Memoir of the Sunday Brunch

by Julia Pandl

  Running also meant I could cram an occasional bite of something into my mouth. There was no such thing as taking a break to eat. Those people who sat down and ate were feeble and weak. They were culled from the herd the same way the cheetah picked out the gimpy gazelle on Wild Kingdom. I had learned to eat on the fly, grabbing a strawberry here, a ham roll-up there. The challenge, of course, was to have it down the hatch before you heard the tongs. Jeremiah could eat an entire long john in a single bite.

  And running meant I actually got to hear my father talking to customers. One day, he broke his own cardinal rule “The customer is always right.” That is the rule except, apparently, when he or she is being a big fat pig.

  The guy approached the eighteen-wheeler with his plate out and tried to grab George’s tongs that were sitting in the bacon. He winced, dropped the tongs, and drew his hand back to his side. I saw a tiny sliver of a smirk slide across my father’s face. He didn’t like people messing with his serving pieces, so he placed them with their handles exposed to an invisible trail of steam creeping up and out from underneath.

  “What can I get you, sir?” George asked.

  “I’ll have seven pieces of bacon.”

  “Seven pieces of bacon?” Twitch, twitch, bulge, click. “Seven?”

  The guy looked over his shoulder, a little embarrassed. “Yeah.”

  “You can have four. If you want more after that, you can come back.” George grew up during the Depression. It’s why he held the tongs.

  AT THREE THIRTY we climbed back into the Corolla. I rested a leftover long john on my knee and George squeezed a martini shaker of brandy Manhattans between his thighs. On the drive home we counted cars. Each week, instead of taking the freeway, we weaved our way north on the old Highway 32. George detoured through the parking lots of the Port Road Inn, the Nantucket Shores, Boder’s on the River, the Ulao Inn, and Smith Bros. Fish Shanty. Counting cars was my father’s way of keeping an eye on the competition, but it also let the state of the industry settle into his quieted, post-brunch brain. These squares of blacktop, some more crowded than others, provided tiny snapshots of the early evening eating habits of the North Shore customer.

  At the FOSTER ROAD 1 MILE marker, he started to coast. Running the stop sign at the end of the ramp, he was able to maintain enough speed to make the right onto Sauk Trail and the right onto Wilson Lima Road. That’s roughly a three-mile coast, going at a pace slow enough to make Mother Teresa grind her teeth down to her gums. We crept to a complete stop at the crest of the small hill just beyond the freeway overpass, and George gave the gas pedal a tap to get us over the hump. I dug my feet into the floorboard until my hair hurt.

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. Something snapped. Afraid I might chew off my own tongue, I looked at him and said, “Dad, can I drive?”

  He gave me a sly sideways glance, “Do you know how to drive a stick?”

  “Dad, I’m fourteen. I don’t know how to drive anything.” That was not entirely true. A couple of times, when I was really little, too small to reach the pedals, Jimmy had put me on his lap and let me take the corners on Lake Drive. But I could see George’s wheels turning toward an answer of yes, so I didn’t mention that.

  He pulled the car onto the gravel, got out, and walked around. Wide-eyed with disbelief, I jumped over the stick shift and settled into the driver’s seat.

  “Okay now,” he said. “Move the seat up.”

  I did.

  “Put your seat belt on.”

  I did. He didn’t.

  “Okay, now put your left foot on the clutch and your right foot on the brake. The clutch is on the left, the brake is in the middle, gas is on the right.” He put my hand on the stick, covered it with his own, gnarled and worn yet warm, and showed me, “First, second, third, fourth, reverse.” Then he let go. “Okay, push the clutch in and put it in first gear.”

  I did.

  “Good. Now ease your left foot off the clutch, and at the same time ease your right foot onto the gas.”

  The car lurched forward and died.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay. Put your left foot on the clutch and your right foot on the brake and turn the key.” The engine revved.

  “Okay, now try it again.” The car died eight times before I finally made a smooth transition into first, and second, and then third, and at last fourth. He nudged me, wearing an enormous grin, and said, “Getting started is the hardest, first gear. Once you get the hang of it, though, it’s like riding a bike.”

