For years I wondered what ever happened to the dark meat of the chicken. None of the restaurants I patronized had it on the menu, I'd noticed. Somebody told me it was being sent to feed the starving Russians. As I said, I worried about this for years. Then one day it all came clear to me after I had lunch with the pope.

This is no joke. I did have lunch with the pope, as surely as I flew to Europe once on the Concorde. Understand, I'm not relating these experiences to exhibit the deep texture of my life, or for any other self-promoting purpose. No, sir, I am far beyond that by now and am aware that the kind of people impressed by this sort of thing are not worth cultivating. You know who you are.

Let me hasten to say that going about on the Concorde is not a normal part of my day. It was more a felicitous accident of scheduling. I didn't even pay the fare. My boss and I were to go to London on British Airways, but they overbooked their 747 and bumped us onto the Concorde flight an hour later. We raised no complaint.

Boy George was on the plane that day. Remember him? He was a British rock star -- he still is, actually -- who went around in a satin bowling jacket. When he was young, his father took him down to the local boxing gym because he decided his boy was too soft. This experience had a decisive effect on the youth.

He went home and put on a dress, which caused Dad to question his penchant for sink-or-swim remedies.

Before the Concorde took off, I called my teen-age daughter Lisa and told her who I was flying to London with. "Oh, Daddy, you're fooling again," she said. "Just like the time you told us you met Bianca Jagger."

I did, you know. But what can you do? How do you deal with such skepticism in the young?

It WAS the same building

As for the pope, well, more about that in a minute. Just let me say right upfront it was not His Holiness who invited me to lunch. And though we shared the bounty of the same kitchen, we sat down at tables in different rooms.

Is that truly having "lunch with the pope"? It's a fair question. But we did eat the same food, at the same time, at the same organized luncheon, though not at the same table, or even on the same floor. Three out of five is enough for me. But I don't want to make an issue out of it.

You might think dining with the pope could be the sort of thing you could use to impress your grandchildren. Think again. Grandchildren are not the pushovers they once were.

Actually, I am absolutely certain my grandchildren would be unimpressed. How do I know that? Because my daughter Andrea, their mother, saw the pope herself the same day I had lunch with him. She was walking her dog up by Baltimore's Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.

When she turned a corner onto Charles Street, he came gliding by in his Popemobile, blessing people to the right of him and to the left. His schedule had been published in the newspaper, but she hadn't seen it. Lucky for her, the dog decided she wanted to be walked at that moment.

I might have told her that he'd probably be in her neighborhood at that time, but I forgot. I was mightily busy. I was one of the reporters sent out to all points of the pope's itinerary to cover his doings that day he visited Baltimore.

Breaking bread

My assignment was at the downtown soup kitchen, Our Daily Bread, where an ethnically balanced cadre of the deserving poor had been assembled to dine with the pope, though, unlike me, in the same room and at the same table, a long head table similar to the one depicted by Leonardo da Vinci in "The Last Supper," which I saw once when I visited Milan. But that's another story entirely and has nothing to do with the pope.

They kept us reporters behind a rope. The pope sat in the middle of the room. He blessed everybody within range, even us, then began to tuck into his lunch. At this point the ecclesiastical authorities rushed over to shoo us upstairs. But first they allowed us to take pictures and ask a few questions of the pope. I hurled mine across the room in the pontiff's general direction: "Is that dark meat?"

Now, chicken is naturally a subject of some interest to Marylanders. It's a big industry, especially over on the Eastern Shore, which some people (not Marylanders) call the Delmarva Peninsula; this because it passes through three states: Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. Chicken Peninsula would be a more appropriate name, but that would surely offend the sensibilities of the tens of thousands of people busily colonizing that once Arcadian land. No, Delmarva is a mellifluous word; it conjures images of sylvan peace: warm summer sun, the soft buzz of a fly over long grass, a sweet sound only occasionally interrupted by the rat-a-tat of nail guns.

Delmarva (never to be called the Chicken Peninsula) is where Frank Purdue built his empire on big breasted oven stuffers. Remember Frank? He used to go on television and say, "It takes atough man to raise a tender chicken."

Well, he does

Actually I met him once, too, but I don't feel like going into that right now. Let me say only this: It is true what some people say: Frank does look like a big chicken, which may lend some support to the old argument that people who live together come to resemble each other. If it works for people, why not people and chickens?

Since we spend a lot of time over on the Eastern Shore during the summer, we see a lot of evidence of the chicken industry. We have a game we play with my two grandsons, who often ride with us when we go there. This game is called "chicken house." It's not complicated and diverts the boys for a time during the three-hour drive. This is how it works: Everybody watches out for chicken houses. They sit low on the horizon, but are quite distinctive. The first to sight one shouts, chicken house! and points in its direction. The first to tally 10 wins the game. We are thinking of abandoning this diversion. The kids cheat.

When I got upstairs at the soup kitchen, my colleagues were crowding up around a table. Paper plate in hand I nudged my way through to find a large chicken casserole.

It was made entirely of legs and thighs.

But it was good, I'll tell you that. A lot better than the lunch I had that day I met Mother Teresa.

Pub Date: 3/30/99