It was a dark and stormy night ...
	Funny story: It's seven o'clock on Friday night, an hour before the preparty is supposed to begin at Frank's Steaks in Jericho, kicking off a great reunion weekend for the JHS class of 1972 and friends.
	It's
	I'm in the shower, thinking, Looks like I've got tonight and tomorrow night all under control. This is good.
	All of a sudden there's a sharp knock on the door. "Someone from Frank's Steaks is on the phone for you."
	Uh-oh. Maybe the restaurant is calling to notify me that it has checked our high school transcripts and discovered that our collective grade-point average fell short of the district average of 4.0, heaping shame upon not only the Jericho school system but also the entire town-village-hamlet-burg-spiderhole-whatever-the-hell-it-is at large, and therefore Frank's is barring us from the premises. For life. Maybe even for the afterlife.
	Instead the owner informs me apologetically that the place got zapped by lightning during a violent late-afternoon thunderstorm and has no electricity. No lights, no air-conditioning, no way to cook food—three things that for most people do not exactly spell a great party. Unless, that is, they're Amish.
	Gerry Gaffen Alterbaum, from the class of '72, takes the phone from the owner and explains that she, Caren Kushner, and Deborah D'Amore-Ascari had arrived an hour early to have dinner at Frank's, only to find the place in the dark. They're going across the street to an Italian restaurant called Angelino's, she says.
	I remember that the class of 1975 held one of its get-togethers at the bar at Angeleno's. I call the owner and ask if he would be able to accommodate eighty or so people who drink alcohol the way a Hummer consumes gasoline.
	"Uh-huh," he says, dollar signs in his eyes.
is	It is now ten minutes after seven. I'm still dripping wet.
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