Catering for Lawyers, December 14th, 2020

Catering for Lawyers, December 14th, 2020

There’s a lot of talk about lawyers lately on the news. Lawyers will make it (the election, lockdown orders, masks, etc.) all right.

Don’t count on it.

Back in 2002 or so my wife and I worked on a big catering at the Friedman Event Center in Santa Rosa. It was a celebration of a lawyer’s life.

The Friedman Event Center is a Jewish facility. It’s very big. You can easily seat 100 people in the main room. It has a stage. The local rabbi has his office in the building.

The kitchen was huge with plenty of cooking areas and storage space. Garbage was always a problem as the dumpster always seemed to be full for our catering jobs there.

But I digress.

This event was for Jimmy, who was a lawyer in Santa Rosa of some renown. I’ve never seen so many lawyers in one place. Over a hundred of them. We set up two bars to accommodate the demand.

On the west side of the large room full of dining tables, was a glass case. In this case were pictures of Jimmy in his flight suit next to his F-86 fighter in the Korean War.

There were also pictures of Jimmy and his lovely family on vacations and in their beautiful home in Santa Rosa. There were ski trips and trips to the Caribbean and Hawaii. What a lovely successful family.

The lawyers were proud of Jimmy. They took turns giving their testimonials to the deceased.

And then perhaps a lawyer who’d had a bit too much to drink and didn’t notice us caterers, as usual, told this story:

“Jimmy was a great guy and a great lawyer! I remember this one time, his client was arrested for arson. His client had burned down some businesses for the insurance money.

The guy had a trunk full of gasoline cans, rags, and lighter fluid, but Jimmy got him off! What a guy!”

I’ll never forget that speech. Catering has taught me that the oligarchs are completely full of shit.

Don’t count on the lawyers.

Tim McGraw