Plans For Dinner
Plans For Dinner
Noodles and Nice People
November 22, 2020
Dinner With Destinies
Chinese Kitchen No. 7 is open late. The only diners left are me, my father, and John F. Kennedy.
We order noodles and almond cookies and drink tea and diet Coke which helps the former President maintain his energy because it’s well past the normal bedtime for a 103-year-old.
President Kennedy tells us about the war in the Pacific, tells us about missiles in Cuba, and tells us how he dropped his pen that day in Dallas and bent over to pick it up and the bullet whizzed past him and the motorcade sped off to safety.
After his second term ended in January, 1969 he tells me and Dad, he thought about retiring completely from public life but had to be there in the control room when they landed on the moon. Then he had to accept President Humphrey’s offer to be ambassador to Vietnam and cut the ribbon when Ford Motor Company opened its assembly plant in Saigon in 1971.
We eat lots of noodles, Dad, the President, and me and we keep the staff of Chinese Kitchen No. 7 busy long past quitting time, but they do not mind because they like the President and they know we’re all good tippers.
A cold, dark rain falls past the neon lights and, after a few more almond cookies, it’s finally time to say goodnight and Dad and I drive the President home and he flickers the light twice, letting us know he’s safely inside. Then I drop Dad off at his house and he does the same thing.
I drive home, 100 miles an hour on the late November road, the leaves erupting behind the wheels. --TK
Sunday, November 22, 2020