Lunch Poetry

During one glorious phase of my work life, I was lucky to be a part of a special lunch group. It all started with a few trips down Michigan Avenue to the Taco Bell. The Bell, as we lovingly referred to it, is no longer there, replaced years ago first by a vacant lot and subsequently by a parking structure. Over time the group of Bell regulars grew to a dozen or so, meeting each Wednesday, with perhaps another dozen attending infrequently as guests of the regulars. It was a time of stress for many of our group as the proud edifice that had been the Collection Division was slowly and then more rapidly falling down around us. The lunch group served as an island of sanity and comfort, restoring our energy and lightening the mood for the balance of the work week.

There were of course many other lunch traditions of which I was a part during my work life. In my early training days there were regular trips to the Adams Family Restaurant (an Albanian establishment) for the weird chili. This was followed by almost daily trips in the early 80s to the Arcade Bar for a sandwich and a beer with the Collection Division staff, led by John Masson and Bill Bigby, rest their souls. There was the Cadena's era which saw many IRSers munching the best taco chips I have ever had to this day in a little hole-in-the-wall joint that was really a roofed-over alley between two other buildings. There were the Friday outings in the late 80s/early 90s to the Congress Cafe with my Bride and her circle for a fish-mac special. During the early 90s the entire Quality Office (both of us) made many a memorable journey to the Schnelli Deli where we enjoyed soup, a half sandwich, a side salad and a drink for under $4 (often followed by a stop at Otis' Bakery for a cookie on the way back to the office). And there were many other eateries - Lindell's, Leandi's, the Coneys, the Press Pantry, to name a few - that each had their place and time. Fond memories all. (It should be noted here that none of the restaurants named thus far still exist except for the Coneys. Wow.) But my fondest memories are of the Taco Bell era.

The trips to Taco Bell were originated by my good friend Jim Wyatt in the mid-90s. That was the beginning of my Research days. Each Wednesday Jim would put out an email or make a few calls and get the group together. In the beginning it was pretty informal, but as time passed the weekly "lunch and moan" became an integral part of the group's work week. Then a strange thing happened. Jim left. In an odd career move, he left the comfort of life in the Federal government for the greener pastures of the private sector, ostensibly to make his fortune. Rumor had it that the move was prompted by a fear of threatened layoffs. But it's hard to believe that James would have been taken out by that old dodge. More likely it was unmitigated ambition :-)

As you might expect, Jim's departure from the scene left quite a void in the Taco Bell lunch world. Who would take the reins? In a fit of desperation, I leapt into the breach. But I knew I had to take my game up a notch as it would be hard to replace Jim's affable style with my buttoned-down, plannerized approach to life (this of course was long before I became my current fluffy retired self). How would I get the group to show up? My answer was lunch poetry. Bait them with a little humor to take the edge off the day and get them out of the office. You have to remember that most of the members of the Taco Bell lunch group were in high-pressure, stressful jobs and often took no lunch at all so they could catch up on their in-boxes and emails.

Originally delivered through email then through "special courier" - there was a little hullabaloo about using official Government equipment for personal messages - was an individual invitation to attend each Wednesday's event. To entice invitees to make the effort the invitation was framed in the form of humorous verse. These were usually parodies of popular music or appropriate rewrites of well-known passages from pop culture. There was also a series of limericks about a working girl named Estelle who frequented the Bell to parade her wares. Some of the more elaborate offerings were actually delivered through live readings by the special courier (you know who you are), sort of lunch poetry as performance art. It was all great fun and, much to my relief, seemed to work. The Bell lunch tradition endured for several more years. And when the Bell was summarily closed without notice (we showed up one day and the doors were locked), the group sought out alternative venues, eventually launching the "pile into the van and go to Mexican Town" period, which had its own charm and will be the subject of a later post. But the lunch poetry continued until the demise of the old district office and the rise of the distributed organization early in the new century.

I am in the process of scouring my old files and day planner pages (I still have back to 1990) to reconstruct as much of the old verse as I can for the purpose of putting together a little memory book for those who were involved, and will share additional items from that material through this blog from time to time. For this post, I have included a few of the earlier invitations for your reading pleasure, and for some perhaps a trip down memory lane.

This was the first of the courier-delivered invitations, establishing the new protocols and assuring the group that the long arm of computer security would be overcome. It's entitled Insufficient Postage.

Email is for "business only".

Private thoughts send me not.

To keep us all from getting lonely,

Little notes are what we've got.

So little notes we'll learn to use,

Brief and to the point.

Takes more than this to thwart the muse

That haunts the taco joint.

This invitation was a re-write of the famous airport scene from Casablanca, penned in Bogart-eesh.

Over the lasht weeksh, we've shaid a great many thingsh. You shaid I wuzsh to do the reminding for all of ush. Well, I've done a lot of it shince then and it all addsh up to one thing. You're getting into that line at the Bell where you belong.

Now you've got to lishen to me. Do you have any idea what you'd have to look forward to if you shtayed here? Nine chanshes out of ten we'd all end up in a shtaff meeting.

I'm shaying thish because itsh true. Inshide of ush we all know we belong there. It'sh part of our work, the thing that keepsh ush going. If the group leavsh and you're not with ush, you'll regret it. Maybe not now, or today, but shoon, and for the resht of the week.

I'm no good at being noble, but it doeshn't take much to shee that the problemsh of we the little people are all that count in thish crazy world. Shumday you'll undershtand that.

Here'sh looking at you, kidsh.

Here are a couple of the early Estelle limericks, just to whet your appetites. The idea of the limericks came from Linda Mathews, a charter member of the lunch group to whom I am greatly indebted. This first one introduced the "Queen of the Bell".

An unseemly lass named Estelle,

Use to troll for men at the Bell.

She'd grab the behind

Of each guy she could find,

Until one of them for Estelle fell.

This follow-up provided a little more insight into Estelle's world, entitled Estelle (of the Bell) Returns.

Of late, poor Estelle's had it rough,

Learning attitude's just not enough.

Seems the last man she lured

Of lusting was cured

When Estelle he beheld in the buff.

There'll be of more Estelle in future posts, but let me close this inaugural commentary on lunch poetry with these two items, both favorites of mine. The first is a rewrite of the Star Trek mission. Just imagine the voice of William Shatner as the starship Enterprise (that would be NCC-1701) wooshes down Michigan avenue.

Lunch, it's vital, fun and weird.

These are the forages for taco chips of any size,

Our continuing mission to explore strange new foods,

To sneak out to life in crude civilization,

And boldly go where no one should go, ever.

Except today.

And The Pledge, a somewhat disrespectful but heartfelt parody of our national mantra.

I pledge indulgence,

Not to brag,

But to unite us

In states of euphoria.

Until in public,

We cannot stand.

Satiation,

Oh my God, unforgiveable.

For sanity,

And just us.

That's all.

As noted above, there's more, much more, to share with you all from the archives of lunch poetry. But at the moment I'm hungry and am heading to....well....lunch. Bon appetit to all.