Daily Blague

There were summer jobs all through high school and college, all of them on Wall Street, all of them at a predecessor of the Bank of New York, for the matter of that, until we moved to Houston in 1968 and I varied my experience a bit with gas pipeline dispatching (a command-center sort of job) and a term in haberdashery at Sakowitz. Right out of college, I went to the radio station, KLEF, and I kept that full time job, with ever-increasing responsibilities designed to up my paltry income, for seven years. Then came law school, and, after that, the only two jobs that I've had since, first at the New York Stock Exchange and then at E F Hutton. How many of you remember the catchphrase, "When E F Hutton talks, people listen." Well, Hutton got into trouble over money laundering (let's hear it for "the pizza connection"), and the old satirical annual, The Bawl Street Journal, adjusted the phrase accordingly: "When the Feds speak, E F Hutton listens." Actually, Hutton didn't listen, not until it was far too late. I was in the Legal Department, but we had nothing to do with fixing the problem; that was delegated to outside counsel and, in my opinion, botched to the point of sabotage. Hutton went under, merging with Shearson, which no longer exists either, a few months after I quit/was fired. That is, I was told to look for another job by an unsympathetic general counsel who had been brought in as part of the "cleanup," but no term was set for my sufferance, and indeed the announcement that I would leave on such-and-such a day met with a request to stay on. I did not. All of my colleagues had to apply for their own jobs in the merger. Hutton had been a jolly place to work, until the money-laundering thing. I have to say that I liked the job a lot, I liked the people a lot, and I might even still be there if a bunch of screwups hadn't ruined the party for everyone. In any case, I have not worked in nearly eighteen years.

Going through the five or six boxes of stuff that I'd kept from those two jobs, the vast bulk of which I threw away this afternoon, took me back to a past that, for the most part, I don't miss. It actually frightens me to consider it. I had such wrong-headed values! I was so stupidly dazzled by finally having realized the childhood ambition of living in Manhattan! And I mean, here, to speak of myself as just another kid getting off the bus. I might have been born here, but I didn't grow up here. I might have had a few more resources than kids who really do get off the bus, from places much farther away than Bronxville (which is not in the Bronx), but I was just as unprepared for the glitz as the deepest rube. In fact, I was more prepared to make mistakes.

Kathleen and I are still married and still in love, however, and that, in the end, is all that matters. And how much it matters! I have been inordinately lucky. But wading through those boxes, I could see just how incredibly lucky I'd been - because I certainly hadn't helped myself along. I almost got fired from the Exchange because of absences (they had a weird, complicated, and very strict policy about sick days), and there were way too many liquid lunches at Hutton. I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going - it was always clear that Kathleen would do the going, and indeed she made Wall Street partner the year I left Hutton - and the contents of the document boxes brought the perplexity of it all back into sharp focus. Such sharp focus that I had a hard time holding on to a sense of who I am.

When the last box had been emptied, and the last pile of refuse tipped down the chute, I was getting very hungry. Kathleen said that we should go out, but what I wanted was a big bowl of spaghetti alla carbonara. Kathleen is on record as not caring for this dish, and so I've been making it for myself for years now on nights when she's working late. I had a feeling that she might change her mind about it when I served it, and she did. "I always think that this is going to come in an Alfredo sauce. It is certainly true that many restaurants douse carbonara with cream; it is likely that most cooks use whole eggs. But mine is one of the simplest dishes in the world, and because I keep parsley growing on the balcony, I always have the ingredients: bacon, eggs, spaghetti, parmeggiano. The sauce is ready before the pasta water reaches a boil. Tonight, as a variation, mindful of Kathleen's desire for light food, I used Canadian bacon instead of pancetta - both of which I stock in the freezer but can slice with my meat slicer. The egg yolks, the parsley, and a bit of parmeggiano go into a small processor for blending; the thick slice of bacon is cut into small cubes and browned in butter, and the spaghetti is boiled for eleven minutes. Then everything is tossed together. Spaghetti alla carbonara took the edge off of a very iffy day.