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October 16, 2003
Banducci's Every so often I’ll
Banducci's
Every so often I’ll go to church, but I don’t believe in any particular god. I do see an Order to the way things happen though. Like the way I stumbled upon Banducci’s last January in Palm Springs.I was leaving California bound for graduate school in New York City. Had I been 24, this might have been a jaunty trip. But I was 34 and scared. Friends were building families and careers, while I had recently quit my job and broken up with my girlfriend. I had my reasons, but I also had a sick feeling in my gut. I didn’t like the plot. I felt like a yuppie cliché, part of the post-Internet-boom flight from the Bay Area, heading the wrong way across the continent. Go East, Young Man? I wanted it to be Kerouac, but my trip seemed more psychiatric than literary, like an ad for Prozac.
I started by driving south down the coast highway from San Francisco -- in part to see that beauty one last time, and in part to visit friends and the Formative Ex in Los Angeles. This was a triumph of masochistic procrastination, and I hit bottom on the afternoon of the third day parked at a convenience store in Santa Monica. I was lonely to the point of gasping.
Finally started east that afternoon and felt my despair hardening, turning into a kind joyless fatalism. Fought back an urge to drive through the night, pulled off at Palm Springs, and checked into a gated hotel with sunken sprinkler systems. Dropped my bags and went looking for the suburban Italian joint that I knew I would find somewhere up the road.
Less than a mile later, I found it: the faux stone exterior surrounded by blacktop and the big sign with cursive letters across a profile of the Italian boot, “Banducci’s Bit of Italy Italian Cuisine." When I pulled open the red, wooden door, a waitress, who must have been leaning against it on the inside, stumbled out next to me. She wasn’t young, perhaps in her late sixties, wearing a red skirt and frilly white blouse…and carrying a microphone.
I stopped her momentum and found myself the center of attention of a dozen or so elderly, maraca-wielding singers. They were an eclectic lot, draped around a circular white piano in front of me. Their showtune was peaking, and they kept singing as they smiled out at me. The place was long and narrow and had a warm glow. A well-worn bar stretched beyond the piano, and along the opposite wall ran a red vinyl banquette with small dinner tables. From the low ceiling hung golden tinsel and gaudy ornaments from the recent holidays. Standing in that doorway, I sensed the hand of God.
Providence had clearly brought me, an urgent case with a weakness for karaoke, to this kitsch emergency room. It was a not-so-subtle invitation to get on with life, to let go of my obsessive longing for Big Sur sunsets and ex-girlfriends. There was a free table directly in front of the piano. Nothing to lose, I thought.
At the bar was a very tall woman with long, straight black hair, stiletto heels, and a floor-length black dress. Somewhere over sixty, she was younger than many of the others, and only slightly more unusual. After a moment, she sauntered to my table and helped herself to a bread stick without saying a word, and then returned to the bar. I was thrilled and horrified. The piano man was square jawed with a Kenny Rogers beard, and he hammered out the old standards: Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, etc, while managing the jovial, unreal ambiance around him.
Barry Minnifield, at the table next to me, leaned over to say hello. He was a round black man with a coiffed mustache, perhaps in his late thirties, dressed all in black with a profusion of gold chains and cologne. In little snippets of conversation between numbers, he explained he was a former chef turned singer and band leader.
“This was one of Frank’s favorite places,” he said, and later added “Elvis used to come here when he was in town.”
On the other side of me were three couples that might have been at a VFW bingo evening. One of the men with a tremendous nose took off his beige windbreaker and silenced the house with a long, crescendoing ballad in Italian, his tenor only slightly broken. A woman sang “Someone to Watch Over Me.” You could tell she was once a pro. She was well into her 70s, and her voice had the sweet, innocent sound of an earlier era. Her coy gestures were a fragile mime of a lost cabaret act. A lot of retired performers come to Banducci’s, Barry explained.
I began to open up, to make eye contact. The veterans on my right and their wives smiled at me. Eventually the piano man caught my eye. Did I want to sing? I nodded yes, stood up, and walked to the piano. I said the name a Gershwin tune I knew, and he started in without missing a beat.
“They write songs of love, but not for me, A lucky star’s above, but not for me. With love to lead the way, I found more clouds of gray, than any Russian play could guarantee….”
I was off key, and my voice broke in the mic, but the regulars applauded. They wanted another. I sang “They Can’t Take that Away From Me,” and then I sat down.
Back at the table, Barry beamed and shook my hand. Just like Life, I thought, and suddenly my trip east had begun.
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Posted by oliver at October 16, 2003 07:34 PM