Think About It. Gray-bar-Hotel. You may recall Dorothy Mengering abruptly and happily leaping into our consciousness while providing reports from the 1994 Winter Olympics. Her charming insights and interviews provided smiles for a world of viewers from as near the top of the world as I ever desire to be, Lillehammer, Norway. Capitalizing on this new-found fame, she promptly began to write about more important things, like food favorites of her family. Summer of 1996 found her at radio station WLHN launching her book tour, causing the interviewer to become the interviewee. My son Wade (President of Dream Weaver Broadcasting) assigned me the opportunity.
Before sharing airtime with the first-time author, I took the time to read enough to help me seem knowledgeable about the content. The Foreword written by her son mentioned checking “into the old Gray-Bar-Hotel (allegedly misunderstanding a permit for cheerleading camp)”. Though a veteran broadcaster, I had difficulty waiting to ask what he meant by that unusual comment; but I politely began asking the questions she came to answer. Naturally we chatted about the process and content of the publication filled with charming family and food pictures. The recipes, it turns out, are wonderfully doable, unlike some of the famous cooking snobs. Of course Julia’s are also worth the effort.
After mentioning that her son was once an announcer at the radio station where we were broadcasting at the moment, as well as sister-station WERK in Muncie, she looked at me with shocked disbelief. Things didn’t really get fun though, until I asked about her eldest child’s favorites. Turns out her first thought was a recipe on page 81 called David’s Fried Baloney Sandwich. Be sure to note that you “Make one small cut from center to edge of baloney slice so it doesn’t cup.”
When at last I asked about the cryptic comment in the Foreword she explained, in her own sparkling style, that it was his way of (hopefully) joking about his time in jail. A few weeks later, she travelled from her home in Carmel back to Elwood, Indiana for one purpose, to tell me she had checked with her son and I was correct about the employment she had long-since forgotten.
Twenty years later this timeless tiny tome is still a pleasure to see, to read and to use. If you get the chance, be sure to look carefully at the front cover picture of two smiling people with only slight gaps between their top front teeth. You must have known the book was HOME COOKIN’ WITH DAVE’S MOM. Of course you know that Dorothy , the well-loved mother of the recently retired(?), now bearded Late Show host David Letterman died Tuesday at 95.. Sadly I never learned more about his alleged stay in the Gray-bar-Hotel. Think About It.
