom. Boom, boom, boom, boom.
But not even that could spoil the pleasure of sitting with friends in an elegant courtyard the week before Christmas. And the gazpacho and hummus made for a delicious Sunday lunch.
Christine Dolen, former theater critic for the Miami Herald, died over the weekend. She was that rare critic who seemed to be universally liked. Her passion for theater – all of the arts, really, and the people who make their living in them – came through in every word she wrote. She was also one of the most gracious people I ever met, and this too explains her beloved status.
Sam Graff was the husband of my first editor, Sally Lane, back in 1977 at the Trenton Times. Sam had worked at the paper before moving on to the Daily News in New York, commuting every day by train in suit and tie. In summer, he sometimes wore a white suit that went well with his thick mustache. He looked very good in hats.
To me, Sam was the ideal of the big city newspaper editor. He loved opera, spoke German, and was armed with a formidable store of knowledge on a vast array of subjects, which he would never flaunt, but reveal quietly when the occasion demanded it. He was worldly and yet a proud Trentonian, sophisticated and at the same time possessing a remarkable kindness and warmth. And he was very funny, able to see the humor in life, the countless absurdities of the modern world, and comment on them with wit.
When my first book, Unquiet Days, came out, Sam and Sally came to New York to hear me talk about it at the Kosciuszko Foundation. After the talk, we met with some other friends, one of whom asked me if I was working on a second book. Sam answered before I could: “Unquiet Nights.”
In her book Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, Jan Morris writes of a group of people who “form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones! … They share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humour and understanding. When you are among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically. They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean. They are not inhibited by fashion, public opinion or political correctness. They are exiles in their own communities, because they are always in a minority, but they form a mighty nation, if they only knew it.”
Farewell to one of the lordly ones.
Friday we went to the Gateway to see The Persian Version – happy that the theater is still showing the occasional non-mainstream movie – and before the show had dinner with our friend Joe at the Greek restaurant next door. It was the first Greek restaurant I’d ever been to that had entrees in the $40 range, and crabcakes on the menu but no moussaka.
Going over recent events, Joe expressed amazement at all the press given to the death of Matthew Perry. “I bet Jimmy Carter is lying around thinking, ‘If I don’t get at least half of this attention …’” He also regaled us with his evening spent using ChatGPT. Joe being Joe, he gave it some unusual tasks, one of which was “Create a knock-knock joke about Pol Pot.”
The movie was delightful.