Bookending New Orleans

Pigskin Bookends: The National Football League season started off its first weekend last summer with a controversial non-call of offensive pass interference in the end zone and ended Sunday night with a controversial non-call of defensive pass interference in the end zone. The first non-call cost the Green Bay Packers a win against the Seattle Seahawks. Replacement refs failed to make the call. The season-ending non-call came in the Super Bowl by the regular refs and cost the San Francisco 49ers a chance to cap an extraordinary comeback effort to go ahead of the Baltimore Ravens. 

How fitting that the start and end of the professional football season should be bracketed by similar controversy. In the opening week game a Green Bay defender was clearly pushed out of the way by a Seahawk who caught a Hail Mary last play pass into the end zone. No foul was called. In the Super Bowl, 49er end Michael Crabtree was clearly held by a Raven defender by his jersey in the end zone, yards beyond the five yards from scrimmage where contact is permitted. Crabtree was impeded. He couldn't catch the pass. No foul was called. Instead of getting four more tries from the one yard line to score the go-ahead touchdown, after trailing at one point during the third quarter by 22 points, San Francisco turned the ball over to Baltimore to run out the clock and secure the championship.

I have no allegiance to either team, and there are those who believe there was no foul in the end zone. I’m not one of them. San Francisco should have had more chances to score. If the 49ers had scored, they would have fulfilled my prognostication about a late touchdown to take the lead and we’d have seen if I was further correct in predicting a Hail Mary pass by Joe Flacco. Well, we’ll never know, thanks to the refs. But I did get right Baltimore’s early domination, San Francisco’s comeback, a fumble by Baltimore and the point total, 31, achieved by San Francisco. 

A Taste of New Orleans: I’ve been to New Orleans about eight to 10 times, always as part of a convention either sponsored by the publication I worked for or the retail industry. Gilda joined me during my first trip there, in the fall of 1977, when I was a field editor for Nation’s Restaurant News. While I worked the conference we produced, MUFSO (Multi-Unit Food Service Operators), Gilda partook of the spouse’s program, visiting a plantation outside the city, riding on a streetcar, viewing Mardi Gras floats in their garage, and eating in some fine restaurants. In Commander’s Palace, a  distinguished establishment, the spouses were served turbot, at the time the “in” fish, much like Chilean Bass has become in recent years. Gilda still recalls how one woman, married to a McDonald’s franchisee, disdained the turbot, saying she never eats any fish except the fish filet sandwich at her husband’s fast food units. It was that type of crowd.

Anyway, about a week before our trip to New Orleans, the restaurant critic of The NY Times, Mimi Sheraton, wrote a review of the food scene in the Crescent City. She found it wanting, except, she noted, for an out-of-town humble shack called Mosca’s where she had the most divine fried oysters, garlic chicken and barbecue shrimp, all cooked Creole Italian style.

Naturally, we decided to go there, cautioned by Mimi’s article that no reservations were taken and that the last guests must arrive by 9 pm. Along with a fellow editor, Connie, and her husband, Bill, we left plenty of time to taxi from the Fairmont Hotel in downtown New Orleans down Highway 90 to Avondale, almost 20 miles away. Though the cabbie claimed to know how to get there, it quickly became evident he did not. We kept double-backing and crisscrossing roadways, looking for Mosca’s. This was way before cell phones; there weren’t any public pay phones along the dark roads we rambled on. We were four hungry and squished adults sitting in the back of a Mercury Marquis (the unofficial New Orleans taxi model). Since I had recommended Mosca’s, my seatmates were getting quite upset with me. 

Finally, at 9:05, we came upon two whitewashed buildings supporting a backlit Budweiser sign. Lots of cars out front, on the grass. We begged entry, explaining the taxi driver couldn’t find Mosca’s. They took pity on us, but advised it would be an hour and a half before we’d be seated. We could stand at the bar. Gilda, Connie and Bill were not happy, even with $1 drinks, 25 cents for sodas (remember, this was Louisiana, 1977). We waited just 45 minutes to be seated, a few tables away from where Momma Mosca sat watching over her customers. We ordered the recommended dishes. They were more than divine. They melted away Gilda, Connie and Bill’s collective anger. It was, we all agreed, one of the best meals we ever ate. 

The power of a good meal to smooth over differences was not lost on me. Several years later, as editor of Chain Store Age, we ran a long article about problems at Sears, Roebuck & Co. Upset, the CEO of Sears dispatched the head of the public relations department from Chicago to express corporate displeasure. I took him and his assistant to Shun Lee Palace on East 55th Street, down the block from our office. Considered by some to proffer the best Chinese food in the city, Shun Lee melted away any semblance of protest from my Windy City visitors. They so thoroughly enjoyed the meal that we ordered a second round of each dish. For such an honor, the chef emerged from the kitchen to personally bow his respect. 

Traveling Together

Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz caught flak, and a $20,000 fine from New York City’s Conflicts of Interest Board, for taking his wife, Jamie, on three overseas trips paid for by outside entities. Though it appears he technically violated the law, Markowitz’s argument that his wife was an asset on two trips to Turkey and one to The Netherlands resonates with me, and not just because I, too, am a Brooklyn native.

From my very first year as a business journalist I took Gilda (and subsequently our young children) along on as many multi-day conference trips as possible. Building rapport with customers, clients and sources is among the most important part of any relationship. A spouse is an invaluable asset in forging those ties.

Gilda’s first trip with me was to New Orleans for a restaurant conference produced by the trade newspaper I worked on. She wound up seeing more of the Big Easy than I did, visiting a plantation outside the city as well as the Garden District and a warehouse where the floats used in the Mardi Gras parade were stored. The pattern of her seeing the sights, or just lounging by the pool, while I worked the conference sessions repeated itself on subsequent convention visits. More importantly, the contacts she made with the spouses of retailers and suppliers turned into introductions to company executives during cocktail receptions and dinners I would have had difficulty making.

We started taking our children with us when Dan was just two. At the Del Coronado Hotel outside San Diego, he learned to say “croissant,” as every morning he and Gilda would breakfast on the French pastry while dining on the balcony outside our room. One of my favorite pictures has me wearing a straw cowboy hat, plaid shirt and jeans while carrying Ellie, her head in a bandana, asleep on my shoulder during a cocktail reception during a conference at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix when she was barely one.

The kids traveled with us through elementary school. Most of these excursions were during the school year. Gilda and I earned a deserved reputation as parents who blithely took their children on trips without caring what classes they missed. Guilty, with the explanation that our credo was they would learn long division two weeks later, but the educational experience of seeing different parts of our country, and one time even Japan, far outweighed any classroom instruction they might have received.

I was fortunate to work for a company that appreciated the value a spouse brings to the business environment. After I became a chief editor, my employer footed the bill for Gilda’s presence at many of the conferences I attended. Perhaps business has become less intimate (though I doubt successful people would say that), but I never understood why more executives didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to bond in a more personal way with their contacts at other companies. Yes, more spouses had jobs of their own and perhaps could not get away; not everyone could be as cavalier as we were about their kids missing school.

The bottom line for me, however, was the chance to share with Gilda the thrill of seeing a new environment—San Antonio, Marco Island, Tokyo, New Orleans, Oakland, Nashville, Dallas, Kyoto, Maui, Luxembourg, Strasbourg, Stratford-on-Avon, Brussels, Boca Raton, Palm Beach, Paris, Prague, Phoenix, Scottsdale—venues we might never have experienced together.