12 November 2016

Editor’s Note: Apparently there is still rioting over the refusal of some citizens to accept the results of the election. I vividly recall all the Republican pouring out into the street back in 2008 to protest, smash the windows protecting small businesses and vandalize automobiles….oh, wait. That never happened. Never mind. Whatever the president-elect does when he actually takes office, I am prepared- as I was for Mr. Obama, to get his time at the plate and his three strikes. I am- temporarily- buoyed by the hope that the torrent of regulations, instructions, nudges, and rules will slow down. And some of them be overturned. As I have mentioned before, I am no Republican and trust them about as much as I trust their opponents, which is to say, not at all. I was thinking back to the early days of the current Administration, and one of those Last Best Years. My folks were holding their own in the assisted living center, and fully resettled. Mac had a couple health issues, but had roared back to his usual vigor. He was actively collaborating with historian Elliot Carlson on his masterful treatment of the life and times of Mac’s old boss, Joe Rochefort. (“Joe Rochefort’s War,” U.S. Naval Institute Press. Now out in paperback).

It was the sort of year that Dickens talked about in the first sentence of his “Tale of Two Cities.” But by that criteria, I guess this one is, too.

– Vic

When I’m (92)

(The Birthday Boy at 92, with Peking Gourmet Cheesecake, and a platoon of Chinese waiters singing a chorus of Happy Birthday to You! Photo Socotra.)

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine?

– Copyright 1967 John Lennon and Paul McCartney, members of an obscure rock band popular fifty years ago.

It was 2011, which despite the turmoil of the budget and the real estate bust, I still think of as a pretty good damn year. Who would have thought that we would all be closing in on that fabled age of 64, Beatle Paul would be a senior citizen, and John in his grave for decades?

It was Mac’s birthday, his 92nd, just to give some perspective, and he was feeling good enough that he was seriously considering going for the century mark, and have the occasional beer along the way. His family had honored me with an invitation to his birthday dinner. He was born on the 25th of August in 1919, entering rural Iowa during the second installment of the plague years (1918-19) of the Spanish Influenza that killed 675,000 Americans. It was almost a full century ago, a time when across the pond the acrid smell of gunpowder could still be sniffed in the dank lower reaches of the trenches of the former Western Front, and Doughboys like my grandfather were discovering whether they could be kept down on the farm after seeing Paree.

Our destination was special and part of the celebration. Mac’s family has a long history with the Peking Gourmet Restaurant. He and he wife Billie would take the kids there for special occasions, the ones in which the boys would stick the chopsticks up their noses to look like walruses.

Mac had contacted the manager, Ray Leong, and secured the Peking’s lushly decorated Bush Room for the occasion. The spécialité de la maison is the Peking Duck, and it is world class.

I had read about the place for years in the Washington Post Food section, since the little strip-mall palace had attracted all the greats and near greats of this hot-house political town, and both Bush elder and junior had a particular fondness for it.

The Peking Gourmet has been operating out of the slightly thread-bare mall along Rt.-7 in Falls Church since 1978. Founder Eddie Tsui wanted to run a restaurant specializing in northern Chinese cuisine, an featuring a flagship item that few could afford back on he Mainland. He decided on Peking Duck as the specialty, and the Peking Gourmet Inn was born.

This was no ordinary ethnic restaurant. Eddie ruled out ordinary store-bought ingredients as inadequate to generate the authentic taste he was seeking, and instead founded a parallel family farm business to grow jumbo spring onions and cucumbers. He formulated his own recipe for hoisin sauce and hand crafted each pancake for the delicate wraps that caress and enfold the thinly-sliced duck and golden-glazed fat-rich skin.

I parked the Hubrismobile in front of the Post Office across the alley from the mattress store and the inauspicious entrance to the restaurant sandwiched in between the Hispanic Market. The narrow corridor leads direct to the reception area, which doubles as the take-out window, a complex and tangled space that conceals a vast bright dining area swarming with Chinese waiters and Hispanic waitresses.

I asked for Mac’s party, and was walked back through the main dining room, into another through a large portal, and behind a tall oriental screen to the Bush Room, where the Presidents looked down on a round table for twelve with a gigantic Lazy Susan in the middle. Only Kathy was there, from the Alzheimer’s Program at Arlington Hospital. Mac had spent his third career there, after the Navy and the CIA, helping other’s cope with the insidious disease as he had endured its effect on his beloved Billie.

“Hi!” I said brightly “Where is everyone?”

“Mac’s Jaguar had a flat tire,” she said, looking up from her cell phone. She already had a gin and tonic in front of her to ease the wait, and I asked our angular red-coated waiter – Peng, according to the tag- for a glass of Chardonnay. It was not at Willow-style happy hours prices, I’m afraid- but the glass contained a vintage that was crisp and good when it arrived. We chatted about the hospital, and what Mac was still doing in service to the community.

As I was siting down, my Blackberry pinged and told me there was a contract modification that I still did not understand, and sent an ambiguous response with both thumbs into the ether as Mac appeared, none the worse for wear, with the story of the failed tire and the bandits at the Goodyear Dealer on Glebe Road.

“They had to keep it overnight,” he said. “So we just left the car and came direct.” Peng brought tall glasses of Tsingtao Beer.

Mac started the order a brace of ducks. A single duck can feed a family of four fairly well, but with the gaggle at the table, two was a minimum. Kung-pao Chicken, Spicy Shrimp, steamed dumplings, spicy green beans, Scallops, white rice and all the sauces where eventually delivered to the Lazy Susan, though Peng the waiter brought the pancakes first along, with a plates of scallions and cucumbers and bowls of their Hoisin sauce, which is absolutely fantastic.

The ducks arrived whole, and a Hispanic girl sliced them right by the tableside – it was fascinating to watch the process, and the lady was very efficient with her gleaming knife. There was hardly any fat on the neatly aligned pieces as Peng brought them to Mac to assemble what amounted to a Peking Duck taco.

The service was solicitous as the family dined with gusto, the Lazy Susan bringing the feast around in a truly moveable manner. The talk was of the duty stations where the family grew up, in London and Naples, and Coronado and Honolulu. Along with Mac’s long career in Washington, it was a kaleidoscope of the American Century played out on the background of an old- and new- Chinese landscape.

The feast was consumed almost in its entirety when a hoard of Chinese waiters brought Mac his slice of Cheesecake with a single candle. They like it when the people who beat down Imperial Japan dine with them. It is their way of saying thanks to a dwindling number of gentlemen.

Mac smiled and dug in. “I haven’t eaten this much in years,!“ he said with a smile.

All we could do was smile right back. Happy Birthday, Mac! And many more!

As it turned out, it was not going to work that way. But at that moment, as far as we knew, Mac was eternal, and we could make reservations at the Peking Gourmet for 2019 to celebrate his century mark.

Sometimes it is better not to know.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com