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Brunch with love by Linda Rodriguez
managing editorThursday Feb 28, 2008There are only three rules for Sunday brunch at Mel King’s house: Introduce yourself, eat, and sign the guestbook before you leave.
For nearly 40 years, those rules have applied to every visitor who has walked through the former state representative’s back door and into his open, garden-level kitchen for his weekly brunch - everyone from the Rev. Jesse Jackson to activist Angela Davis to, last Sunday, this reporter.
The brunches, hosted at the Yarmouth Place home King and his wife, Joyce, have lived in since 1969, are open to anyone who wants to come. Last Sunday, around a dozen people showed up to take a place at the huge round oak table in the Kings’ dining room, a table that used to live in the old Christian Science Library before the Kings claimed it. A recent Boston transplant, an art teacher who lives in Dorchester, a semi-retired designer and consultant from Brookline, a grandmother from Roslindale, and an education consultant based, he said, all over the country, were among the visitors who passed dishes of vegetables and baked salmon, bowls of fruit salad and pumpkin muffins, who talked about what they did for a living and where to find a good dentist, and who complimented the chef on his delicious hot fruit punch. When someone put the 25th anniversary edition of Michael Jackson’s Thriller on the stereo, King tapped out the beat on the table and with each song, another person at table would pipe up, "I remember this one!"
Most of them had never met one another before.
And that’s what Ariana Cordona likes the most. Ariana, 6, has been coming to Sunday brunch since she was born and calls the Kings "Mama Joyce" and "Papa Mel."
"My favorite part is when the people come and introduce themselves," she said, adding that she also likes swimming, playing on the miniature billiards table in the Kings’ dining room, and "not keeping her room clean."
Her grandmother, Georgia McEddy, worked with King in the legislature during the ’70s. She said that their children essentially grew up together; her daughter, Ariana’s mother, came to brunch every Sunday when she was young, too.
"You learn a lot," she said of the brunches. "It continues to be an education."
McEddy said that when her daughter was growing up, she would come to the brunches and learn from King how to season and cook the fish he always serves. "Now, Ariana goes over and watches Mel cook the fish, make the punch. When I ask, I’m told it’s good fish. When she asks, she gets every minute detail," she laughed. "So it’s an education."
McEddy is one of the core group of people who have come to the brunch consistently over its nearly 40 years. She’s certainly not alone. Last Sunday’s group included four people who have been coming for more than 20 years.
"It’s sort of like if you build it, they will come ... and Melvin really likes this, it’s an important part of his life," explained Joyce King. "It’s very important for him. He’s always had this thing that if you bring a whole bunch of people together around food, good things can happen."
And good things have happened.
When King started the brunches in 1969, issues of civil rights, institutionalized segregation in schools and in society, affordable housing and poverty had already reached a roiling boil in the city. The four-day sit-in at the empty lot that would later become Tent City housing had just taken place the previous summer and the furor over busing would kick off in a few years. King, who was born and raised in the South End, had already established a citywide reputation as a community activist, solidified by his organization of the Tent City sit-in. What was needed, he felt, was a place for people to come together in a respectful environment to talk about some of the issues they were dealing with.
"A number of things started to come together," said King, explaining that he had begun teaching at MIT and soon after became a state representative. Many people he knew had things they wanted to talk about, things they wanted to address, and many of them also had young families - meaning that finding childcare while they were out at a forum, talking about those issues, could pose a problem. Bringing people and their families together on a Sunday afternoon for brunch seemed like a good solution.
"People would come with their issues and talk to the broader group," said King. Almost immediately, the brunches were a hit and they began to grow.
"Some of my associates in the legislature would have folks visit them, pretty soon we had people come from all over the world," King said. While still deeply rooted in community organizing in the city, issues discussed at the forums sometimes took on an international tone. After a group formed around easing the tension between the US and the then-USSR during the brunches, the Kings visited Moscow for 10 days. A Palestinian official who was later assassinated came to one Sunday brunch; King and his wife later visited the man’s family.
But, said King, "Global, local, it doesn’t matter. And anyway, all issues are global."
