Easter 2020

Repost from April 12, 2020

Some years ago I moved from Chicago to Florida on Easter weekend. After living and working in my ex-wife's wonderful home for almost 21 years - -I was going back to one of my own homes.

It was in the 30's when I left Chicago early Friday morning. The CD player was loaded with discs and it was smooth sailing until the magazine jammed just outside Memphis. I later learned how to un-jam the player by striking the magazine with a cheap ball point pen a couple times. But outside Memphis I was forced to turn on the radio. Amazingly (or not), the powerful signals all belonged to Christian stations and NPR was no match. Like Air Traffic Control, I was passed from one station to another and their version of The Passion. At first I was frustrated but grew curious as the liberal in me marveled at the music and southern perspective.

I made Chattanooga my Rest Over Night point and figured I'd drive around downtown and look for a proper hotel with secured parking rather than park at Holiday Inn on the interstate and listen to 18 wheelers down shift throughout the night. A sound I grew up detesting as an Army Brat.

I exited the highway and was dumped in front of the perfect hotel. Nine or so stories, brick, mid to late 19th century. Perfect. A call from my cell to reservations as I drove around the hotel --a vacancy at $70 a night. Perfect. I pull in and my station wagon filled with art (worth little to anyone but me) is valeted into a secure garage. Perfect. I check in and inquire if there's a decent steak restaurant close by. Before I can qualify that by decent I don't mean Outback, the desk clerk tells me they have a steak restaurant in the lobby. Perfect. I throw a bag in my room and run down to the restaurant. A rib eye, half a bottle of Cabernet and truffle mac and cheese. Perfect. Upstairs my bed has a down pad on top of the mattress. I lie down on one of the five best beds of my life. Perfect. And I dream...

I'm in a nondescript office waiting room. A man walks in and tells me, "Jesus will see you now." I get up and follow the man into another nondescript room. Jesus sits on a metal folding chair in the middle of the room in a white robe with his legs crossed. His bare feet in sandals. A clip board on his lap. I sit down in the empty folding chair across from him and cross my legs. The man leaves us in the room alone.

Jesus raises the clip board and starts to read from it but before he does there's a glance at my feet as he lowers the clip board and smiles, "Before we begin, I just wanted to comment on your socks. They're always so colorful." I look at my socks and look up at Jesus, "You like my - - socks?" Jesus leans forward, "Absolutely, I can tell you really make an effort." I ask, "That pleases you, Jesus?" "Yes," He says. "If it pleases you - - It pleases me." And I woke up.

I lay in bed that night and thought about the dream and realized how calm I was. I easily fell back to sleep and the next morning I watched the sun rise and reflected on the dream. Still unsure of what it meant but smiling to myself as I turned the radio on and headed home.

Mr Pitt & Penance Hall Socks

"You're hired, Penance Hall. Hello!" Mr. Justin Pitt, Doubleday Publishing

Shortly before Mr Pitt's death, he sat down with the boys at Penance Hall and designed a sock that would stay up but that wasn't too tight. "Pitty," as the boys at Penance lovingly referred to Mr Pitt, and who  loved to say, "Stay up, but not too tight -- Sounds like a cocktail to me." And of course it is, Fino Sherry and Mezcal, shaken and served up with a slice of orange.  But I digress.

Mr Pitt promised a story of 500 words to The Trad about the Penance Hall sock but we wound up in a dispute over a non-compete clause that I thought was only right to include. I didn't think two years was too long for Mr Pitt not to write for anyone else. I was, after all, paying him $1 a word but he didn't think so and sadly things escalated. Finally,  after five years the matter was settled…with Mr Pitt's death.

Despite the contractual language, Penance Hall and Mr Pitt really knocked the cover off the sock with this one. Merino wool, in classic Ivy school colors, and only $20 a pr. Mr Pitt suggested they retail for $20 per sock, but the boys felt differently and agreed on $20 a pair. If you invest in their Kickstarter, they'll lock you in for life on the $20 deal. The fine print is around here somewhere.

As a quick aside, Mr Pitt, before his death, offered a personal tour of NYC to Kickstart investors with Elaine Benes but... that has sadly fallen through. Pitt is dead and Benes is no longer in NYC.   Instead, Penance Hall has offered up, for the paltry sum of $5,000, lunch (and all we can drink) with myself and G. Bruce Boyer at the Four Seasons as well as a shopping excursion with yours truly that will blow your nuts off.

So open your check books for a good sock. You would make Mr Pitt very happy.