Love At First Sight

 

Love at first sight happens. It happens all the time in movies and stories, it is the stock and trade of romance novels, two people spot each other across a room and their hearts start to beat with the same rhythm.

And let me tell you it is not the sole province of teenagers awash with hormonal imbalance, it can happen to wise, sane folks with years of experience and wide renown for their temperance and good judgment.

And if isn’t exclusively about sex. I know, the whole Trawler just went from PG13 to X. But sex isn’t the only component, there are other things.

Every see a new model year car and suddenly your palms get wet, your heart races or your vision blurs? No, then how come Bullet still draws huge crows every time it gets shown on the tube? It ain’t the fashions, cause those clothes were pretty funny when they were the latest thing and now looking back you wonder why did you ever think bell-bottomed pants on a guy were hot stuff?

You did, you know you did and what about Steve McQueen’s haircut, all that hair around the ears and collar it makes it hard to take him seriously as a tough cop.

Okay, so you don’t get weak in the knees when you see a Shelby Mustang or a Dodge Charger, even though when you were a teenager you wanted one or both with a white hot passion, and the only reason you lived to collect Social Security was you didn’t get a Shelby Mustang or a Dodge Charger.

You think all of these old guys spending hours working on sixties and seventies cars do it for the collector’s value? They do it cause they can’t keep their hands off the perfect curves and the soft lines of those magnificent bodies. Ole Raccoon Welch stand aside, Hemi ‘Cuda on the prowl.

What about the clearly unnatural relationship all women have with their shoes. Oh you can protest and wheedle but the truth is there breaths not a woman with soul so dead who does not drool for Jimmy Chues.

One of these days I am going to write a thriller with one of those sleek, manly action hero types and I’m going to write a scene where he’s running from the bad guys and he ducks into a women’s shoe store, the poor black hast won’t know where to look, he might as well have a cloak of invisibility. Men do not look at shoes. Shoes are what you wear to keep your feet from getting wet.

There are all kinds of passions, some people like kittens, some folks like wild birds, some prefer chocolate and some do coffees. Guess that’s why Starbucks can have a store on every corner and the Dutch Bros have “Powered By” signs on the back of everything from Mercedes to GMC pickups.

Me, I like food. And it is sort of ironic I have become a diabetic and food is now the enemy. I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised; all of the other things I liked and enjoyed have become enemies. Young girls, even middle aged girls, okay old girls look in another direction when I come into the room. (Probably the safest bet as the Long Suffering does not approve when I spend all that much time with younger women.) I can’t smoke, drink or survive without exercise which to my way of thinking is the crab grass on the lawn of life.

No, I grew up in Texas where the heat kept sane people inside seven month out of the year and when you did go out you made a bee-line for the nearest air conditioned place as fast as you could. The closet river, the Trinity, was so polluted from years of raw sewage dumping you could smell it long before you could see its evil brown trickle and the only living things in it were turtles and alligator gar. So no rafting, kayaking, fishing or swimming allowed. Even the chance splash of an ill-tempered reptile was cause for a full HAZMAT recovery team’s toxic spill emergency protocol.

As for biking and running, well, in Texas pedestrians and bikers have no protection by law; they are like all vermin on the roads, subject to immediate disposal. Those yellow stripped areas where folks are allowed to walk when the light changes are not cross walks, they are pedestrian aiming isles.

So I have lost all of my deepest passions, except food. And despite the Croaker I still love food. I can enjoy the smell if not the actual tasting and the sight of a well-prepared meal is a joy beyond words, which brings me to Little Italy.

I mentioned Little Italy last week and I’ve been back cause at my age, love at first sight is an iffy thing. It might be true love or just indigestion and bloating, hearts and flowers or heart attack, the music of the spheres or Brittany Spears.

I’m leaning toward the romantic poets here, this place is fantastic!

Okay, the food is what counts and so far I’ve narrowed it down, if it is on the menu it’s great, beyond great. That is unless Max decides to make something special for you and then if it isn’t on the menu it is great. Try to coax the olives out of him, Kalamata olives in olive oil, with oregano, garlic and onion. It sounds simple and it is, but the taste will rip your taste buds out and make you wish you could eat the plate.

Soup and salad is what your mama ordered when she got old and didn’t want to eat but knew she had to have something or the kids would drive her nuts trying to get her to take some of their food. At Little Italy keep your knife in one hand and the spoon in the other. You’ll have to defend your plate and you don’t want to slow the eating part down while battling the other bums at the table.

Come hungry, this is an Italian place, food is not what you do to stay alive it is a celebration, taken with gusto and joy or not at all. Drink the coffee if you dare. You might want to keep the fork handy it is a whole nother food group.

Oh yeah, the white sauce, calling it Alfredo is like saying the Mona Lisa is a picture, is so full of flavor, rich and creamy and not thick and heavy like the stuff you get in a jar at Safeway, you’ll want some extra bread to make sure none of it goes back to the kitchen.

That is if you can keep from eating all of the bread with butter before the rest of the food arrives. Bread and olives when you read about the Roman Legions sounds like hard rations, until you get a taste of what it must have been like, then you wonder how the Romans managed to stop conquering with just the known world.

Mangia bene!