A Holiday Feast In The Rock & Roll Capitol
As the season of food and friendship waxes as surely as the winter moon, I’m enjoying extra time in the kitchen of my new Ohio City digs, which features a gas stove, newly acquired third-hand table and chairs, and windows overlooking a courtyard garden, an expanse of steel grey Cleveland sky and the ornate, red brick buildings of the St. Ignatius campus.
This is the time of year when we all seem to be able to resurrect the recipes of our mothers and grandmothers, forget about our waistlines, overstock the shelves, hit three events in one night, and still find time to shop. It’s also the time when we take a moment to remember those who have less than we do, and then do what we can to support those organizations that serve the poor, protect the environment, or fight the good fight.
It was while writing a check to an indigenous people’s organization, that I was struck by the notion that it was our native brothers and sisters who, through kindness, an intimate relationship with the land, and a practical knowledge of the wild, provided for the original European settlers' survival. Shortly thereafter, while researching menus and seeking new culinary ideas in cyberspace, I learned about recent developments at the Hard Rock Café.
This well known eating and drinking establishment was founded in London during the sixties, by two young Americans who had the good sense to hang their friend Eric Clapton's guitar on the wall. This was the same Eric Clapton who had the good sense to learn all that he could about Black American roots music, thereby becoming a god of the emerging music movement that the record companies peddled back to American teenagers as the "British Invasion".
Years later, the Hard Rock Cafe, long ago sold off by the founders, and now in forty countries and nearly 100 US cities, was purchased by the Seminole Nation for just under a billion dollars and so is now, officially, the “Seminole Hard Rock Cafe and Casino”, or will be, as soon as we get those remaining pesky gaming laws squared away.
What most folks don't know is that in addition to being a famous Florida football team, the Seminole were one of the few tribes that, while not exactly victorious in the war against the US troops, also did not ever surrender. The Seminole thus remained in Florida, where they happily shared resources and mixed races with remnants of other tribes and with the African slaves, who were equally duped, displaced and disenfranchised.
This bit of history warmed me like fresh baked pumpkin pie served with fresh brewed Phoenix coffee. It's somehow comforting, here in the digital age, to know that the white man's once truly riveting fear of the gambling, sex and drugs that were often at the heart of the black man's Rock ‘n’ Roll, is now a thing of the past, and that the red brothers actually managed to last. Brothers who, ironically, now own the largest collection of Rock & Roll memorabilia on the planet, along with licenses to sell fire water in every major US city and a large piece of the gambling that will soon be in every US port.
Perhaps next year, we can skip the roast, the ham, the locally grown vegetarian buffet and simply take the whole family out for buffalo burgers at the casino. Maybe if we're lucky, they'll give us souvenir blankets and a couple of free pulls at the slots for the kids.
Jeffrey Michael Bowen. "A Holiday Feast in The Rock & Roll Capitol". CoolCleveland (2006)