  “Way better.” I smiled, concentrating on the center line, hands at ten and two. Corolla or not, it was the open road, and I was on it. The freshly fertilized summer wind swept through my window and out his, carrying away forever the irritation of coasting. My heart raced on ahead as we blew past cornfields and bounced over the broken white bridge that marked the entrance to the tree line. It was the most exciting one-mile trip of my life. When we reached the turn onto our gravel road, the car sputtered to a stop. He climbed out and I climbed over.

  He settled back, put the car in gear, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Don’t tell Mom.”

  I knew enough not to tell, of course. I just couldn’t believe he said it. I’d heard those words hundreds of times before but never from him. Usually they came down the basement stairs with a bong in tow. Occasionally they left a fingertip in the kitchen sink and a spray of blood on the cabinets. But partnering those words with my father was something else. I didn’t realize such a combination existed, but instinct told me it could be mined—to what depths, I wasn’t sure.

  So I shut up and shook my head no. I definitely would not tell Mom.

  THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY, when I heard him coming downstairs, I was skipping toward the bathroom before he made it to the bottom step. I showered, dressed, and sat bouncing my knee with anticipation as he ate his grapefruit and read the paper. Not wanting to raise any red flags with Terry, I read the church bulletin and did my best to look lethargic.

  Before we reached the end of the driveway, George smiled and asked, “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking I should drive.”

  He pulled off to the side of the road and we switched spots. He let me drive a little farther each week, adding the distance to the next stop sign, conveniently set exactly one mile apart, before we switched back. Then, on the fourth week, I made the turn onto the freeway and neither of us flinched.

  Our “partnership,” my windshield time, and Jesus forced me to a couple of realizations. The first was that my father’s desire for me to learn to drive was greater than mine. Honestly, driving was a little like doing pancakes. The thrill of it didn’t last long, but once I took over the chore, George was done. He was fifty-nine and ready to be a passenger. This made him a good teacher, patient and relaxed. He never used the imaginary passenger’s-side brake that I’d seen him use on my siblings; instead, he read the paper. Plus, I was better at driving than he was. He put his trust in me not because I was worthy—what we were doing was illegal, after all—but because I was handy.

  And second, my parents were old. It was that simple; sometimes life just is. With the exception of the occasional skirmish over the fact that we lived in Oostburg, all the jagged edges had been worn down. Unwritten, unmentioned rules developed right under our noses. They went something like this: I agreed to suffer through endless episodes of Murder, She Wrote and Matlock, and my parents, each unbeknownst to the other, overlooked—actually encouraged—things like truancy and driving without a license.

  We played with fire every Sunday, growing more and more careless. In the morning I blessed myself at the holy water font hanging next to the back door, and then I grabbed the keys off the hook and skipped out to the car. George let me drive all the way, to and from. We both knew it was wrong, but the delinquency bond was too much for either of us to resist. Besides, I was fourteen; it never occurred to me how far the long arm of the law could possibly reach, and I can’t say with any certainty that George cared—at l
east it didn’t seem like he did. I weighed nothing beyond the fact that it was cool. I was more concerned with the long arm of my mother. If she found out, two things were certain: I’d never be allowed to get my license, and she’d ask for a divorce.

  But it was cool, so . . .

  Of course, it was all fun and games, all Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, until the day he ruined it. Not for him, for me. Just like a father. Two or three months in, I pulled the car around the parking lot and waited. He popped open the door, lowered himself into his seat, shaker of Manhattans in one hand and the Sunday paper in the other, gave me a leveling stare, and said, “Now, don’t get pulled over. I can just see what they’d say in the newspaper. ‘Restaurateur Arrested Drinking Manhattan While Fourteen-Year-Old Drives Car.’ ” Then he stuck his nose in the paper.

  Arrested.

