Elton John’s album, 11-17-70, was recorded live for a WPLJ-FM concert here in New York City. Just days later, me and my crew slapped on our Caswell-Massey patchouli, took the #4 train to 14th Street, and walked to the Fillmore East.

It wasn’t to see Elton, though.

We were Leon Russell fans and Elton was just icing on the cake. We heard the ‘PLJ concert and we were intrigued. The trio’s set list was far more energetic than the introspective tunes on his first album. In our heads, Elton and Bernie Taupin were decent, up-and-coming singer songwriters. Elton had a great voice and played well. We expected, you know, “Your Song.”

The acts that night were to be McKendree Spring, then Elton, then Leon Russell. Well. Elton comes out in a canary yellow tux and rocks out for WAY over his time limit, does multiple encores, and leaves the audience limp and exhausted for poor Leon, who had to race through his set. We were like, WHAT did we just see here?

We followed him through the years and rooted for him through his personal trials and tribulations. Financial disasters. Substance abuse. Shifting tectonic plates in the recording industry.

Fifty years later, guess who’s still standing. Elton. Bloodied but not broken.

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Today, thinking about that WPLJ-FM concert, and the Fillmore East show, and Elton’s career evolution (and mine), I feel a sense of wistfulness. I know, the rains of November will do that to a person’s psyche.

What I do know is, his hard rocking songs are fun and showy, but his ballads — with Bernie’s lyric genius — are timeless.

And what I also know is, on this strange erev-Thanksgiving in The Time of Covid-19, this song of his springs to mind as his finest.

We’re lucky. We’re alive. We’re still healthy. We’re still standing! Stay safe and enjoy. See you on the other side, with a fridge full of leftovers.

The Monday before Thanksgiving, the work in the Kleinman-Stolzenberg household usually begins.

But, not this year.

I have a Thanksgiving folder with all our favorite family recipes: the turkey, the sage sausage stuffing, sweet potatoes, Boursin mashed potatoes, roasted Brussels Sprouts, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, silky butternut squash soup. This is what we made every year for up to 18 knuckleheads since the mid-90s.

But not this year.

Usually on Monday, I’d go down to the basement and bring up the folding chairs. But not this year.

Then we’d tussle about how much charcuterie to buy, for pre-dinner snacks. “We don’t need that much!” I’d say. “Stop being so cheap!” she’d say. “It’s not cheap — it’s wasteful!” I’d counter. She’d always win, and we had leftover triple creme and manchego for days.

But not this year.

On Tuesdays before the Turkey, we’d go shopping and panic when the store was out of control, brimming with clueless consumers arguing about the difference between a yam and a sweet potato, or consulting on cooking times, turkey sizes, and other holiday minutiae we had down cold.

But not this year.

The night before, we’d get to work on the pies and sides. But not this year.

The day-of, Ronni would do the table and it was always so festive. We used our special reddish tablecloth with a cool autumny centerpiece. But not this year.

Invariably, someone (usually my parents, or her mother, or sometimes BOTH), would come hours early. Ding-dong! We’d answer the doorbell, still vacuuming, in our sweatpants. Why? Who the eff knows? It was part of the ritual.

But not this year.

No, this year, we are going back to Brooklyn, just the two of us, to have a quiet session with Dan and Mo. We’ll bring lots of wine and a pie. Dee and Mo are doing all the rest. They are great hosts and master chefs. The food is going to be top shelf; they always go all-out.

Maybe this is the year the Thanksgiving baton is passed? No one is sure of anything anymore. It’s one day at a time, one foot in front of the other, like Phillippe Petite between the two World Trade Center towers. Whatever you do, don’t look down.

Not this year.

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Note: this is NOT a pineapple slice. NYC does not do pineapple pizza. Two, notice how people keep walking. That is correct. Just another day in paradise.

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At first, I liked this newcomer, a new guy at a client’s company. He was roughly my age, he played the guitar; we liked the same music. Above the black Les Paul that hung on the wall of his suburban office in the Midwest was a big old bar sign of a man hoisting a mug of suds.  Beneath the man were the words: “Beer.  Helping ugly people have sex since 1862.”

I wanted to believe we were kindred spirits.  And at this phase of life, I’ll take all the new friends I can get.

But in the weeks that followed, this new fellow quickly got under my skin.  It wasn’t his “dontcha know?” Fargo accent, either.  Rather, it was the fact that he took every opportunity to break my chops about my regional accent. In his approximation of New Yawk-speak, I’d be treated to his lame “Yo, how’s it goin’?”

I supposed that is what passed for wit amongst his sunset-seating, walleye-eating crowd. His part of the world (deleted here, to protect the innocent) is a very nice place, of the sort where the locals consume king-cut prime rib by the roaring fireplace of The Double Muskie Pub, secure that their eight-eight percent white world would forever repel virtually all manner of “the other.”

And at the risk of getting all “Sarah Vowell-ish,” it is instructive to note that taciturn Europeans settled to the region’s wild prairies and virgin forests, via emotionally reserved New England.  The locals vamoosed out of Vermont as soon as the Erie Canal was complete and the Blackhawk Wars were won. 

In short order, Yankee elites came to this guy’s home turf for “the waters” and the area was recast as the “Saratoga of the West” – that is, until the healthy, healing waters were befouled by radium pollution.

Groaning Geiger counters aside, Money Magazine ranked it as one of our “100 Best Places to Live.” 

Last November, I sat at my desk in anticipation of my recent weekly client update conference call.  Then the new guy, let’s call him, oh, “John Smith,” called.

Midwesterners enjoy starting business calls with chitchat.  Generally, I’m ok with their “how’s the weather?” and “what are you doing this weekend?” opening gambits.  But this particular phone call caught me completely off-guard.

He actually started, in his New Yawk, put-on accent, with: “Yo, you havin’ pastrami and all the trimmings this Thanksgiving.”

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I was shocked.  Because he knew that I am Jewish, and he knew what he thought he could say, that is, get away with, since he was – after all – “the client”.

And, thus taken aback, I wanted to say:  “You know, my dad had the front of his head rubbed by southern boys when he was in basic training in Camp Van Dorn Mississippi.  They were looking for his Jew horns.”

And I wanted to add: “And weeks before he shipped out to fight Nazis, he got into a bar brawl at a local roadhouse, and had his forehead split open by an MPs baton, because he dared to play Louis Jordan and His Tympani Five on the juke box.

“And the following winter, his foxhole buddy drawled, in the snow and sleet of the Bulge, ‘you a Jew?’”

And I felt my blood pressure build. And my gut said stomp on the gas, rev it up, Thelma and Louise, baby, screw the account, forget the money, damn my professional “reputation.” Just tell him to piss off, because after all the years, and all the BS, I’ve had it.  And now this?  “Yo…you havin’ pastrami for Thanksgiving?”  And he actually added: “With all the trimmings?”

But the adult me, thankfully, as befit the holiday, grabbed back the steering wheel and I answered, flatly:

“Actually, I’m serving Oregon Pinot Noir, and we’re having roast turkey, and sage sausage dressing, cranberry sauce, pan roasted Brussels sprouts, candied yams, walnut bread, pumpkin and apple pie – you know, our usual, traditional fare…

“So, to look at our table, you’d never suspect that we were….”

And I stopped myself. And there was silence at the other end.  And we continued our update meeting.  As if nothing, at all, was wrong.