Charge of the Casserole Brigade

Mitch Bagos is an eligible bachelor. Healthy, a nice bounce in his step. A joiner. Sort of outdoorsy.

Mitch has a motor home that he takes on the road and a trailer parked in Cabo San Lucas. Really likes Mexico. Really likes to get out. He’s going to Hong Kong in the fall for the lawn bowling championship.

Mitch is much in demand with the girls. That’s what they usually call the women around here--the girls.

Oh, it’s not like Mitch is beating them back with a stick. Good Lord. That doesn’t sound very nice.

“Of course, I haven’t been turned down that I can remember,” he says, narrowing his eyes just a tad as he stares off in the direction of the VCR.

And Mitch has a long memory. He’s been a widower for 12 years. He is 76.

“No, wait,” he says. His birthday’s in June, so he’s not quite there yet.

It’s just that time really flies when you’re having so much fun--here at Leisure World in Laguna Hills.

Let’s face it. The odds are in his favor. Women just flat out live longer than men. And this lopsided ratio can create all sorts of jams.

“Terrible. Just awful. Not good,” says one of the girls about the prevailing odds. (This girl doesn’t want to be named. She is “over 65.” Even her daughter hasn’t figured out by exactly how much.)

The Swinging Singles of Leisure World is now advertising for men, and there aren’t many takers so far. The club’s membership roster is kind of fluid, but there’s something like 200 women and 20 men. And even then, only a few--say, three, four or five--ever show up for events.

The imbalance makes the girls sitting at the “singles’ table” at the Saturday night dances (Clubhouse 5) feel a little, uh, vulnerable. It makes some of the guys kind of cocky. You should see them strut around the pool.

It can lead to desperation. It can lead to . . . The Casserole Brigade.

“Well, you know, I’ve never done it myself ,” says one of the girls.

“Everybody knows who they are,” says another. “But I’m not telling who.”

“Oh, I look at the obits too ,” says a third. “But I wouldn’t take a casserole for all the tea in China. I’ve been used to having men come to me!”

The Casserole Brigade is legend around here. There was even a musical number about it in “The Leisure Whirl,” a spoof performed by the Theater Guild two years back.

From the chorus of “Casserole Capers”:

We make meals chock full of sex appeal.

We’re so lovely but just watch us wheel and deal.

Not that a song was necessary. Everybody seems to know how the brigade operates, even if not everybody believes that it exists. It is a decidedly female unit, all volunteer. No rules are written down. It’s an instinctual thing, a delicate matter of timing and taste.

The sad fact is people do die. And wives leave husbands to survive on their own.

Few of them, it seems, ever bother to cook.

“It is a phenomenon,” says Lillian Heller Conrad, on the record strictly as an observer, because her husband died within the last year. She says she is not yet ready to date.

“There are all sorts of reasons for this,” she says. “If a gentleman should lose his wife, he might need to be taken care of. Most men at our age level are pretty much at sea in the kitchen. So bringing food is a kindness . . . .

“(The women) turn up fairly quickly. If it should lead to something else, wonderful. If not, well, you’ve done a good deed.”

Lillian says some friends of hers have a casserole to thank for breaking the ice. They are married now.

Of course, not every girl is looking to tie the knot.

Certainly not.

One widow (“over 70”) who has been single for 25 years, says she could be 90 (she is not) and she’d still be looking strictly to date.

“This one fellow is really crazy about me,” she says. “As long as he keeps bringing me the flowers and the candy, that’s fine. But, see, I don’t let him know that I’m seeing someone else . . . .

“And, between you and me, a lot of people around here are just shacking up.”

Which has it’s drawbacks too.

“There was one man who lived with me for seven months,” says an “over 60” girl, widowed for six years. “Well, now he’s living with a girlfriend of mine. And he is getting cataracts and having surgery, and it’s a mess. Well, she’s stuck with him now.

“You hear story after story like this. I tell you, you take up with somebody and you become their nurse. They just want a nurse with a purse. Honey, that says it all.”

Some men say they are rather awe-struck by all the attention, that things were different when they were growing up.

“I haven’t had any experience at chicanery or genuine passionate pursuit for many years,” says a retired university professor. “It is so frightening.”

Mike Jimenez, 71, is decidedly not in this camp. “Some of these gals, they knock on your door cold,” he says. “They’re eager, you know. They say, ‘I saw you not too long ago’ or something.

“Hell, casseroles? I’ve got macaroni, scalloped potatoes, some kind of chicken stuff. Somebody brought fudge, cake. I had matzo ball soup the other day--not bad--and there was a lemon meringue pie not long ago . . . .

“These odds here, they’re real nice. Right on!” he says.

“Hey,” he asks a visitor. “Where do you live?”