"Bobby Darin had class!"
I was working in a deli in Covina, California, trying to make my half of the rent for a cheap, two-bedroom apartment in a bad part of Baldwin Park, also while taking a full semester of credits at Mt. Sac JC.
The deli was owned by this wonderful couple who both had normal jobs during the day, then worked this deli at night, while their son ran the place full time. God only knows when they slept, or if they ever got more than a couple of hours a night. They were from Chicago, I think, and had that kind of Chicago edge to them that always seems funny and strange and sometimes scary to those of us born and raised in the California sunshine. The sun makes you mellow, the cold makes you gritty and hard and determined.
They both drove brand new C4 Corvettes. I didn't begrudge them at all, they worked harder in a week than I knew I would work in my entire 20s.
Anyway, the deli had some random musiak piped in, something boring and contemporary, and I just remember one evening the husband, out of absolutely nowhere, just shouting out "Remember Bobby Darin? Bobby Darin had class." Not like this sh**, was his implied next line, which he didn't say, but we all finished his sentence in our heads anyway.
You're damn right, sir, Bobby Darin did have class. Never forget that.
That's all.
