Every Saturday morning, we convene the Breakfast Club. We meet at Mike’s Premiere Grill on Calumet Ave in Valparaiso. The hierarchy or chain of command kind of goes like this. Fred McNulty is the Grand Poobah.
He used to be a lot bigger than he is now so he always ate breakfast, sometimes twice in one day plus lunch, dinner and snacks. Even after he lost weight he was still there to keep up his routine. Jack Wallace is an original member of the group, and so is Dave Rose, President of Horizon Bank in the region. Dave is 6 ft 10 inches tall so besides him taking up a couple of seats, Mike loves seeing him there for breakfast. I too am one of the originals, but I am there for guidance and knowledge, mostly to answer questions that come up during our discussions. I do quite a bit of reading and I am a wealth of useless and trivial information.
We arrive between 7:45 and 8 a.m., and of course we can always count on stragglers. We have anywhere from 6 to our highest total ever this past Saturday morning, with a crowd of 14. In attendance this week were Fred McNulty, Jack Wallace, Dave Rose, myself, Jim Fitzer, who is retired from Nipsco, Art, our Polish physical therapist, Mark Leuthardt and Scott Holman from Comcast, Dr. Ric Frataccia from the Portage school system, Chris Mahlmann who owns ValpoLife and PortageLife, Don Asher who works for Ken Allen the Attorney, (and I will also get to some other stuff on Asher later), and Jack Phelps, whom I still don’t know what he does other than his mail is always at Jack Wallace’s office. Rex Richards, who runs the Valpo Chamber, is usually in attendance. Finally last but not least, Tom Carroll, who is President and CEO of Lakeshore Public Television and Radio, joins us.
Don Asher is our resident movie star. He was Reporter #1 in the movie "Public Enemies." We know the movie inside and out thanks to Don. He hates it when I tell him I have been on the screen more than him thanks to my being an extra in "Hoffa," Cab driver in "Dennis the Menace," and mob guy on the TV show "Early Edition." I will talk about these at a later date. McNulty usually tries to act like he’s in command, and when he is not able to make it, I always make everyone comfortable when I tell them I am in charge like Alexander Haig. This usually draws a lot of cat calls and derogatory comments but I am used to it because when you are in charge and leading you have to be able to withstand the abuse. This group is no different than when guys always get together. There is lots of chop busting, bravado, and juvenile behavior. We always try to get help from any aches and pains from Art the therapist and of course we think that the advice should always be free.
Dave Rose, Chris Mahlmann, and Ric Frataccia always show up in shorts, no matter how cold it is. The excuse is that they are going to work out after breakfast. The really old guys are always eating oatmeal which reinforces our feelings that they are full of ####. After watching these guys come in for a long period of time every Saturday, they should consider a change to their workout routine because they don’t look any different. A few months ago we are having our usual cut up session and as you look around the table you see big omelets, lots of meat, sausage gravy, toasted bread of all kinds and lots of butter. So it was surprising to get a phone call on the following Tuesday that Ric was in the hospital and he was going to have open heart surgery. We were all deeply concerned but the Grand Poobah said not to make too many calls or visits, so Ric could keep his mind on the task at hand. Thankfully everything went well. We had also heard that one week after his surgery; Ric was at the Premiere Grill for dinner. He did miss about three breakfast club Saturdays though, so as soon as we were sure that he was doing fine, we sent Ric the breakfast club bills for the three Saturdays he missed. We felt that since he had not informed us ahead of time that he needed this surgery, that it was only right for him to buy breakfast for the guys who faithfully attended. We are still waiting for him to pay.
We always try to recruit new members so that we can initiate them by making them pick up the tab. If no one new is there then we make the last guy there buy. If that can’t be determined it becomes similar to a kangaroo court so we can make up any excuse to cajole someone to buy. Half the fun is trying to beat someone into submission and getting them to buy. We invite anyone that wants to show up to join us on Saturday mornings. We are always looking for someone to buy. It could be you.
Until later……………………………………..Ciao.