One warm but comfortable evening in the summer of 2005 I had the pleasure of dining at Mediza on LaSalle Road with Bernie Lurie, his wife, and four members of the West Hartford Symphony Orchestra board of directors.
Besides the former principal violinist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, and an in-demand violin teacher, Bernie is an enchanting dinner companion and a spell-binding raconteur.
Unlike the characters in the movie “My Dinner with Andre” who go on and on about nothing until I had to leave the theater after only 20 minutes, Bernie’s stories are interesting and fun. (I can’t decide which was more ghastly: “My Dinner with Andre” or “Room with a View.” At least Helena Bonham Carter was — and still is — pleasant to look at. Maybe if it was “Room with a View to a Kill” I would have enjoyed it more.)
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My favorite Bernie Lurie story involves his good friend (and Hartford native) actor Charles Nelson Reilly [the following paraphrase does no justice to Bernie’s compelling account]: “Charles is nothing at all like the characters he plays on TV,” Bernie said. “In real-life he’s actually a highly-regarded producer [Who knew?] and ‘piss-your-pants’ funny. Many times when he was visiting the Hartford area he would crash on my living room couch for the night. You never knew what to expect. Once I was awakened in the middle of the night by a long-distance phone call — it was Charles, of course. ‘Hey Bernie!’ he said. ‘Guess what?’ What? ‘I’m in Budapest doing “A Lincoln Portrait” with an all-lesbian orchestra. Top that!’ ”
Chapter 2 of "It Was A Typical Day In West Hartford: Lifestyles of the Merely Suburban" available for purchase online at lulu.com
