In the Company of Guys

My dinner discussion group consists of grizzled veterans mostly retired from the cut and thrust of life. By trade, we number three lawyers, a journalist, a professor of history, a city planner, and me, a very minor business mogul. We have Democrats and traditional Republicans (an increasingly rare breed). We lost one of the latter a few years ago, a beloved pediatrician who could be counted on to gently jerk the chain of his Dem pals. The discussion saunters aimlessly. Plans for a new knee elide into local politics. Someone harrumphs about the use of tax dollars to build a new baseball stadium for the rich New York hedge fund whippersnappers. We rummage in a box of memories of friends and past events, finding treasures.

We eat at Carrabba’s because it has a round table. The problem with rectangular tables is that guys get off into side conversations. This is particularly true of the guys at the far ends of the table, who can’t hear their opposite, so give up and start to chat up their neighbor. Hearing is a fraught proposition. There is much craning and leaning over to catch a conversation going on next door, sleeves get caught in the marinara sauce. I am the organizer.  I prohibit side conversations. When someone has the floor, they are Sir Oracle and I let no dog bark.

“Chicken Bryan” is my standard order at Carrabba’s. Goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, basil are involved. When I grew up as an army brat, I never heard tell of such exotic ingredients. My mother was a tuna casserole and meatloaf person. As for cheese, what was wrong with Velveeta? I pair my Chicken Bryan with the house Chianti Classico, a nine-ounce pour before 6:30.  My mother served her guests Carlo Rossi Paisano in a cut glass carafe, leaving the jug in the kitchen. She called it Piss-on-you.

I have belonged to breakfast groups, some lasting as many as ten years before dissolving from divorces, relocations, and departures to that greasy spoon in the beyond. We would arrive with grunts of greeting, chairs scraping as we assembled, plates and silverware clattering at bussed tables nearby. People recently out of bed required hot coffee to get their engines started. Chirpy, early morning types would elicit muttered threats from the guys who regarded morning as an imposition. Table conversations ranged from the lack of a decent Tampa Bay Buccaneer tight end to the merits of Crystal Hot Sauce versus Tabasco on grits.

My favorite breakfast group destination is Skyway Jack’s, a gastronomic feature of St. Petersburg since 1976. The walls are covered with posted specials. A row of baseball hats hangs on the wall behind the counter, a line of ceramic pigs over them. Pittsburgh Steelers pennants and Terrible Towels droop from the ceiling.  The vinyl seats are torn. The clientele is both White and Black, truck drivers and mullet netters sitting next to business types. You can stick a fork into Country Fried Steak, Philadelphia Scrapple and Jack’s SOS, as well as the Zombie Platter with pork brains. In less enlightened times, the waitresses wore T-shirts imprinted with two strategically located fried eggs.

In a lion pride, single males hang out together on the fringes of the pride. Like single male humans, they gather down at the watering hole and grouse about dating prospects and the fact that there are fewer wildebeests around this year. They grumble that the dominant male is not so hot and anyone could run the pride better than him, etc. Eventually, a single male knocks off the old, grizzled leader, takes over and finds things are not so rosy. Wives can be troublesome and, as the leader, he is expected to tangle with the big prey like the Cape Buffalo, a surly beast with bodacious horns. As he naps under an Acacia tree, he dreams of hanging out with the guys again, sans spouses.

Several months ago, I received a call from my friend Kip, featured in “Come Back, Huck Finn” and “Three Men in a Boat” posts. Kip fishes a minimum of four days a week. His passion for the Everglades makes Shackleford’s obsession with the Antarctic seem like a summer romance. His proposition: four days fishing, three nights at the Flamingo Lodge in the Everglades National Park. Two boats, six guys. We’d be cooking for ourselves, no fried chicken from the gas station at Florida City. “Pick me! Pick me!” I said. Aside from Kip’s friend Tom, also in “Three Men in a Boat,” there were three new guys for me to meet.

Once on the water, we fished hard for snook and redfish. We threw hooked feather and plastic creations against shorelines from Coots Bay to the mouth of the Shark River.  To make nice with the gods of fishing, we made blood sacrifices of scraped shins and cut fingers. We offered up tender bums bruised from banging over waves. Unfortunately, though we were paid-up members of the Catch and Release Tribe of fishermen, the fish mistrusted us and the catching business was slim.  

We were each assigned food responsibilities. I was the sous-chef for salad and oven-baked bread for dinner. The eating was great, the homemade chili and the snook filets (not released) drawing rave reviews. Dinners were bookended by leisurely discussions, feet up, bourbon in hand. When I got home, My Life’s Editor asked, “What were the guys like?” I considered this.

Had it been a group of women on an outing, and My Life’s Editor were there, she would have returned home having learned where her companions went to school, the names and numbers of husbands and children, the state of their health, what they did for a living, and if they had gotten their third COVID booster. She would have exchanged email addresses and recommended a few book titles.

I failed on all counts. Mea culpa. The best I could do was “They were good guys.” When I leave for that trout stream in the sky on the banks of which sits the great greasy spoon in the sky, I hope someone would say of me, “He was a good guy.”