I went to see a wonderful band perform at the Dart Coon Club a while ago. We went at a friend’s bidding and it was great to hear them and see the thrill and admiration shown by their ardent supporters. But my friend was probably the most ardent although she would never say so and the feelings that were hers were for her alone. The band played fast and with a degree of dissonance but always with a sense of imagination, intricacy and history.

It seems my friend would dine with two of the members of the band –two fine-voiced brothers. Their parents were pillars of the community although mom’s lipstick was more often than not misplaced, and she always wore clothes of a school marm. For Sunday lunch they would gather to carve the roast beef to the sounds of the War of 1812, to wear grey flannel pants, to look censoriously at the youngest who probably felt doomed to a lifetime of grey flannel short pants in the dead of winter. Tahiti Treat was foremost on his mind on those occasions.

Between sets my friend told us of how this young sprite piloted her from his brothers and sisters, sat her down on the divan and offered to eke out a segment of some time-worn classic on his handy violin.

“Sarah let me play some Chopin for you,” he would plead.

And the eldest Philip, who sang well of motorcycles and their sounds and motion, grabbed her hand once, pulled her to the end of the dock, and told her to scream as loudly as she could. Could one have helped such an ardent supporter? Behind the brothers was the history of their family, and although their mother who came thousands of miles once to see them play and promptly dismissed them as “crazy,” would deny it vehemently, they are a product of their past.

And thank God for that. For I also am a product of their past and their music and convictions give me the strength and perspective to make my decisions. And my friend feels for them for the roast beef and tennis and what that has become. Mom can’t quite understand, and the Ginger Ale will never give way to Tahiti Treat. She can’t be entirely faulted, for the mind boggles at the prospect of the cornerstone of the church hearing her son’s heartfelt extortions to “SIT ON MY FACE.”

Around and around people glide and the Chinese Freemasons can’t skate, although they try so hard. More dangerous is yet for people to leave tropical plastic places and enter far removed land where they gaily test the ice with no skates. That domain is reserved for free and graceful girls in canary yellow pants, who have no eyes for what they do not want to see. The ice goes on before them, but near pillars of aluminum are patrons who know nothing of the Dart Coon Club, grey flannel short pants, and to them Chinese Freemasons are a mere curiosity.

Originally published in White Wall Review 6 (1982)