by Cory Tracy

The Lucky Ones

Value is found in renegade forms that flex their uniqueness and stray from the norm.

Though he is an octogenarian Catholic priest and I am a famously asinine atheist firebrand, my uncle Phil Tracy and I get along really well. We have lunch on the second Friday of every month, and last month it was his turn to pick, so we went to Uncle Don’s Spurwink Country Kitchen in the tangled back roads of Scarborough. Eating at Uncle Don’s is like time-traveling back to the 1950s. Most of the clientele look like they were teenagers during that decade. When they don’t have someone at the piano, there’s usually a record of classical music or mid-century standards playing softly in the background. Phil got an old-fashioned boiled dinner and I got a tomato grilled cheese with a generous hit of sweet-potato crinkle fries. The food was good and treated me right, but the peppermint ice cream brownie sundae on the dessert menu tried to seduce me. As many women will testify, it doesn’t take much to seduce me, so I gladly let the sundae have her way with me.

We Mainers are much luckier than we realize. On Sunday, June 11, I managed to dodge most of the Old Port Fest, but zipped down at four to see Armies on the WCLZ stage. Anna Lombard and Dave Gutter splashed the crowd with their mesmeric lyrics, backed by old Rustic hands Tony McNaboe on drums and Jon Roods on bass. I was flanked by two distracting beauties, Christine Arsenault and Kristen Hill, and facing a third (Lombard), but managed to avoid an eye-meltdown by employing some Zen mindfulness tricks.

When the band was done, I bid my farewells and dissolved into the background like a Murakami antihero. Navigating the Old Port as workers disassembled the festival was challenging, but I made it to Temple Street just as Reggie Groff was driving by. He pulled over and we exchanged a few lighthearted insults.

Uncle Phil is officially retired from the diocese, but his fluency in several languages still makes him a valued asset to the church. On Friday, Uncle Phil told me he’d administered the blessing at the grand opening of El Corazon, in Longfellow Square. Reggie, feeling combative, suggested we go somewhere to play chess, and I suggested we do so while checking out the new Mexican restaurant. We threw my chair in the back of his jeep and off we went.

Turns out El Corazon isn’t open on Sundays, so we went across the street and gave our business to Local 188. Local’s open kitchen puts the meal prep on full display, so the cooks aren’t allowed to get too messy or swear up a storm. I’ve worked in a few restaurant kitchens and always appreciated the door separating us from the customers. Reggie and I stimulated our stomachs on tasty tapas and exercised our intellects on the chess board. Though I am but a humble naïf and 188 is a hipster hangout, I have always had a welcoming reception there and find the food to be finicky but well worth my tongue’s attention.

Later that night I got a call from my sister, Seanna Caison, who was in town for our brother’s wedding. She and her boyfriend Wes and their friend Grant were in the neighborhood and wanted to chill. We went to The Top of the East. I was wearing a Marcy’s Diner shirt and singing its glories, so we decided to meet there the next morning. Grant raved about the food and about how cute Gillian Sinnott is. I told him to take a number and go to the back of the line.

On Monday night I went to Portland House of Music to help Ken Bell celebrate his club’s second anniversary and to soak in some Gina and the Red Eye Flight Crew. The band played flirty spurts of spunky funk and the room got hot from all the sexual deflection. Gutter showed up and sang Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” during the second half. Not bad for a Monday night — not bad at all.

On Thursday I met my friend Timothy Gillis in Congress Square Park for a few quick matches, and after Tim left I played chess against a fellow wheelchair resident named Hashim. Hashim is an older fellow from Iraq. He told me he was imprisoned there for political dissidence for 10 years. They played a lot of intense chess in the Iraqi jails.

Like I said, we’re much luckier than we realize.