Banana

When I wrote the word banana this morning, I heard it, not in my voice, but in the voice of my girlhood friend's father, Patrick Wall. He'd luxuriously drawl it out several full syllables: bawhnawnah. Redolent on the tongue. But he was a curmudgeon of affection with his only daughter. Patrick was from Jersey (as in the Isle of); he took his family inheritance, sold the family farm, and emigrated to California. Patrick was the first to open a modern art gallery on the West Coast, in Carmel. He was a friend of Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Doc Ricketts, etc. The stuff legends were made out of. Oh, the art opening parties they had were legendary, where Patrick provided the starter tea punch and everybody contributed a flask of hootch. The parties lasted until dawn, everyone staggering home for brekkies of bawhnawnah—to combat the cumulative hangover threatening to sink the entire Monterey coast, I presume.