  I realized then and there that we had entered the realm of “Those People”—as in, the ones you see on the news, as in, can you believe the stupidity of Those People? We were one speeding ticket away from receiving our Deliverance merit badge; the one with the picture of Ned Beatty on it, the badge that came with a pickup truck, an outhouse, a banjo, and revoked a lifetime of dental hygiene privileges. My father was “that guy”; his mug shot flashed before my eyes. He was grinning, of course. Then I saw him in an orange jumpsuit, sharing a cell with hunting-knife guy. Only hunting-knife guy wasn’t a boy anymore—he was a man with yellowish eyes, a ruddy scar on his left cheek, and a wad of Kodiak in his lip. They were in a cell together. My father pulled out a copy of Much Ado about Nothing, pushed his glasses up on his Roman nose, and began to read. Then hunting-knife man-boy spat a thick stream of slippery brown spit dead center on page one.

  I white-knuckled the steering wheel that day. It was more than just a piece of hard plastic beneath my sweaty palms, much more. In my hands, I held his license, for sure, probably his checkbook and his freedom, possibly his reputation and his business, and more than likely, his marriage. Sweat poured down my cheeks. I slowed the car to five miles an hour under the speed limit and set the cruise control. I’d been reduced to driving just like my father. I looked over at him.

  George was fast asleep.

  4

  The Backstory

  Of course, my parents didn’t always have nine kids. Before any of us were born, before the brunch existed, Terry and George had parents, siblings, and lives of their own. Their stories came to us filtered through time, memory, and parental prerogative.

  My father had three older sisters, Angie, Helen, and Violet, and a younger brother, Jack. His parents, John and Anna Pandl, immigrants from a village on the Austria/Hungary border called Porppendorf, landed at Ellis Island in the 1890s and somehow found their way to Milwaukee. Perhaps they had dreams of “America,” like so many other immigrants; dreams of finding their way, their independence, and their fortune. Honestly, I have no idea what their dreams were. I do know, however, that their reality ended up in a marriage, five children, and a restaurant called the Whitefish Bay Inn, which still exists and operates today as Jack Pandl’s Original Whitefish Bay Inn.

  There’s something “old country” about the place, as if it were plucked from a hamlet tucked among the evergreens in the Austrian Alps. The windows, with flower boxes overflowing with geraniums and vinca vines, the log exterior, the lanterns flanking the front door, and the hand-carved wooden sign out front hanging from an iron rod, all look like something straight off the Getreidegasse. Throw a snowcapped mountain behind the place and you’re waiting for Maria von Trapp to come skipping down the street, singing, guitar in hand.

  The Inn, as we affectionately call it, opened in 1915 and attracted diners from all walks of life. Railroad workers, bricklayers, mayors, governors, and beer barons landed via steamship or railcar at the Pabst Whitefish Bay resort, then made their way across the street and bellied up to the bar. Today customers arrive via BMWs and SUVs, after cruising past iron-gated mansions. Famous for its old-world charm, its giant German pancake, and its dirndl-wearing waitstaff, it’s still one of the few places in Milwaukee where they know how to pour a beer properly, in a clean pilsner with a thick head.

  My father worked with his mother and brother at the Inn until she died in 1967, leaving him enough money to venture out on his own. Her death was the birth of his restaurant, George Pandl’s in Bayside, while his brother stayed on at the Inn. Rumors still exist today regarding the relationship—and the split—between the two brothers. It was as simple as my father wanting a place of his own and as complicated as providing for two families—one with three children, the other with eight—on the income from one small restaurant. In the beginning, change brought a few bumps, as it always does, but in the end the brothers settled into a happy friendship inspired by healthy competition.

  PANDL’S IN BAYSIDE sits just five miles north of the Inn, across from a strangely unused Baptist church and kitty-corner from the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center. In the industry the restaurant is considered big, seating roughly 225 people. The L-shaped dining room points northeast and is surrounded by picture windows looking onto a wooded lot. The place has been remodeled extensively a couple of times, but the windows have always remained untouched. The view they offer is sacred: women wearing Prada and dripping platinum guard their window tables as if just after the salad course, Jesus Christ himself will deliver the entrée.

  The seasons bring the passage of time and wildlife. Maple, oak, and ash trees bloom and wither. Deer, raccoons, chipmunks, chickadees, robins, finches, and cardinals wander by, searching for food, looking in at the diners with curiosity. They provide a serene, picniclike atmosphere. Pandl’s in Bayside has a heartbeat, a pulse; it breathes. It is our tenth sibling, my family’s special-needs child, born in between Jeremiah and me, my father’s first baby, his gift.

