unifying

I’m sitting in the Record Bar early Saturday evening with a few friends having some cocktails.

No one’s really there yet except for us and we’re having one of those easy conversations unique to friends in that kind of setting. We’re jumping from one subject to another talking about everything from tattoo shops to who’s sleeping with whom and so forth.

Suddenly I look up from my drink and make eye contact with the cat next to me who suddenly starts grinning. And before you know it, like some sort of airborne virus the smiles and looks jump from one person to the next and so on.

For a few minutes not only are we united by friendship but also by the aromatic scent suddenly wafting through the air.

I exclaim “BACON?” And the call is soon carried by everyone in the bar. “BACON, BACON, BACON!”

It seems that the kitchen was pre-frying up bacon for the Record Bar’s Sunday Brunch and the scent was overwhelming.

Out from the kitchen door appears one of the cooks with a single strip of hot glistening bacon on a plate.

With great flourish he lays the plate before one of the bartenders and we watch with joy and some envy as she snacks it down with a satisfying smack of her red lips.

It’s amazing how a simple meat from the back and sides of a hog that has been salted, dried, and often smoked, being fried dregs up so many fond memories.

Breakfast with the family and my mother in the kitchen, days off on a cold winter morning watching nothing on the TV, and of course a serious hankering for a BLT.

"and the monkey flipped the switch"