bourgeois dilemma #35: honey this coffee is cold

in case you didn't get it from the country club post, I have been a beneficiary of The Good Life. a prime example is spending summers in a small town east of new haven - every summer, for the most part, in a little town where both sets of my grandparents as well as my paternal grandparents "summered" back in the day. in fact, my grandparents first met in this town on a beach where a sort of chuck wagon had pulled in to provide changing rooms for the day and the girls had honking huge white bows in their hair and the boys were in full on suits. my parents met here at a dance, and my father swears that he knew at age 15 that he would marry my 13 year old mother, flat chested freckled and mouth full of braces. knowing what it all meant, my sweet husband was good enough to propose to me here and we celebrated our perfect union on the lawn between grandma's house and the neighbors.

things are different now - we are renters, theirs a starbucks/cvs/subway in the mini strip mall and mcmansions are supplanting the third generation beach houses along the shore.

But some things never change and thank god for those things, such as the lawn bowling league. 25 or so old men (and I say that with the utmost respect, but these guys are bona fide old like "Yale class of 1944 dear" old). who turn up at a pre-appointed destination every sunday from may -october to lawn bowl. boules, petanque, no matter what it is called it seems that many cultures have a version of old men hanging around tossing bigger balls to reach a smaller ball and uttering their linguistic equivalent of "beh".

Here in our little town it's a ritual of course and the ways of the tradition are not clearly communicated in any way. I will never forget the first time that my "parents" (as in my mom) hosted the event 15 or so years ago. There are very clear patterns: the old men arrive at 9:15 (so exactly at 9:15 one wonders how they synchronize), drink coffee from an urn which is passed on week to week along with a basket of mugs and eat sweets. They then bowl. Then there's a "minor lunch" involving min sandwiches, vodka and rum among other libations. Mom probably had to wrestle this general protocol out of my father (he's never been much on hostessing details) so she was left to figure out when the minor lunch would be served. given the booze aspect, she assumed it would come at the end. Au contriare, that course arrives mid-bowl at 10:15 am. On that particular weekend, thank god, we had a dear friend of mine as a house guest - one of those girls/women who has managed to maintain their 16 year old figure and the corresponding bikini well into her 40s with very little effort. So, the grumbling of the old men who charged on to the porch at 10:15 looking for their mini sandwiches and vodka tonics was mitigated by my bikini clad pal passing cubes of cheese on a platter.

Just last weekend, we had the honor of hosting this event. Mom died last summer, so it was a stake in the ground of normalcy for dad, who has his own problems, to host it. Luckily, in my mother's recipe box was a slip of paper with the set shopping list for "lawn bowling" and we were able to procure what was needed at the stop n shop. I admit to cheating by procuring pre-made salmon cream cheese rolls, but other than that I stuck to the list. A few emails with one of the bowlers, a 90 year old urologist with whom I am friends on facebook, naturally, to fill in what booze was needed, and I was ready to roll.

8:00 AM: cut coffee cake, arrange donut holes, arrange mugs, ice down lemonade.

8:15 AM: plug in urn to brew. In kitchen as the cord doesn't reach the plug on the porch, will move later.

8:20 AM: someone finds an extension cord so we move the urn to the porch.

8:30-9AM: arrange baskets of sweets, set out milk/cream/sugar and spoons

9:00AM: await arrival of bowlers

9:15AM: bowlers begin to arrive, striding, ambling, and/or creeping across the lawn and on to the porch.

9:16AM: very short old man with huge thick round spectacles comes into kitchen with coffee mug: "Honey, this coffee is cold."

Turns out the plug on the porch did not work. How did I not check this? I go into a free fall of panic. I have approximately 1/2 a coffee maker pot of my own high grade brew, so I reach in to the basket of mugs and offer Mr. McGoo some of my own hot coffee. "I don't like that mug." Shit. I am ruining lawn bowling with my ineptitude. He gets his own mug, and I fill it up. "That's too much". I pour some back in to the pot "I need more." At this moment, I am squelching the urge to pour the coffee over his head but I just smile. The coffee urn has been moved back in to the kitchen and is audibly perking away, thank god. The porch is now crowded with men and while technically speaking it's a no fly zone for anyone of the weaker sex, I have a hall pass on account of the coffee fiasco (oh, and the man who needs tea). this means I have the illicit thrill of listening to the announcements which amount to a necrology as well as the introduction of a guest - in fact, the guest of my fb friend who gleefully explains that he and his colleague, a fellow urologist, are "pirates of the perineum" and declares it's better to have foreskin than hind skin. I am not even sure what hind skin is but naturally I don't want it and am overwhelmed by an urgent need to get off of that porch as fast as I can. There are several more roars of laughter from the assembled group in that hale fellow well met modality. they totter off to bowl and at 10:15 on the dot clamber back to the porch - lemonade, vodka, the salmon cream cheese pinwheels and mini ham and cheese sandwiches seem to go over without incident. the bowling continues and as it's about 95 degrees I am ready to offer more lemonade after but that's not how it goes. as each team finishes, they pack up their balls and get back in to their cars and that's it 'til next week. not even a goodbye.

some might suggest that a gathering such as this should be busted wide open. at one point, a splinter group of wives was going to start a cultural get together to prove that the womenfolk could have their fun too, not that the pirates of the perineum would care much. but the truth is that there is something hapless and even sweet about these geezers with their bags of balls and the sneaky mid morning v&t. who knows, maybe the rest of the year they are forced to go to church or something.

next year, I will be sure that the coffee is piping hot.