Karen McCann, Artist
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Dead in a White Sauce

5/9/2012

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Seville still has those sleepy, old-fashioned clubs where ancient members nod over their newspapers in dim, high-ceilinged rooms. Although far from ancient, Rich and I occasionally stop to rest our feet in one that’s open to the public in the downtown shopping area. The hushed atmosphere and air of slightly seedy grandeur reminds me of a club we once belonged to in Ohio. It was an old Scottish manor house, brought over stone by stone in the 1920s. The plans for reassembly were lost en route, so the results were somewhat quirky. As was the staff.

Picture
There was a butler from Trinidad named Charles, who sported a threadbare tuxedo, white cotton gloves and a glass eye. He couldn’t read and tended to garble the evening’s specials. Once, hosting a business dinner, we asked Charles about the special, and he told us, “Halibut.” How it was prepared? He said, “It’s dead in a white sauce.” 

A moment’s stunned reflection suggested this was good news; who wants to eat live halibut? Eventually, we worked it out: he was using some convoluted past pluperfect of the word “done,” that is, “It’s did in a white sauce.” The phrase took immediate and permanent root in our vocabulary. Now, when something is clearly doomed (a bill in Congress, the kid who runs back to save the cat when everyone knows the killer’s in the house, a fading techno trend) we turn to one another and say, “Dead in a white sauce.”

Originally published May 30, 2010

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    About this blog

    I love to talk about my paintings – and often do, as my long-suffering friends will attest. These are some of the stories I tell people who ask, "So what were you thinking about when you painted this one?"

    Housekeeping note: When I renovated my website and blog in 2012, I had to transfer my favorite posts from the old site's blog archives to this page. The dates they first appeared are shown at the end of the post, so that my readers, and future art historians, can keep them in chronological order.

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