"People have to be respectful of one another. Some people want to come and push their own agenda, but we try to make sure that they listen to the other side... That’s really the thing, getting people to talk." The brunches soon became - and still are - a staging ground for campaign fundraising efforts, with visits from politicians ranging from city councilors to Jesse Jackson during his efforts to win the Democratic nomination and Angela Davis when she ran for vice president on the Community Party ticket.
Some Sundays, the brunch becomes a poetry reading or a book signing for local writers, and 150 people can cram into the kitchen, dining room and spill out onto the back patio.
Other Sundays, like this past one, it’s simply an open house meal, as people come and go over the afternoon. The food is always provided by the Kings, and often, their daughter Pamela. Every Sunday morning, Joyce King said, she and King follow a routine of getting the paper, getting a pizza baked by a North End pizzeria, getting coffee, and coming back to cook brunch. The meal starts at noon and usually lasts until about 3 p.m., with visitors trickling in and out over the three hours. Sometimes, people don’t always want to leave when it’s time. "I’m the one who will call time," Joyce King laughed.
"We’ve met a lot of different people who have come through," she said, adding that the brunches hinge on a respectful atmosphere. "People have to be respectful of one another. Some people want to come and push their own agenda, but we try to make sure that they listen to the other side... That’s really the thing, getting people to talk."
And, she says, "There have been a lot of characters."
It’s easy to idealize the brunches as a kind of Rockwell painting channeled through a United Colors of Benetton ad, but opening up one’s home to a large community can be daunting and even a little frightening.
"We do try to make people understand that this is our home. We have had people think that this is a meeting room and they can do whatever they want," she said. During the 1970s, when the Black Power and Black Panther movement began to gain traction in Boston, she said, many of the organizers would come to the brunches. "The Black Power, Black Panther guys came and guys [were] starting to light up," she recalled, indicating that they weren’t just smoking cigarettes. It was a bit tense. "I’m like, ’Melvin, get them out of the house!’ and he’s making his way over there," she laughed, mimicking King’s deliberate gate.
While the South End, the city, and certainly the world continue to change, the Sunday brunches remain largely the same: a forum for respectful discussion, still open to anyone who wants to come, and still a place where issues will be heard.
"Some people we’ll see every week, some people come to get whatever they get out of it, the ambience, the food," Joyce King said. "And we know that some people just come to eat, and that’s fine."
It’s also still a place for people from different backgrounds and parts of the city and lifestyles to come together for an afternoon. And that, last Sunday’s brunch group uniformly agreed, is rare. Said Sheldon Fischer, an education consultant who attended his first brunch on Sunday, "Not many people say hey, come to my house."
It’s that vibe that keeps people coming back and bringing their friends, and even inspires them to start their own brunches. Emily Cheniack, a 26-year-old former City Year member, said that she’s been coming to the brunches for several months. Now, she holds her own brunch once a month.
"It was inspired by what [King] does. I can’t do every Sunday, I don’t have the energy, although he’s like 77," she said. (In fact, King is 80.) "I just don’t think that people have as many places to go anymore, and it’s just nice to have a place to hang out."
People appreciate that. Darrell Gane-McCalla, a 29-year-old art teacher who lives in Dorchester, has been coming to Sunday brunch for several years now, having been introduced to the event by a friend. What keeps her coming every Sunday? The people. "I don’t have any family here," said Gane-McCalla, "so this is family-ish."
Lawrence Fine, a semi-retired design consultant from Brookline wearing a collection of political buttons on his shirt - "Stop Global Warming," support for the Green Rainbow Party, "Yes" to the Cape wind farm - says that he’s been coming to the brunches for around six months. He, too, comes for the people. "It’s just a good feeling being here," he said.
Is that rare? "Sort of," interjected another attendee, Rene Ridley.
"It’s definitely a unique environment that’s created," agreed Fine.
"There’s a mellow thing in that kitchen," said Ridley.
King may have an idea about what that mellow thing is. Asked what he puts on his salmon, King smiled. It’s the same ingredient he puts in the punch, the same ingredient that’s in everything on the table.
"Love," he said, "it’s all made with love."
Linda Rodriguez can be reached at lrodriguez@southendnews.com
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