  I KNOW VERY little of my father’s father, except that he started a tradition that lives on almost one hundred years later and that in 1932, at the age of fifty, my grandfather fell to his death down the basement stairs of the Inn. The offending water pipe that his head met with also still exists and operates today.

  My dad’s mom, Anna Baumann, lived longer, so there’s more to know about her. She died in 1967, three years before I was born. We never had the chance to meet, but she did leave me a solid inheritance. I discovered, after unearthing a pile of old photos, that my grandmother endowed me not only with her massive Hungarian arms and her stovepipe legs, but she also left me a tremendous set of cankles. She haunts me every time I dream of owning a really kick-ass pair of cowboy boots. Cankles, life has taught me, survive the test of time. They are part of one’s DNA—try all you like to get rid of them, they’re not going anywhere. You might as well try raising the Titanic with tweezers.

  Grandma Pandl was tough, buxom, and brawny. She spoke German. She was not the kind of grandma who took the grandchildren overnight and let them eat candy. Even in photos she’s a little scary, not so free and easy with the smiles. The photos make me wonder what kind of weak, watered-down version of this earlier generation we really are.

  She came to America from Austria when she was sixteen, traveling alone, taking the place of her older sister who was afraid to make the trip. Back then, millions of young people made that voyage—it’s why most of us are here—but alone at sixteen on a steamship across the Atlantic? That took some chops. At sixteen, I whined if I couldn’t take the car to school, or if our hotel room didn’t have a minibar. After her husband’s death, she raised five kids, alone, during the Depression. I’ve heard stories about the Depression, read a few books, seen some pictures, learning enough to know ours is a better time. I’m also told she drank three fingers of brandy for breakfast each day, straight from a tub in one swig, tossing it back like a merchant marine. The last time I drank three fingers of brandy, I mixed it with Diet Pepsi and promptly threw up all over Jerry Wostrack’s front lawn.

  My grandmother was no Martha Stewart. She did not cross-stitch or crochet afghans. My grandma was a bootle
gger. Forced to sell her home and move the family to rooms above the Inn, and unable to make ends meet, she took to selling alcohol during Prohibition. She got carted off to jail now and then. (Okay, maybe she was just a little bit Martha.) One summer day, my father and two of his sisters sat out back behind the Inn, playing a game—probably marbles—when suddenly a paddy wagon pulled up in front. They abandoned their game, of course, and hurried over to peek through the slats in the fence. “It’s Ma! It’s Ma they’re takin’ away in the paddy wagon!” Violet exclaimed.

  The village rallied around my grandmother, extending credit and posting bail. My father always said it was because she was a woman. He said if she’d been the one who fell down the stairs and my grandfather had been a widower, serving alcohol and not paying the bills, the Inn never would have survived. I suppose he might be right, but I believe it had more to do with her liver dumpling soup than chivalry. Sure, money talks, but food talks much louder.

  There is one speckled black-and-white photo where my grandmother can be seen wearing a bittersweet grin, sitting atop a Harley-Davidson motorcycle in the front yard of the Inn. It hangs on the wall there today, just inside the back door, next to the coatrack. If not for the frock, the dark stockings rolled down around the cankles, and the loafers that look like they might have been owned by Ben Franklin, she looks quite comfortable on that motorcycle, as if she often went rumbling down the open road with the wind blowing worries off her face.

  THE SHOT-PUTTER PHYSIQUE skipped a generation. As a kid, my father, born in Milwaukee, was wafer thin. He was a bony boy with cropped hair and dark circles under his eyes. He wore blousy shirts, baggy knickers, no shoes. According to him, he walked barefoot to school every day, uphill both ways, through ten feet of snow. He and his brother, Jack, went to St. Monica’s grade school in Whitefish Bay. Tuition was unheard of at the time, so Grandma could afford to send her sons off to the priests and nuns every day for a dose of pre–Vatican II Catholic discipline. They received the sacraments under the watchful eye of the beloved cigar-smoking Monsignor Dietz. They received the rest of their education under the stiff ruler of crusty nuns. They left St. Monica’s armed with the Catholic faith and Palmer penmanship.