Deadly Invitation
Pandemic variants raging through Pinellas County offer great marketing opps for the National Cremation Society
As a travel journalist I’ve enjoyed many press invitations to dine and review fancy restaurants around the world, like the Five-star Park Hyatt Tokyo Kozue and Glover’s Alley at Dublin’s Fitzwilliam Hotel and the Champlain in Quebec City’s Chateau Frontenac. But I’ve never received a luncheon invitation like this one. Or is it brunch? Eleven a.m. isn’t exactly the time for wine-bibbing with appetizers.
I realize that as a semi-retired “blogger—as travel writers are called now—I may be a bit out of the press loop. And seeing as how we are in the midst of an earth-throttling killer pandemic, dining indoors is definitely not the thing to do right now.
Except in Florida
Hmmm... I winter in Tarpon Springs. A few blocks from the Tarpon Glen mobile home park, where I enjoy part-time life in a single-wide with a tropical mural-painted screened lanai, they have just bulldozed a thick stand of cypress and live oak sheltering alligators, great blue herons and sandhill cranes to make a huge extension for an overflowing cemetery. Across Tarpon Avenue is Lake Tarpon, and one of Tarpon Springs prime restaurants, The Tarpon Turtle Grill.
They say the food is expensive. They say the food is great (by American standards, as in fat burgers and fancy French fries?) I’ve never gone there, and I’m not even sure how to get there, as it’s on the water and I think most diners arrive by boat or jet skii. But I have just received an invitation to go there for lunch!
Bad taste
Like any press invitation (which this is definitely not) there are always expectations and strings attached. In this case the strings are nooses, and the invitation to sit inside and get infected with the deadly Corona virus is probably intentional. I can’t think of anything in worst taste—puns aside—than the National Cremation Society promoting its services to a hungry captive audience in the midst of a pandemic that is raging now through Pinellas County. Pandemic predators, they are.
Only in America can you imagine such crass marketing. Or I should say only in Florida, where my sister says that average age of most people is dead. Black humour may help us survivors and grievors all get through this nightmare a little bit. But this invitation is dead serious.
“Considering Cremation? Join us for a FREE LUNCH and informational seminar” the post card beckons. And wondering what that might be, I consult the Tarpon Turtle’s online menu to find a catastrophic conjunction of flavors—Cajun, Caribbean, New York City Jewish, Mexican, Japanese, English, Asian—tarted up with French nomenclature like remoulade and brulée. Pulled pork; Wings—three different types for appetizers: “original,” “wings,” and “boneless wings”; Nachos and—Good god—Pineapple habanero marmelade!! …Crab cakes with raspberry supreme drizzle!!… Grouper Reuben: fish + sauerkraut + Swiss cheese + Thousand Island dressing on marbled rye bread. Ick.
Bites, nuggets, chunks. Deep fried. Char grilled. Breaded. It sounds disgusting to one spoiled by Quebec’s cuisine, or nearly any other cuisine that doesn’t mix everything from everywhere to create new taste sensations. And what might we guests be served, after smelling the charred meat wafting from the kitchen and spending an hour hearing all about how cheap it can be to have our human ribs burned to a crisp? (For surely they would not feed us first and hope we would stay for the ghoulish presentation afterwards. Or maybe they chat with us about their bargain incinerations while we are eating.) We could be served their blackened chicken or blackened grouper sandwiches, or anything else char-grilled. And then creme brulée for dessert.
My partner Gordon Mooney facetiously asked about coming with me as my guest. We once presented a sold-out “Lunch and Learn” event at The Tarpon Arts Center a few years back. Our show “Odd Scotland” featured odd and creepy things about Scotland, like bog mummification, and tasty Scottish dishes like Haggamuggie - a fish version of Haggis, and Crappit’s Heid—crispy crunchy dried fish heads. At the National Cremation Society sponsored Lunch & Learn we might get to ask about how much it costs to have our ashes buried at sea or sent into outer space, like the creator of Star Trek or maybe even whisked to Mars.
“Well how about settling for the inside of a Scottish vacuum cleaner?” I joke. The one thing my dear mother will never know is that I took some of her ashes with me when I moved to Inverness to be with Gordon. One day the little jar fell off the dresser and spilled all over our bedroom carpet. Try as I might, I could not pick Peig’s ashes out of the thick loom, and vacuumed them up instead. And that’s where they stayed, until we sold the house, vacuum cleaner and all.
But that wasn’t the end of her. I did finally return to Lake Champlain, which borders Vermont, where Peig’s ancestors farmed, and New York State, to where her ancestors re-settled and where she was born, and Quebec, which she visited and loved. At the setting of a fiery sun I waded out and sprinkled the rest of her and gazed in wonder as the sun danced a sparkling trail over her ashes.
So let it be said that I am not against cremation. Our crowded world doesn’t need more huge mahogany and marble and brass caskets taking up underground space. But mixing char-grilled food with char-grilled funeral plans can make anyone lose their appetite.
