Thanksgiving

I spent Thanksgiving at the Royal Perth Yacht Club at the American Women's Auxiliary Thanksgiving Dinner. It was a great little affair with about 130 people and an authentic Thanksgiving Dinner.

The only flaw was that the cook served the sweet potatoes with the dessert course. They thought it was dessert because they were sweet and had brown sugar on them. It just looked very odd seeing a pile of these potatoes sitting with the pumpkin and apple pies.

The Royal Perth Yacht Club is situated in a beautiful little bay on the Swan river between Perth and Fremantle. It overlooks the city about 2 miles away which is stunning at night. It was worth the view alone.

This club is famous for being the home of the America's Cup Yacht Race back in the 80's (or 90's?). It seemed that every wall in the club is dedicated to that event which photos and scale model replicas of the boats involved.

I was lucky enough to be seated at the President's table, that is the president of the American Women's Auxiliary Club. The club is mostly a bunch of American wives of executives who work in WA, mostly in the oil or mineral business. The husband of the president works in the IBM building upstairs from me.

I was unlucky, or lucky, enough (I don't know yet), to be seated next to an American woman named Yvonne. She is about 60 and seemed nice enough, very intelligent. She said she was from Palo Alto. Great! Another Californian. However, as the night went I one I discovered that her elevator doesn't stop at all floors, she's a few bricks short of a load, she's a couple sandwiches short of a picnic. You get the idea.

She pulled me aside and asked me if I felt that Al Gore had really won the election last year. She told me that she and her group of intellectual friends in Perth have proof that Bush stole the election. The best I could gather was that she was confused by the popular vote and the electoral college and that her "proof" was nothing more than statistics of the popular vote. Fair enough. American's can barely understand it. I didn't think anything much of this.

Then she goes into this weird trip about how she believes Bush commissioned the terrorist attacks on the WTC. She bases this belief on the fact that she believes that Roosevelt knew of the attach on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and allowed it to happen in order to get the US into WWII. It turns out that she is the president of the local skeptics society.

She gave me her opinion of her ex-husbands. She said they were all brilliant and highly paid chemists but they could not handle the fact that she was smarter than they were. She also has a daughter in the Bay Area who is a physiologist but is crazy because she has gone through 25 boyfriends in one year. Wow. That's two relationships a month. Business must be slow for shrinks in the Bay Area right now. I could never find the time to even keep one going.

I assured Yvonne that her daughter is crazy because every physiologist I've ever met is. That's why they are in the business. Yvonne added that her and her daughter don't speak to each other anymore because her daughter feels that she can't compete with her brilliant mother. She said that she told her daughter that she will never be as smart as her because she has a 25 year head start on her. What a nice supporting mom. Yvonne better pray she never comes down with Alzheimer's. What's the old saying?.. "Be kind to your kids. They get to pick your old folks home"

The evening wasn't wasted talking to insane people. Another guy and I really clicked. He is the toilet paper king of Western Australia. No shit (aw come on, I had to say it). Seriously. He owns the largest TP distribution company in WA. He sure knows paper. He recently married a Canadian woman, and it was their first American Thanksgiving. His wife wanted to introduce him to the holiday and I think he liked it. He kept buying me different West Australian beers all night and like an idiot I kept drinking them.

He is short stocky guy with an intense but cheerful demeanor. He reminds me of the British actor Bob Hoskins. He is the kind if guy who can be a fierce competitor and your best friend. He owns a large riverfront house on the Canning River (a tributary of the Swan River). He said that often schools of dolphins swim and play in the river in his back yard. He claimed that the dolphins often have orgies my his house. Since we were both very buzzed at the point and tired of Yvonne's far out theories the discussion turned to who we could stuff into a dolphin suit and dump in the river next time that happened.

I certainly hope to see more of him. He wants to meet me in Fremantle for beers next weekend. I might take him up on it.