C Or K

Back in the heady days of cheaper gas and unlimited sales of high-margin trucks, the auto business was fun. We had golf outings, parties, wine tastings, fishing trips, concerts.

But there was one event that I looked forward to more than all the rest. There was a great restaurant in Detroit called The Whitney. It was a wonderful gourmet restaurant inside a three-story Victorian mansion. The rooms of the house were used as dining rooms, each one with a giant fireplace. There were pianos, restrooms with couches and chairs, and a very elegant atmosphere.

Once a year, one of my deep-pocket suppliers would rent the whole house for a party. And what a party it was. Gourmet food in every room, each with a different theme. A sushi chef would be making spider rolls and custom-slicing fatty tuna in one room, and the next room would have lobsters and filet minon. Twenty-five year-old Macallan scotch and high-end Napa cabs washed it all down. And the desserts....OMG...the dessert room was amazing. Think chocolates of all kinds, tarts, cheesecakes, custom dessert crepes, and coffee drinks with Godiva, Baileys and Kahlua.

Ice sculptures and live piano music topped off this fairy-tale event.

The price for all of this splendor? Mucho dinero. $50 thousand? No, not even close, think much, much higher.

So one year I got my invite and a friend named Ted at work who was also invited said he couldn't make it and asked it I wanted to bring someone with his invite. I greedily snatched it up.

Now, this is a delicate situation, because these invites are meant for the person they are given to. You're not supposed to sell or trade them. So when I asked my brother Brian to come with me, I told him he was going to have to pretend to be Ted Constantine.

So we're at the front door, dressed up and drooling, and the woman handing out name tags gets my name and then turns to Brian.

"Name?"

Brian smiles, happy that he remembered he was: "Ted Constantine!"

The woman immediately said "Is that with a C or a K?"

Brian looked startled and then looked at me and said. "I don't know".

We still laugh about that.