Saturday, September 2, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Maggiano’s on a Friday night
Ashley has worked at Maggiano’s for 18 months. Thinking of our son Marc’s work as a server, we left a big tip for her after dinner last night with our friends.
She told us when she walked in to make an application, she’d never seen the place. It can be intimidating. We’ve been to Maggiano’s in St. Louis, Indianapolis and Chicago, now in Austin. Walking under the high ceilings around thick black and brown pillars in the dining and banquet rooms, down the long, almost endless hallway toward the exit, I can’t help but think of the Sicilians.
Surely the Mafia godfathers bring their daughters here for their rehearsal dinners and wedding banquets. The crooners are at the top of their game – Dino, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Perry Como, and even occasionally Bing Crosby. Fly Me to the Moon and let me play among the stars. Everybody Loves Somebody. Dream a Little Dream of Me. The Way You Look Tonight.
Most of us are whispering, even the wait staff. The restaurant opened in 1991 Chicago, but everything about it shouts 1950s New York. And as far as I’m concerned, when I walk in, I walk straight back into the past. Red checked tablecloths cover every table. I expect to see large bellied middle-aged Italian men lumber past me in white shirts and thin black ties, barely concealing their shoulder holsters. Fresh Italian tomatoes sing out from the kitchen, alongside garlic and basil countertones. Mozzarella and parmesan cheese pour over pasta and chicken and eggplant.
Margaret and Ashley had a long conversation about gluten free food at Maggiano’s. In olden days the chef came out to talk with Margaret. Not the sous chef, neither. The head chef knelt beside the table and talked directly with Margaret about what they could and would do to keep her happy and healthy. That was when gluten intolerance was not a fad. Margaret’s decades-long difficulty with wheat is far from a fad.
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, and work with your own hands, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
I imagine Italians by the boatload docking at Ellis Island in the early twentieth century. Could they lead a quiet life? Sure. That doesn’t mean all of them did, of course. The music, the Mafia, and especially their food celebrated life and didn’t hold back.
But most of us in the restaurant are whispering, even the wait staff. Immigrants, and their descendants, need to stay clear of authorities and others who pretend to help but don’t.
A man going on a journey called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents, to another, two, to a third, one – to each according to his ability. And to some he returned and thanked them. “Well done, good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you greater responsibilities.”
Think about those who came before you. My German ancestors moved to central Illinois. Many Italians settled in New York. Margaret’s Scotch forebears lived in North Carolina and Kentucky. We have become assimilated, many of us, into the United States of America. Others, millions of other folks, are still working on that.
Rather than defending what I have, it’s right that I share it with others. In that way, remembering where I came from, I want to be as welcoming as I can be.
(1 Thessalonians 4, Psalm 98, John 13, Matthew 25)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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