Happy Birthday, Cambridge

THREE years ago the Cambridge City Council used to meet in the afternoon and then adjourn to Igo's restaurant for cocktails and a leisurely dinner of lobster or steak. The city picked up the tab, of course. But it is unlikely now that the nine councillors could refrain from making political accusations over such dinners. The Council meets now in the evening and the sessions are long. Driveway permits and requests to put up signs on stores no longer have priority. Groups protesting rent control, police brutality, the lack of low-rent housing, and the recent tendency of the City Council to fire the City Manager after every election demand more attention from the Council. Often Mayor Vellucci must bang his gavel 20 times to maintain order in the council chamber. The era of dinners at Igo's has gone by.

Last week- for one evening- city officials made a concerted effort to forget issues and recapture the spirit of the Igo dinners. On Wednesday, the City Council and its guest's dined at the Hotel Sonesta in celebration of the 125th anniversary of the City of Cambridge.

After an hour of casual drinking, mingling and nametag reading, the party began in earnest when we rose, glasses in hand, to sing the newly written "Cambridge Day." Cambridge Day just happens to fall on Saint Patrick's Day and so, to the tune of "When Irish Eyes are Smiling," a feeble chorus rose:

Oh, Cambridge Day is Wednesday. Sure, tis pride and joy we feel For the University City Is a place of great appeal. The folks are ail hard workers And there's no one now alive Who won't celebrate your birthday When you reach hundred twenty five.

The voices got a little stronger towards the end of the song. Even Presidents Pusey and Bunting, who were conspicuously seated at the center table, could be seen joining in.

Thirty fourth-graders from the Fitzgerald School spent a week researching Cambridge history to make a presentation at the dinner. Did you know that Eliza Howe invented the sewing machine here in Cambridge? And Alexander Graham Bell tested his telephone here? One boy had a lot to say about Harvard, or rather the Harvard hockey team. "They have a good hockey team at Harvard. I have seen them play many games and they have some rough goalies. You can see them play yourself for one, two, or three dollars," he said.

MAYOR VELLUCCI, as usual, had something to say about Harvard, too. Elegantly attired in a white pinstriped dinner suit, apparently the same one he wore last year to the Harvard graduation, Vellucci welcomed us all to the dinner and told an assuming anecdote about the East Cambridge Italian who sends his son to Harvard, only to see him on TV in an SDS demonstration.

Returning to my seat after taking some pictures, I was stopped by Daniel Steiner, a University attorney who was frequently questioned by reporters last week in connection with the women's occupation. He winked at me and said, "Don't tell me they even let the CRIMSON in here? What an outrage." I smiled, too, and said, "Yes, we're everywhere."

True to the Igo tradition, we all started in on the steak and champagne. By the end of the dinner I had downed two ice cream parfaits, and George Croft, the reporter from the Globe, had managed to slip three bottles of champagne into a doggy bag.

We were all in much better spirits when Paul Morrissey, the Mayor's special assistant, gave his rendition of "When Irish Eyes are smiling."

VELLUCCI rapped on a glass to get our attention for the award. To Presidents Pusey, Bunting, Johnson, and Weisner went sets of brass plated bookends engraved with the seal of Cambridge. Pusey was speechless but managed an appropriate thank you. Bunting went up to the podium to pose for one of the pictures on this page and she and Vellucci discussed their upcoming Ping-Pong match for the Currier House tournament. Last year they were unable to play because Bunting was eliminated in an early round.

By the time Councillor Crane got up to give the main speech of the evening most of us had been eliminated on earlier rounds. I must confess to missing Crane's explanation of his tin can lid necklace but I felt I had an excuse. The 125th centennial dinner was my only chance to relive the myth of former CRIMSON city editors who used to write their council stories drunk after a night at Igo's. Next week it would be back to the issues.