Pedestrian Crosswalks

The young men were dear old friends with memories galore and had known each other all through Catholic schools and sports teams. As they married and their families grew, holidays were shared, Christmas trees cut for a dollar a foot, too large for the average house, but amply providing the needed fill for the unfurnished front salons of their old Newport 'cottages'.

Two were Fairfield University educated, one a plumber, the other an electrician, brothers who loved to laugh, kind, and caring. The third, a stockbroker, who unassumingly, charmed his way to Wall Street, with Irish immigrant movie star dark looks, and more importantly, an innate diplomacy and honesty in all things human, had finished college in night school at the local state university, working days to support his then small but promising to grow family.

Newport was at a stand still, the Navy fleet had been pulled out by Nixon and moved to May Port, Florida. Businesses and public systems went down the tubes without the Fleet and federal aid to schools. Real estate was available for a song, however you could sing it. The homes of the elite, big old mansions, ones no one wanted to renovate, or at the very least, heat, were available at bargain prices.

The old friends were street smart, schooled in large, unruly, but gracious, Catholic families, savvy businessmen, and book smart, reciting Shakespeare with proper allegories to life as the world turns. They worked hard, with hands like sandpaper, bought the unwanted mansions and created multiple living spaces, played hard, and loved their wives and children like no others.

The three couples entered the Tavern through the main door, near the bar, greeting the maitre d' with fond hellos. With wives, dressed to the nines in Pappagallos, the Island's best knock-offs and a little Lilly Pulitzer pizzazz: a belt, a purse, strategically placed, the six were 8 by 10 glossies, a fresh batch of matadors from the baby-boomer generation.

America's oldest tavern, The White Horse, was rather quiet that night, with white linen table cloths set with a single taper in tall glass chimneys surrounded by ladder back chairs, tables for two positioned squarely around the periphery of the old tavern's dining room with larger seating for four or six in the middle.

Dining in the main room was one of The Avenue's grande dames, a Town & Country cover girl, once or twice married well. The money had vanished, ran out with husband number three, but she retained a baronial-sounding surname and squeaked out the annual dues for The Beach with her realtor's license to get on everyone's list for important Avenue parties. After all, she was almost a Brahmin, although an aging realtor now, she still made great photograph fodder in Suzy's Palm Beach 'shiny sheet' after-party gossip column.

Her very dapper dinner partner, who would have presumably rather been dining and dancing with the boys at David Lilley's on the Hill, heard the jovial greetings from the young matadors and asked, "Who is that good-looking bunch?"

As she toyed with her bird-sized pieces of the first course mushroom patisserie, she forked, "Oh, they're just wanta-be's."

The young party was seated at one of the middle tables for six, as their footsteps on the polished wide plank floor echoed through the room and chairs pulled out signaled the new herd, everyone in the room stopped to look.

They were politely loud, laughing about old, new, and everything in between, a shade different from the baroness' table, where her partner sat in lust for all the rugged, good-looking men sitting in the middle.

The table for two had started first and the dinner for six included many "I'll have another's," stops, and go-aheads. At some time during her meal, the baroness remembered just who did butter her bread, and ever planning, on her way out, stopped to graciously posture with the men in the middle, pleasing her dinner partner in very great measure.