Commencement
“I knew her at Forest Park High,”
Ron, the Jewish guy who ran the drycleaning shop
told me when I came in for my shirts.
“She was Ellen Cohen then, class of ’fifty-nine.
I remember she was in the co-ed choir.”
In another month it’d be the twenty-first century.
I was on my way home from work,
always loved shooting the breeze with Ron.
There’d been a story about Mama Cass Elliot
in the local newspaper, dead a quarter century.
“Just two weeks before she graduated,
she went off to New York to seek her fortune.
She wanted to be an actress.
Her mother worked at Social Security headquarters,
in Woodlawn. Needless to say she disapproved.”
Ron rang me up at the register.
I handed him a bill, he gave me change.
I had stuff to do, ready to leave,
but Ron had memories to spill,
a life-long Baltimorean.
“Took her years, but she made it big.
Absolutely hated being called ‘Mama Cass,’
but that’s where she made her mark,
even though her career had its ups and downs
after the Mamas and the Papas broke up.
“Mayor Schaefer always knew an angle when he saw it,
declared August 13, 1973 “Cass Elliot Day,”
had a parade and everything, marching bands,
clowns, politicians, antique cars,
Cass and her mom in a Cadillac limousine.
“They ended up downtown at Hopkins Plaza,
Willie Don handing her the Forest Park diploma,
fourteen years late, along with a key to city.”
Ron sighed. “Cass’d be dead less than a year later,
heart failure, in her Mayfair apartment, London.
“Rumor is she choked to death on a ham sandwich.”