Honey Dew Lunch Bunch

"It's a shame 'bout Bobby Ray.  That hurt knee's gonna kill our playoff chances," groused Andy Caldwell.

"Some more sweet tea, Andy?" asked Franny, their waitress.

"Not right now, Sugah," answered Andy, letting roll out of his mouth like it was ...sugar.

The men of the Crowley Round Table were gathered together, ready to spend their lunch hour jawing about football, golf and how liberal atheists were screwing up their lives.  Andy Caldwell, the local State Farm agent was there, joined by his three brethren in lunch crimes.  Well, those three and also Gariton Hollander.

"Crowley ain't been past the first round of the playoffs since '89.  I'm not sure even with Bobby Ray they coulda done any better," said Tony Delco, who worked at his daddy's furniture store.  Tony was a fairly tall man, with muscles and a strongly chiseled chest.  He played football with the Crowley team back in that glory year of 1989.

Rondy Strickland nodded his agreement, ready to bite into his Bar-B-Q burger,  Rondy was a lawyer who worked just down the street with Thomas Cooper.  They specialized in bankruptcy, and divorces.  Rondy himself has seen his won marriage disintegrate a year ago.  But he rebounded fine, and was spending a great deal of time with Thomas Cooper's daughter, Betty.  Rondy was a tiny bit shorter than Tony Delco, but just as muscular and athletic.

The other two members of the Lunch Bunch were from the same CPA firm.  Houston Graves, the very tallest man at the table, but with a thinner frame.  Houston was a tennis champion at college.  He was the son of on of the CPA partners, at the firm of Graves & Robinson.  It was the only multi-person accounting firm in Crowley.  The other man at the table was Gariton Hollander.  He also worked at Graves & Robinson.  He was much smaller than anyone else at the table, frail and one would daresay slightly effeminate.  Gariton was the only one of the five who was not always there.

Two of the men had glasses that hung on plastic necklaces around there necks.  Somehow that struck Gariton as kind of a Southern thing to do.  Not just any Southerner, but those he thought of as "the 10%".
The 10% often correlated with income, but it was more to do with a power structure within a town.  It was having the right family name and connections.  Power was handed down on an almost feudalistic basis, at least that was Gariton's feelings.

Gariton had not grown up in Crowley.  He was actually from Connecticut.  He wound up in Crowley because he had met Daddy Delco's daughter while at school in Athens.  He loved her heart and soul, and when she decided she wanted to move back home, he gladly went with her.

But being the son-in-law of the daughter of one of the 10% families gained only begrudging tolerance, not acceptance.  And much of it was his own fault.  He couldn't get into their discussions.  He couldn't identify with their interests.  Football meant nothing to him.  He didn't golf.  He was a committed liberal, and was one of the few Crowley votes for national and statewide Democrats (there were no local Democrats that ran - Crowly only had Republicans and had as much political diversity as the old Communist Soviet Union).  He was in local community theatre, but that was a hobby that the Lunch Bunch found on a par with a baby gurgling googoo.  Entertaining, but relatively meaningless.  It certainly earned him no respect.

"How's the Compton Park development coming, Andy?" asked Tony.  The Compton Park was a residential development that both Andy and Houston had sunk a good bit of resources into.

"Aw, crap, you know Tony!  Those damn environmental namby-pambys are holding us back.  Encroaching too much on wetlands.  What a crock of sh..."

"More sweet tea now, Andy?" interrupted Franny, just in the nick of time.

"That's the trouble with this country," said Houston.  "Too much regulation inhibiting the progress of the entrepreneurial class.  Choosing some pitiful swamp fly over jobs and the economy!"  Of course, most of the construction jobs went to illegals, but to Andy and Houston that was beside the point.

"Howdy, boys!"  It was the sweet, sing-song voice of Daddy Delco's daughter, Christie Delco Hollander. She gave Gariton a brief kiss, and then smiled broadly at the rest of the table.  Christies was a gorgeous woman.  An inch or two taller than her husband, with long auburn hair and blue eyes that lit up a room.  An athletic body, that of a graceful dancer, and a way of moving that could stop a man's heart.  "So what have y'all been jabbering about this fine lunch hour?  Bobby Ray, I bet?"

And the group just chattered away, just lit up over her presence.  Except for Gariton.  He couldn't help but notice as they talked with such animation, that Christie was resting her arm on Rondy's shoulder.

Well, there was one other person that noticed.  The waitress, Franny Goodkind.  She sadly shook her head.  Looked like the Lunch Bunch might soon be coming to an end.