The one-candle cake

texture · Sep YDAU (a Sunday)

• When: the September Sunday marking Gately's first year sober, YDAU.
• What: "Ferocious Francis G. and the White Flaggers presented him, on the September Sunday that marked his first year sober, with a faultlessly baked and heavily frosted one-candle cake" — and Don Gately cried in front of nonrelatives for the first time in his life (he now denies it, blaming candle-fumes). The sponsorship's emotional high-water mark, and the one unambiguous image of what F.F.'s program produces.