A Stone's Throw From Bayard

Lately whenever someone suggests I do something unappealing, I say "My grandfather did not cross an ocean when he was two months old, so that I could..." He also changed his name from Amerigo Vespucci Cerando to Albert Bayard Cerand - perfectly poetic, isn't it? - and later, newspaper gossip columns would say he was so handsome, and quite obviously, some sort of French aristocrat. As always, we Cerands are sorry to disappoint in that regard. Today I am having my breakfast in his egg cup and on his plate. Never met the man, he died almost twenty years before I was born, but I have to say, it's hard to think about living in this city without thinking of the swathe he cut through it once upon a time, in the 1920s. And then there's my father's mother, Claricia, who changed her name to the very trendy "Ethel" and went by "Billie," Swedish sylph from the Bronx, working downtown in the nascent film industry... They met at a big band dance, he broke all his strings so he could leave the stage and track her down, not to mention do away with the director who was her date. I'll have to tell you all about it someday, for the moment, coffee's calling...