I'm about ready to pay top dollar and engage the services of a dream-analysis psychiatrist, but I think the extent of the expert's conclusions would be something like: "Sorry, Pal, can't help you. You're just too weird." This next dream is up there with one that my buddy Terry Brown had a year or two ago around the yuletide season, in which he found himself observing a beautiful Nativity scene. There at the birth of the baby Jesus in the manger were Mary, Joseph, some cows and donkeys, maybe a camel or two, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Anyway . . . .
So, here we go. I found myself attending a buzzing cocktail party at the Manhattan House apartment building in New York City. However, rather than being at its regular location at 65th St. and Third Avenue, the building had found its way to the West 50s.
Manhattan House apartment building, NYC
One other critical difference was that the building was actually owned by the Four Seasons restaurant (for you non-New Yorkers, this is an old-school restaurant in the Seagram Building that is not affiliated with the hotel chain), and the lobby was decorated exactly in the style of its dining room.
The Four Seasons Restaurant, NYC
I'd say the lobby was also about 75,000 square feet, and it was covered in a deep burgundy carpet.
I hung out at the party for a while, and then I headed upstairs to visit my friends Chip and Shelby Burley, who lived in a palatial spread on the upper floors (in reality they've just moved from NYC to Phoenix). Chip was alone in the apartment, and neither he nor I had eaten, so I offered to run downstairs to a deli and pick up some food. He said that all he wanted for dinner was three of those tiny ice cream containers that they give to kids in grammar school - the ones with the built-in wooden spoon/paddle-type thing. He wanted one chocolate, one vanilla, and one strawberry. I said no problem, and departed by way of his beautiful terrace, which overlooked the interior atrium of the building. All of the apartments seemed to have lush, plant-filled balconies and terraces interconnected by way of their fire escapes. I passed through several of these, and on one balcony there was no sign of life, but there were a whole bunch of burning cigarettes sitting there in ashtrays.
I made my way back down to the lobby. There were people crisscrossing the vast expanse of burgundy carpet, and I imagined that it would be difficult to ride one's bicycle across the lobby, due to the thickness of the carpeting. Outside, I got in the cab line to wait for the doorman to hail one for me. Right in front of me was Harrison Ford, also waiting for a cab.
Harrison Ford
However, he was about eighty years old, and he had a feeble, weak voice. A moment later, he cheered up and left the line as he recognized the blue station wagon of Barbara Sears arriving to fetch him. Barbara Sears is a wonderful older woman from Hamilton, Massachusetts who is sort of a local dignitary around Myopia Hunt Club and Christ Church.
That's it!!
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