THE BLUE SUIT
Discussions about everything Everett with the mayor’s Blue Suit and Josh Resnek, editor of the Leader Herald.
The weather has completely changed. There is a chill in the early morning and a chill in the afternoon and a chill at night. The leaves are changing color. Comfort food is the bill of fare for many of us looking for something to warm us up.
The Blue Suit and I drove down to Revere beach Tuesday afternoon, to Kelley’s for a snack – or at least that’s how the Blue Suit put it to me.
I ordered a small chowder, a garden salad with Italian dressing and a small Coke. At $15 bucks for that, I couldn’t complain. The salad was fresh, crispy, actually. I love the Italian dressing. It comes in a small container. Funny enough, when you spread it on your salad, a small amount of the dressing covers nearly everything in the salad with a taste of the dressing – and that’s good enough for some of us. As for the chowder…Kelley’s clam chowder is almost exquisite. It tastes of milk, cream and butter and it is filled with potatoes, and clams. A real delight, actually. Even a Kelley’s Coca Cola is exactly as sweet and as carbonated every time as it should be. In a lifetime of shopping at Kelley’s I have never received a bad meal.
The Blue Suit was hungry. Oy vey! As Jewish people are prone to say in Yiddish.
A hungry Blue Suit is a problem for those of us who have to pay. It was my turn to pay.
He started with a clam plate at $26.95. He finished that off in about four minutes. Then came the lobster roll at something like almost $30 bucks. It comes with a bag of chips and a pickle. He whoofed that down with three bites.
“Hey man, you shouldn’t eat so fast. Remember, the food tastes better in your mouth than it does in your stomach.”
The Blue Suit laughed.
He ordered up a cheeseburger.
“I love Kelley’s cheeseburger. It is a perfect burger,” the Blue Suit said admiringly as he held it in his hand, viewing it as a treasure of sorts, before raising it up to his lips for a steam shovel type bite into his mouth. He ate an order of fries with the cheeseburger. He drank two Coca Cola’s.
“I’m really thirsty,” he said to me.
Now back at the window again, all the guys and gals behind the counter wanted to shake his hand.
“Yo. Man. Like you’re the Blue Suit! Cool. Wait til I tell everyone on the night shift that you stopped by!” said one of the counter people inside Kelley’s.
A young Asian woman working behind the window held both hands over her mouth. She could not believe the Blue Suit was at Kelley’s, in person, and yucking it up with the help.
“I never knew he had such a great personality!” she cried out to a colleague behind the corner.
“Yeah. I’m getting to know him better and better. He comes here all the time with the guy from the Leader Herald, one of the counter people said to the girl.
“He tips pretty well, too,” he added.
The Blue Suit ordered a vanilla shake. The bill was about $90 bucks. I paid the bill. We got out of there.
We headed back to Everett.
But not before the Blue Suit remarked about the ocean.
“Look at the waves! They’re huge. Feel the wind. It’s really blowing. I love this time of year,” the Blue Suit said to me.
I agreed. We were off.
As it usually does, our talk turned to our favorite subject, that is, Carlo.
“How is Carlo doing?” I asked the Blue Suit.
“He seems OK to me,” the Blue Suit added. “But then, what the hell do I know. He doesn’t share much with me. He doesn’t trust me because I speak with you,” the Blue Suit said.
I laughed.
“He doesn’t have to tell you anything. You are around him all the time. There is nothing he can hide from you,” I added.
“Roger that, Josh,” the Blue Suit answered.
“I’m just wondering what he thinks about the Davis Companies pulling out of the big Exxon Mobil development they had proposed. And now a second developer has pulled out of a project in North Everett at the former Pope John site. Can you tell me what’s going on? Do you have any insights you want to share?” I asked the Blue Suit.
“It is very unusual for developers to pull out of large projects like that. I don’t know what it is that caused the developers to give up on the Pope John site. Carlo believed right up to Tuesday morning that that deal was done – even with the city council and school committee clamoring for the affordable housing development of Pope John to be dropped.”
“Do you think Carlo will be persuaded by the community opposing the affordable housing project now that the developer has pulled out because of lack of community support?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Josh. I just don’t know. We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we.”
OK. Onto another subject…Yom Kippur,” I said.
“What is that?” the Blue Suit asked.
It’s a Jewish Holiday know as the Day of Atonement,” I said to him.
‘What happens on Yom Kippur?” he asked me.
“That’s the day God writes the names of all those who are going to make it another year and those who won’t into the Book of Life. He writes about who shall live and who shall die. Who shall be happy and who shall be sad. Who shall be rich and who shall be poor. Who shall be exalted and who shall be brought low. Take it from me, it’s a big day. You’ve got to tell Carlo he needs to cast off all his sins by Wednesday (assuming he’s committed any) by sundown to get into the right column of the book.. Tell him, please. It’s very important.”
The Blue and I shared a moment of levity.
“You know Carlo hasn’t done anything wrong?” he asked me.
I looked the Blue Suit in the eye. I winked.
He winked back.