MAY 16, 2025 -This evening Beth and I went out to dinner with my sister Jenny, still in town for her opera gig but with the night off. We ate at the 112 Eatery over in the North Loop of Minneapolis. Tucked into a long narrow space of a building from the late 1800s, the establishment was reminiscent of some acclaimed old spot in Manhattan (I imagined). The lofty ceiling was covered with what appeared to be the original stamped tin, painted a deep green. The space was lit by large antique fixtures hung from the heights and small vintage wall sconces, one giving soft warm light to each booth along the corridor that led to several tables in back. We were seated at the last of these tables just below the wine rack that served as a divider between the dining area and the servers’ workspace and passage to and from the kitchen. Across from our table was a leaded mirror framed by old oak and enhanced by a hint of stained glass.
The host and servers were knowledgeable, appropriately solicitous, and wholly on top of their game.
And then there was the kitchen staff and . . . the food: pan-fried halibut with prosciutto crust and salmoriglio for Beth and me and the spaghettie [sic] with green beans and taleggio for Jenny, with an order of Sicilian roasted broccoli for the table. For dessert we indulged in shared servings of the mocha mousse torte with whipped mascarpone.
In the language of a cosmopolitan food critic covering haute cuisine, “the entrées touched the palate as flower petals falling upon a still garden pond touch the pebbled shore with their sumptuous ripples” (for example). In the vernacular, “it was one helluva meal.”
The conversation was as delectable as the fare. It touched many corners of our lives, though amazingly, we managed to avoid politics, except for a glancing comment or two, which were brief enough to leave our collective sanity intact.
We found a few points of nostalgia, as well, some mixed with a good dose of humor.
At the center of one anecdote was Beth’s father, Robert Boger, who left us all too soon at the age of 83 on April Fool’s Day, 2002. I remember him well, of course, all in a most positive light. He was kind, generous, unassuming, intelligent, eminently sociable, practical, and civic minded. He was also quite creative and Beth’s own talent for interior and exterior design can be traced to Bob’s proclivities in that regard. But most pertinent to this post, Robert Boger didn’t have a mean or mischievous bone in his body—well, except for pulling mild April Fool’s pranks, though dying on the day was no joke.
As Beth explained over this evening’s repast, her dad had served in multiple civic capacities in the family’s hometown of Byron, Illinois, a prosperous farming community 20 minutes south of Rockford. Bob wasn’t a native son. He’d grown up in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin and had married into an old Byron family, the Pipers, whose ancestors were among the town’s original settlers. “Piper” was an appropriate name for Beth’s grandfather, especially, who’d started a plumbing business and grew it into a thriving hardware store/sub-contracting enterprise.
When Leo Piper’s daughter Cleo brought Bob home from the University of Wisconsin and the two Badgers later married, Leo invited Bob into the hardware business. Much to Bob’s credit, he immersed himself in the life of his adopted community. It was all but inevitable that he would wind up serving on the city council and as Byron’s mayor.
Beth told us about Bob’s vision for the town; sprucing up the downtown stores, acquiring the original schoolhouse, an architecturally attractive structure in a prominent location, but rendered obsolete by the town’s growth and need for more school space. “Dad had some great ideas for Byron,” Beth said, “and that school would’ve been a great building to restore. Dad thought it would be perfect as a city hall, and with enough space to rent out additional offices.He had vision for the town and could see how much things could be improved, but he just couldn’t get anyone to go along with it.”
It all resonated with me [See my posts a year ago about my battles with the Borough of Rutherford, NJ over improvements for our family’s property there. The overwhelming problem was the lack of vision and imagination on the part of borough officials.]. Bob had great vision, excellent sensibilities regarding visual appeal, and the practical experience to know what would work and what wouldn’t. And he was no “tax and spend” liberal Democrat. He was an Eisenhower Republican—or more precisely, a John B. Anderson Republican[1]. Bob Boger wasn’t a profligate spender, but he was a strong supporter of the common good.
In any event, Beth couldn’t resist telling us about the New Year’s Eve party during her dad’s time as mayor. He and Cleo were celebrating with their usual crowd—members of the bridge club, fellow main street business owners, friends, and neighbors. As was the custom back in those days, a fair supply of alcoholic beverages were made available even before the time for uncorking the champagne. Apparently, the crowd got happier and happier as the evening progressed, and as is often the case in such circumstances, “happier and happier” meant “louder and louder,” to the irritation of the less celebratory neighbors.
Since Beth heard about the incident only after the sun had risen on the new year, she couldn’t say whether the irritated neighbors had engaged in any self-help, but if they had, it wasn’t effective. Eventually, they called . . . the police.
Byron being a small town, The Law didn’t have far to travel from the police station to the commotion. As the squad pulled up to the house, one of the partiers noticed and sounded the alarm. (Somehow, the crowd must’ve learned, one way or another, that the neighbors were upset and had summoned the police.)
Now, being the stand-up kind of guy he was, Robert Boger was horrified by his anticipatory embarrassment when the police would discover that he, the mayor of Byron, was among the offending celebrants. His reputation was deservedly golden, but now it was in danger of being shattered. What would people think? How would the Pipers react? What would his kids think—and their friends, and the parents of their friends and the teachers of his kids and friends, not to mention the minister of their church and so on? Once word got around, Robert Boger would be knocked off his civic pedestal. Customers at the store would knowingly smirk when he met them in the nuts and bolts aisle and asked, “Can I help you find something?”
But Bob was among friends. Just as the doorbell chimes rang, the mayor was spirited to the safety of a broom closet. There his reputation would be secure from discovery by local law enforcement. Once the danger had passed, he could be brought out of the darkness, his name and title untarnished and image preserved. In fact, without much ado, the police obtained the host’s promise to lower the noise and left the premises to enjoy the rest of their night shift with their heels on the desk back at the station.
In fraught times, nothing beats a night out except a night out at a fine restaurant with your spouse and a sibling, as the three of you relish amusing stories from days twice as old as the wine but as freshly told as the prize-winning fare on your plate.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1]The U.S. Representative from the 16th District of Illinois (including Byron) for 10 terms (1961-81); staunchly conservative at the outset of his career, he eventually opposed the Vietnam War and a harsh critic of Nixon over the Watergate Scandal. Anderson ran for president as an independent in 1980. In the 2000 campaign he endorsed Green Party Ralph Nader for president.
