How I wound up here (Part 2)
(When we last left our intrepid hero, he had just arrived at college, not quite of legal age but with as impressive a batterie de cuisine as any freshperson at a large, southern, State university is likely to have had amassed in 1981.)
One of the many unforeseen* challenges in using all my vast** culinary powers to avail myself of the female pulchritude now before me was that most of these young ladies had been weaned on things like fried peach pie, catfish, chicken and dumplings, etc. and things such as Tournedos Rossini might prove a hard sell. There was also the matter of my having been WAY rusty in the skills required for daily interaction with young ladies, owing to having spent 6 years in an all-boys academic boot camp. Having a modicum of fashion sense, being physically fit, tolerably charming and possessing a fine Jesuit-school vocabulary went a long way--but not all the way--towards compensating therefor. "Compensatory skills"quickly became an axiom for my living the collegiate life.
There were other aspects involved in Making Friends And Influencing People, but these are for another blog another time.
One Friday (my classes ended for the week at 11am) I had finished an exam with great success and quite ahead of schedule and I stopped for a quick bracer at a bar across the street from campus, aptly named "The Campus Party Store" but known to all (for reasons which had never been adequately explained to me) as Bolton's. Several Bloody Marys*** later it dawned on me I hadn't lunched and I was feeling positively hollow.
I went to my apartment to fix something, but there was some sort of roofer's convention which made for an ill-suited marriage between the aforementioned Bloody Marys and the scandalous racket emanating from the general area of the roof. I took my new Electric Wok****, my Igloo SideKick cooler and headed to my fraternity house. I decamped on the west balcony which had, dead ahead, Sorority Row, with the corner of the Chi O house on the corner to my left, and the Kappa Kappa Gamma house on the opposite corner, to my right. The notion then struck me to make, right then and there, a batch of gumbo.
I hailed a passing pledge*****, gave him my keys and a hastily scrawled list of ingredients and sent him right speedily to Alberston's and then my apartment. In 45 minutes (they got points for good service) I had the whole gumbo mise-en-place thing going on and I began gumbo-ing. Hey, pretty soon things started to smell pretty good up there, and I was having a jolly time with some Killian's Irish Red Ale.******
A couple of girls going into the Chi O house looked up and asked what I was doing. "Not doing," I shot back, "making."
"So...what are you making?"
"Shrimp and crab gumbo."
"Like in New Orleans?"
"Yeah."
The notion that one could make New Orleans food outside New Orleans was a very daring and novel one, apparently.
"Is that just for y'all?" asked a Kappa.
"Nah. I'll give you a taste if you want."
"How?" (it was pretty much an article of faith that sorority girls only went up the stairs of a fraternity house with stealth and plausible deniability...doing so in broad daylight was Very Much Not Done)
"Lemme thinka something."
With the aid of Pledges Brian and Clay, I rigged something with a fishing rod and foam cups & plastic sporks pilfered from our dining hall.
I lowered countless draughts of gumboid elixir and the whole wheeze went over swimmingly. As I was packing up******* one of the Kappas looked up and asked: "What are you making next week?"
"I'm not sure. I'll have to call you and tell you."
"Okay."
"What's your number? Or, do you live in the Kappa house? What's your extension?"
"I'm extension 1147."
"By the way, I'm Joke."
"I'm Bronwen...yes I know."
"Hey, gimme points for not saying 'Bron...what?' With a name like that you must be an English major." (I had cheated and noticed she was carrying one of the more advanced Norton Anthologies and some Browning.)
"Yeah."
That, ladies and gentlemen, was the first step on the road to perdition.
More later.
-Joke
* Something of a recurring theme with me, alas.
** In hindsight, I now realize I was merely half-vast.
*** In those days the drinking age was 18 and nobody ever bothered to check the ID of anyone, and nobody ever bothered to check to see if anyone was checking IDs.
**** I am not really sure why this seemed like a good idea at the time.
***** Hey, Brian, if you're reading this, shoot a guy an email will ya?
****** The recipe has since been bastardized sharply downward, and now it's just called "Killian's Irish Red Lager" and it tastes like Hell. It is deeply missed.
