Heaven and Hy's

"I believe," said one of our company, "that there have been more changes at the Vatican in the past four decades than at Hy's."

We--several members of the Pointless Digressions Irresponsible Brigade--were at Hy's Encore on Hornby Street in Vancouver.  Nothing had changed since we first lunched there, in the 1960s.  The dark wood paneling, the oil paintings, the cosy bar resembling the reading room in a gentleman's club, the heavy-on-steaks menu, the elegant cocktails, the cheese toast, the fireplace, even the background music--Miles Davis, Paul Desmond--was the same.

The remarkable thing was that, as we sat to table, our present ages vanished, and we were once again the people we had been forty years ago.  Instead of ages sixty to seventy-seven, we were twenty to thirty-seven.

Alas, once we stepped onto the street, in the bright noonday sun, we reverted to our current years.  

Hugh Pickett, for decades Vancouver's dominant impresario, once said that when he shuffled off this mortal coil, he wanted to go not to Heaven, but to New York's Plaza Hotel.  

Our group wants to go to Hy's Encore.