A Christmas Birthday Memory

Today is December 17th. Christmas is looming, retailers are fretting, and everyone is starting to get that warm, toasty, fuzzy inner glow that seems to start manifesting itself this time of year.

It’s also my father’s birthday. Edward Joseph Balon would have been 90 today. There was never a man that enjoyed life more than my dad. His appetites were huge: he loved wine and a good single malt scotch. True to his New England heritage, he loved Maine lobster, fried clams and raw clams on the half shell. He could tear into a good Ribeye with unparalled gusto and like me, he loved great bratwurst, chicken paprika, and adored my mother’s cooking.

Toward the end of his life, he took great pleasure in bragging to his friends about his son in Texas who had recently become a food critic. He got the radio and TV parts down but never had time to come to terms with the Internet. It’s too bad because I know he would have enjoyed reading the reviews: he had an opinion on just about everything, food included.

He loved golf and he delighted in our courses down here: Barton Creek Lakeside was his favorite. Had he bothered about such matters, he probably would have played to about a 20 handicap. But the sheer joy of being on the golf course with his son or back in CT with his pals transcended something as mundane as worrying about a handicap.

No day was inclement enough to keep him from at least 9 holes. I recall one day in January where we played this little 9-hole course near his home in CT. It was cold as hell so he grabbed these huge muckluck gloves that would have kept Nanook warm and off we went. I asked him how many strokes I had to give him (we always played a $2 Nassau). And he just looked out across the course, pointed to the pond on the first hole which was frozen over, and grinned broadly.

“Don’t need any today,” he replied.

He was easy to shop for. “Just get me another one of those Barton Creek sweaters,” he’d say. And he never complained about the fact that Christmas and his birthday almost overlapped; because for him, it was all about giving, and not receiving. How ironic that his grandson-in-law, whom he never got to meet and who shares so many of his finer traits, has an almost identical birthday.

And he loved my wife and his grandchildren. And they loved him back. Grandpa Ed was special to them.

His death at 83 was untimely and accidental. I never had the opportunity, living 1600 miles away, to get there in time to say goodbye. But someone like my father had a presence that was so large that it created its own vacuum: a vacuum that transcended his passing.

So every time I step up to the first tee on any course I play, I feel he is watching. If I smoke one down the middle, or not, I smile and think of him. And when I hoist my glass of red wine at dinner that evening or crack open a huge lobster claw at our favorite seafood place, I can see that ear-to-ear grin that he was his trademark.

As Charles Dickens once observed of a re-born E. Scrooge: “He knew how to keep Christmas well.”

My father had the same talent. Christmas was his favorite holiday. And so it is at this time of year, like so many of us Baby Boomers who have lost parents, that we miss them the most.

Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday Dad/Grandpa.!!!

Love,
Rob, Marge, Jenn and Lauren.

Observations from the Trenches

Writing about food is not without its hazards. I once was almost attacked with a clever by a chef who mistook me for another critic who had been more vindictive-unnecessarily so in my opinion-toward his establishment. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed.

Another observation: while I enjoy going to see a movie at the Alamo Draft House, I have learned that eating there once the lights go out has its perils. This is particularly true if you are wearing black and trying to dip chips into a bowl of queso. Upon emerging from the movie, my shirt had streaks of queso in various configurations. After taking the shirt off and looking at it, one queso manifestation seemed to bear an uncanny resemblance to a caricature of Bill Clinton.

I was dining with some long-term Benchmark clients from New York who were unaware of my second life as a food critic. About half way through dinner, a woman approached our table, smiled at me, and proceeded to reach down and rub my stomach.

Stunned, I sat there mute as did my clients.

“I’ve always wanted to rub your tummy since I first saw you on TV,” she said by way of explanation.

As she left I couldn’t help but imagine what would have happened had I approached her table and started rubbing her stomach. Ah, the old double standard is alive and well.

How often one encounters servers who don’t listen! In a nice Austin bistro the other night, I asked my waitress to allow me to remove a piece of polenta from the serving plate and put it on a side plate where it could receive a resounding dose of ground pepper. Instead, she ignored my plate and proceeded to inundate the serving plate with more pepper than anyone in my party but me would enjoy. She later asked why the tip was only 15%. “What?” I replied.

Has this ever happened to you? For some strange reason the other morning, I found myself desiring a Sausage/Egg/Cheese McMuffin from McDonald’s on Barton Springs. This happens rarely: perhaps once a year. But when it happens, I must fulfill my craving. So I pulled up to the drive-thru at about 10:25am (so said my cell phone)…
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“I’d like a Sausage/ Egg/Cheese McMuffin,” I said.

“Sorry,”came the reply. “But we close for breakfast at 10:30am.”

“But it’s only 10:25am” I replied into the speaker.

“We close for breakfast at 10:30am,” said the voice.

I knew this tack was not gong to work so I changed gears.

“Well, do you have any Sausage/Egg/Cheese McMuffins left?”

“Yes… but breakfast is over,” came the reply.

“So, you’re just going to throw them away?” I said into the speaker.

There was a pause. Perhaps I had hit a nerve. But then: “Breakfast is over at 10:30am. Would you like to order lunch?

By this time it actually was 10:30am. I drove away thinking about the McMuffins and wondering what fate would befall the few that were left.

There is nothing that annoys me more than orthodoxy gone haywire.