******* Well, Pledges Clay and Brian were packing up, I was drinking a Bass and supervising.
One of the many unforeseen* challenges in using all my vast** culinary powers to avail myself of the female pulchritude now before me was that most of these young ladies had been weaned on things like fried peach pie, catfish, chicken and dumplings, etc. and things such as Tournedos Rossini might prove a hard sell. There was also the matter of my having been WAY rusty in the skills required for daily interaction with young ladies, owing to having spent 6 years in an all-boys academic boot camp. Having a modicum of fashion sense, being physically fit, tolerably charming and possessing a fine Jesuit-school vocabulary went a long way--but not all the way--towards compensating therefor. "Compensatory skills"quickly became an axiom for my living the collegiate life.
There were other aspects involved in Making Friends And Influencing People, but these are for another blog another time.
One Friday (my classes ended for the week at 11am) I had finished an exam with great success and quite ahead of schedule and I stopped for a quick bracer at a bar across the street from campus, aptly named "The Campus Party Store" but known to all (for reasons which had never been adequately explained to me) as Bolton's. Several Bloody Marys*** later it dawned on me I hadn't lunched and I was feeling positively hollow.
I went to my apartment to fix something, but there was some sort of roofer's convention which made for an ill-suited marriage between the aforementioned Bloody Marys and the scandalous racket emanating from the general area of the roof. I took my new Electric Wok****, my Igloo SideKick cooler and headed to my fraternity house. I decamped on the west balcony which had, dead ahead, Sorority Row, with the corner of the Chi O house on the corner to my left, and the Kappa Kappa Gamma house on the opposite corner, to my right. The notion then struck me to make, right then and there, a batch of gumbo.
I hailed a passing pledge*****, gave him my keys and a hastily scrawled list of ingredients and sent him right speedily to Alberston's and then my apartment. In 45 minutes (they got points for good service) I had the whole gumbo mise-en-place thing going on and I began gumbo-ing. Hey, pretty soon things started to smell pretty good up there, and I was having a jolly time with some Killian's Irish Red Ale.******
A couple of girls going into the Chi O house looked up and asked what I was doing. "Not doing," I shot back, "making."
"So...what are you making?"
"Shrimp and crab gumbo."
"Like in New Orleans?"
"Yeah."
The notion that one could make New Orleans food outside New Orleans was a very daring and novel one, apparently.
"Is that just for y'all?" asked a Kappa.
"Nah. I'll give you a taste if you want."
"How?" (it was pretty much an article of faith that sorority girls only went up the stairs of a fraternity house with stealth and plausible deniability...doing so in broad daylight was Very Much Not Done)
"Lemme thinka something."
With the aid of Pledges Brian and Clay, I rigged something with a fishing rod and foam cups & plastic sporks pilfered from our dining hall.
I lowered countless draughts of gumboid elixir and the whole wheeze went over swimmingly. As I was packing up******* one of the Kappas looked up and asked: "What are you making next week?"
"I'm not sure. I'll have to call you and tell you."
"Okay."
"What's your number? Or, do you live in the Kappa house? What's your extension?"
"I'm extension 1147."
"By the way, I'm Joke."
"I'm Bronwen...yes I know."
"Hey, gimme points for not saying 'Bron...what?' With a name like that you must be an English major." (I had cheated and noticed she was carrying one of the more advanced Norton Anthologies and some Browning.)
"Yeah."
That, ladies and gentlemen, was the first step on the road to perdition.
More later.
-Joke
* Something of a recurring theme with me, alas.
** In hindsight, I now realize I was merely half-vast.
*** In those days the drinking age was 18 and nobody ever bothered to check the ID of anyone, and nobody ever bothered to check to see if anyone was checking IDs.
**** I am not really sure why this seemed like a good idea at the time.
***** Hey, Brian, if you're reading this, shoot a guy an email will ya?
****** The recipe has since been bastardized sharply downward, and now it's just called "Killian's Irish Red Lager" and it tastes like Hell. It is deeply missed.
******* Well, Pledges Clay and Brian were packing up, I was drinking a Bass and supervising.
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