455: Sometimes, when a bit ...
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 2 concludes
Flynn’s Olde Boston Eating & Drinking Establishment
Sometimes, when a bit of undigested mutton awakens us at night, we lie in the dark, musing. You know the sort of thing. What is the point of life? What has become of our old pals? Do any olde Bostonians ever go to Flynn’s? Recently, we decided that we had to know the answer to at least one of these questions, so we called some old pals who have spent the last few years seeking the point of life in Ohio, invited them for a visit, and took them to Flynn’s.
We squeezed past the little stand selling T-shirts, beer mugs, baseball caps, and coasters emblazoned with the legend “Flynn’s — A Taste of Olde Boston,” and joined a small mob of people from states in roughly the same neck of the woods as Ohio until we were invited to wait in the lounge.
At this point, we would like to say something on the subject of parking. Did you know that on Beacon Hill a parking space costs more than a one-bedroom condominium? It’s enough to keep you awake at night, isn’t it? Actually, though, that’s not the sort of parking we mean. We mean the practice of making one wait for a table in the bar or lounge so that the establishment makes a larger profit on liquor. At Flynn’s, parking is a tradition. It is even supposed to be part of the fun. One never knows whom one will meet while waiting at Flynn’s (though one can be pretty sure that he will be a bathroom-fixture salesman from one of the many states that seem to be located in the Ohio region). Most diners are drunk as skunks by the time they lurch out of the lounge and into the dining room. Presumably, this is, like everything else at Flynn’s, a tradition.
The lounge looks like the setting for a beer commercial — in fact, all of Flynn’s looks like a beer commercial. It’s a big, noisy place that, like it or not, says “Boston” to the rest of the country, as do, presumably, codfish cakes, scrod, chowder, lobster, roast beef, baked beans, boiled budayduhs, and Hahvud beets, baked apples, Indian pudding, corn bread, and sticky buns. One of the famously brisk serving wenches tosses the sticky buns onto the table as soon as everyone has ordered another drink, so that when your pals return to the nation’s buckeye zone they will be able to say, as proof of their having tasted the real Boston, “Isn’t it queer the way they serve you sweet rolls before the meal?” (By the way, we can’t help wondering whether another expectation about Boston isn’t confirmed at Flynn’s. The dining room is a sea of white faces. The occasional black, brown, or beige diner is as surprising as pumpernickel would be in the breadbasket. We spotted a single black diner on our visit. The only other nonwhites were Japanese, a group of businessmen who, in a touching moment of international cliché exchange, snapped pictures of one another wearing lobster bibs.)
And now, we have something we would like to confess. Forgive us, Father, but we were brought up in N*w Y*rk, raised on the clam chowder known hereabouts as M*nh*tt*n. Our first impression of what Bostonians consider the real goods, chowderwise, was that it must be a tonic for ulcer victims. We have, since then, found some wonderfully creamy examples that made us like the stuff, but what we got at Flynn’s is not one of them. This is the Wonder Bread of chowders.
Visitors expect things Bostonian to be olde, and Flynn’s satisfies that expectation, too. We’re not talking only about the lobsters, either. Flynn’s really is a n old establishment, the Flynn family having opened the doors in 1785 (to, we suppose, a group of Cleveland Indians on a package tour). But to be old is not enough. To fulfill the expectations of the tourist, the place must look old, and Flynn’s has accomplished this supremely well, through the simple expedient of, apparently, not cleaning the place for the last hundred fifty or so years. (We may be wrong about this. It is possible that the stains darkening the floors and walls have been sprayed on for effect.)
A warning: Quite suddenly, late in the evening, just when you are beginning to think that it must be about time to go home, a gang of famously brisk waitresses will arrive at your table and serve food. By this time, you will have been consoling and distracting yourselves with alcohol for so long that the idea that food might be served will have slid into the dark area of your brain where most of the cells are dead. Your pals are apt to be confused, even frightened, by this horde of waitresses bearing huge steaming trays of stuff. Assure them that it’s traditional, one of the quaint ways of Olde Boston.
Based on what we can remember of our investigation, we can say, without fear of contradiction, that people who reside in Boston don lobster bibs at Flynn’s only when hosting out-of-town pals. Beware! The pals may decide to get even. They may press you to visit them, and then make you eat buckeyes or something. Permit us to make a suggestion. Mail this review to your pals. Perhaps they’ll decide to visit San Francisco and eat cioppino.
— BWB
Flynn’s Olde Boston Eating & Drinking Establishment
16 Tetford Street, 555-3232.
American Express, Visa, MasterCard, Diners Club, checks.
Handicapped: difficult access.
Lunch 12–3, Monday–Friday.
Dinner 6–11 Tuesday–Sunday.
Reservations are not accepted, never have been accepted, and, in the interest of tradition, never will be accepted.
[to be continued on Wednesday, March 22, 2023]
In Topical Guide 455, Mark Dorset considers Allusion from this episode.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.
You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” and “Do Clams Bite?” complete and uninterrupted as audiobooks through YouTube.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies and Herb ’n’ Lorna.
You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document) and at Encyclopedia.com.