THE AGE OF ELEGANCE

By Garrison Keillor

These perfect fall days make me sad, and there have been so many of them lately in Minnesota. My cure for sadness is, first, to clean off my glasses and, second, to take a fast ride on a bicycle. If that doesn't work, I go to Murray's. The next step is to join the Men in Their 50s Coping with Melancholy group, and I've never had to do that.

Murray's is a restaurant in downtown Minneapolis that's been around longer than I have. In my childhood, there were the Big Three, Charlie's, Harry's and Murray's, and only Murray's survives. It is the sort of grand old joint you find in any big city, restaurants with pink drapes and a 70-year-old coat-check girl and a pianist who plays Deep Purple and the waitresses have names like Agnes and Gladys and the menu harks back to the Age of Steak; a place where a fiftyish couple can enjoy a Manhattan and tuck into a chunk of cow and au gratin potato. Murray's serves the Silver Butter Knife Steak for Two. That's the special, and it's been around since I was learning to read--I saw it advertised on billboards around town. I'd form the words MURRAY'S and SILVER BUTTER KNIFE STEAK phonetically, and say them aloud as we passed, and the mystery and elegance of them stuck with me.

My parents never went to restaurants. We ate at home or at the homes of relatives--we were sensible people, not spendthrifts or dreamers. Once a year we went to the state fair and had Pronto Pups. That was it. Every Sunday morning, however, my father drove us to church, and the route took us past Murray's, and I would glance up from my Bible and the verse I was memorizing for Sunday school, and there was Murray's big marquee and the name written out in orange block letters and, above, a sign that said COCKTAILS/DANCING, and over the years, memorizing one verse after another, you build up an intense interest in a place like that. You imagine walking in and finding yourself in a movie--the maitre d' takes your coat and hat and nods toward a corner banquette, and there sits Fred MacMurray, your boss at Acme, stubbing out a Lucky, grinning, and you realize it's all true--you're assistant manager now, you got the big raise, you and Sue and Becky and Little Buddy can move out to Sunny Acres.

I saved up Murray's for years, and then, when I turned 21, I couldn't go there because I was under the terrible burden of being hip--it took years for that to wear off, during which I ate what hip people were eating in Minneapolis then, ethnic food, most of it awful. I thought of Murray's as a den of Republicans: steaks became (in my mind) politicized. And then, on the very last day of my misspent years in graduate school, my role model and hero Arnie Goldman said, "School's out--what do you say, let's go to Murray's," and so it was cool. We put on our corduroy sportscoats with the leather elbow patches and had dinner, and he ordered us martinis, and the gin made me as witty as Robert Benchley. We swapped timeless repartee for a couple hours and ate liberal Democratic steaks and felt the glow of scholarly brotherhood.

I have gone back about once every three or four years, and the magic seems never to wear off, the sight of the pink drapes, the mirrors, the candelabrum sconces, the red plush chairs, the candles flickering on the white linen--it still elates me, the Silver Butter Knife feels like a bright sword in my hand. And last year I returned with four old friends and my wife Jenny. It was one of the happiest nights I can remember, everyone yakking and laughing, eating steak, drinking a big booming red wine, feeling flush and lovable. And then I went back one night last week with Jenny and my son and his girlfriend. We strolled in, and I saw the pink drapes, and I felt the old euphoria rise in my heart, and it dawned on me that I had invented Murray's: as a child, reading the words SILVER BUTTER KNIFE STEAK FOR TWO off billboards, meditating on them, I had created a kingdom of elegance more durable than any restaurant where an immaculate young waiter introduces himself and tells you about the broiled marlin served in fennel mustard sauce on a bed of basmati rice and topped with shredded asiago cheese and lightly toasted pine nuts. I would never take out-of-towners to Murray's. Nobody whom I wanted to impress. Only my dearest friends. Only old Minnesota pals who grew up with Murrayism and know it as a symbol of all we hold dear.

On a beautiful fall day, when I recall what was grand and exalted and now is gone forever--the Burlington Zephyr and the North Coast Limited, the New Yorker of my youth, Memorial Stadium where we spent Saturday afternoons cheering for the Golden Gophers, the Earle Brown farm that was turned into a mall and a subdivision--I think of the SILVER BUTTER KNIFE STEAK FOR TWO, looming above me on a billboard, our car stopped at a red light on Lyndale Avenue in 1952, the Bible on my lap open to Ecclesiastes, my head anointed with Wildroot hair oil, and I feel restored. Some glories remain. You for sure, and me, perhaps, and, absolutely, Murray's.