There are so many parts of this job that I'm going to miss. But I think the biggest loss is going to be the change in my relationship with Homer.
Ah, those romantic dinners at Lucy's Table. He'd have the goat cheese ravioli, I'd order the wild boar. And so many candle-lit nights, we'd talk tax increment financing and urban renewal "colors of money" until we closed the place.
I'll never forget the night Homer explained to me why the South Auditorium district was such a flop. He put down his salad fork and grabbed my hand. All those cold, tall apartment towers were lonely and out of place with that dinky little Corbett neighborhood to look down on. They needed some more big, tall towers to network with, and to protect them from those winter storms. He regained his composure, and I let him use one of my Gucci scarves to dry his eyes. And so the North Macadam plan was born.
Without Homer, how would I ever have figured out what a great deal a streetcar system is? We've kept the cost to the city down to $900,000 a year -- money much better spent than on street paving. The parking meters along the route pay for it all.
Such a gentleman -- always looking out for my best interests. (Not like Neil, who thinks he's Tony Soprano now.) I'll never forget the night that a couple of my Sierra Club friends and Manny Rose sat down at the table next to ours just before our food got there. Homer knew that I was in trouble, and so he insisted to the waiter that he had ordered the boar instead of me. I ate the goat cheese ravioli and avoided a major loss of face. As Burt Bacharach put it so eloquently, that's what friends are for.
And I'll always remember that horrible night in the summer of '99 when some homeless people were camping out in one of Homer and Joe's apartment construction sites down in the Pearl, and they caught all the particle board walls on fire! (What is it with these homeless people, anyway?) Oh my God, I was out of bed at three in the morning and I had the cops drive me down there to check out the damage. The hard hat look suited me pretty well, I must say. I still have the videotape somewhere. My message was clear: I won't sleep when a precious resource is being destroyed.
But what's left for me now? Homer's already splitting the boca negra with Sam Adams these days, and what do I get? Chopped liver at Kornblatt's with Deborah Kafoury? If that's all there is, my friend / Then let's keep dancing....
Posted by Vera at March 9, 2004 04:06 PM