I set aside Georgia Durante‘s “The Company She Keeps” a few months back because her autobiography had left Rochester and settled in LA but as she found you can’t shake your ties to this town. Durante is a strong woman with an epic story. She ran with the top echelon of Rochester’s Cosa Nostra, well dressed thugs, while modeling for Fortune 500 companies. I can’t understand why Hollywood hasn’t run with her story.
She was born the same year as I was so when she names streets and restaurants and clubs her story is especially vivid. Wouldn’t you love to go back and stop in Skinny’s all night diner or the Living Room on Norton, The Blue Gardenia (now the Bingo joint on Empire Boulevard), The Fountain Blue, the 414 Club with the best bands in the city or the Overlook in Webster? On the night he died Sammy G barhopped from the Club Car to Club 747, the Encore Club and then Ben’s Cafe Society where he was blown up. I could’t remember where Ceasers II was so I emailed Georgia. She responded “Lyell and Dewey in a basement. Those were the days, weren’t they? :-)”
Nicholson Baker was still living in Rochester when he placed a few ads for his “U & I” book on the back page of the Refrigerator. His new book, “The Way The World Works,” is an exquisite collection of short pieces from the last fifteen years, a lot of them are set in Rochester. We went to the same Doctor’s office on Goodman Street. These vignettes are like getting high without the drugs. Here’s one.
“One summer I worked as a waiter in a fancy restaurant that had been owned by a reputed mobster. The mobster sold the restaurant to the head chef for a lot of money. But many of the people who’d gone to the restaurant had been friends and associates of the reputed mobster – when he stopped going, they stopped going. So business dropped, and I stood wearing a ruffle-fronted shirt with a black bow tie, looking out at empty tables. Once a waitress told the chef that a patron wanted a simple chicken sandwich. The chef whose specialty was veal dishes, was affronted. “Chicky salad?” he said. Tell him to bring his dick in here. I’ll make him some nice chicky salad.”
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