Club Lucky prides itself on being a 40s- and 50s-style supper club. The cocktail lounge even has vintage martini shakers on the back bar. Talk about fond memories–with two in diapers and a sitter just once a week, that Saturday-night martini was all we had to live for. The economy being what it is I can see why they’re back in style.
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Style was no better. Aside from the numbing uniformity of tract houses whose picture windows framed a table lamp, the furniture was awesomely hideous. Club Lucky reminded me of every decorating mistake I ever made–the same drapery pattern, the linoleum floors, the Naugahyde (that’s what we called vinyl in those days) booths, and the flying-saucer light fixtures. What it didn’t remind me of was a supper club. Those were small, elegant boites where people ate hummingbirds’ wings, listened to chanteuses, and danced like Ginger and Fred. Try to imagine Ginger and Fred attempting to trip the light fantastic after meatball sandwiches.
I invited my daughter Jill along, thinking she’d like a break from two little kids who’d been home for days with the flu. Besides, I needed a ride. She drove me there in a snowstorm she refused to believe I hadn’t planned, whining all the way that she was going blind from the pinkeye the kids had given her.
Jill condescended to taste my chicken and pasta. We ate in silence, occasionally interrupted by her reminders of what a good daughter she was to go out with me on such a night and my complaints that a person who only ordered salad wasn’t much help to a food critic.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/J. Alexander Newberry.
