Re-Living The Old Days With Old Friends

10/1/2016

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Among the many delights to be found in the earthly garden known as Columbus, Ohio,

...among my favorites are The Spaghetti Warehouse downtown out on West Broad Street,

...and the 1960's Coffeehouse presented once a year at the King Avenue Methodist Church located in the neighborhood just north of downtown known as The Short North,

...by retired NPR Ohio Statehouse reporter, now full-time folksinger, Bill Cohen.

Last Friday night I got to savor both of these Columbus delights with Tom and some good old friends, Kevin and Barb.

We started with dinner at The Spaghetti Warehouse, ...where we ordered two Lasagne Platters to split four ways, each platter consisting of a huge square of 15-layer lasagne, an Italian sausage, two big meatballs and two slices of garlic bread, more than enough for us all and molto yummy,

...and, as each platter came with one salad, we also ordered a couple of extra side salads,

...all accompanied by those incomparable Spaghetti Warehouse loaves of warm, soft, delicious bread with herb butter.

     The others each ordered a glass of red wine with their dinner. During the meal our sweet, friendly waitress brought over another glass of wine.
    "The bartender accidentally poured this extra glass of wine and we decided you all should have it to share!" she bubbled.
     I imagined the young waitress telling the bartender, "Oh, there's a table of the cutest old folks! Let me give the wine to them!"
       You get good at spotting when younger people are giving you the "Cute Old Person" treatment.

Not that I'm complaining about it!

Well satiated after our great dinner, we headed over to the basement of the King Avenue Methodist Church, which, though we arrived plenty early, was already filling up with folks, most of a certain age,

...some dressed in 60's style.

On display around the room were artifacts from the 1960's from Bill Cohen's personal collection.

Bill Cohen in college.

By the time the program began the room was packed.

Bill Cohen took us through the the social turbulence, cultural upheaval, and iconic moments of the 1960's year by year and event by event, in lecture,

with slides and videos,

... in the songs of the time,

...joined for several vocal duets by a local gospel singer,

...and for several flute duets by Ann Fisher, host of WOSU's public affairs talk show All Sides.

...and, at one point, bringing us back to the fashion of the time.

And we in the audience, once the children of the '60's, sang along, reminisced about those times over half a century ago, and felt the wonder of having been a part of it all.