A lifetime of friendship with Jonathan Gold

Novelist Jervey Tervalon met Jonathan Gold when they were both in high school. They became great friends, sharing many fantastic meals and adventures over the decades. Tervalon recalls their long friendship and reads a poem dedicated to the late food critic.

Adventures in Life and Food With JGold

By Jervey Tervalon

07/29/2018

I knew you since high school, hanging in your

Mom’s library at Dorsey

We both kicked it on Hollywood corners

Saw the black dude with curlers and shower cap

Miming to opera records, and them freaks

And those bookstores

Remember a lifetime later you started calling

Me your young friend though I was 2 years older

And we started to roll through your LA and I learned

You ate everything.

We were at another place where Hollywood agents ate.

And the salmon mousse tasted weird

salt that wouldn’t dissolve, you said it was fine

Until you tried it and said, don’t eat it

That’s not salt, it’s glass; the jar had imploded

Damn…so weird and on the way home you made

That right on La Cienega and the police pulled us

Over and you had those expired tags and went all Falstaff

On those rollers and one touched his gun and

Then they towed the truck and we were stuck.

Under a freeway overpass at midnight in a gangster hood

Until Laurie rescued us.

Remember that time I was on the phone with Jinghuan in China

You noticed police behind us

Expired tags no thing at all

Until they ordered me out the truck at gun point handcuffed

Us both on Beverly Blvd, I politely suggested

That your were a famous food writer, you whispered

Don’t bother they won’t listen

Finally they realized that you weren’t an escaped

Felon who shot at cops and they let us go to

That seafood joint

Remember those tasteless fat olives that were really water-bugs

And that cold fresh blood soup?

Remember those not so great crickets and that

Mescal bar at 4am in Guadalajara where we LA writers

enjoyed Tapatío generosity

Remember the Rose Parade at Sumi’s, and that frigid horizontal rain,

Our brood riding in the truck bed to and fro and there we ate cinnamon

Rolls while Elise and Leon broke into a break dance then home for

Black-eyed peas to celebrate the New Year

Remember Santa Barbara where Jinghuan and

I were to be married and you were the best man and

Signed your name where hers was supposed to be and

The justice of the peace thought we were getting hitched

Remember awards and books

And travels and endless brilliant meals at your

House.

Remember the travails and happiness of

Family and friends.

Remember that you belong to Los Angeles to us All

In your singular herculean generosity

We remember it All and we will remember you.

As we look at Los Angeles and ourselves through Gold eyes.

And I remember the truth: I never ate better than at your house.