Category Archives: City Life

Night Life in Happy Jack’s: ‘Two-Beer’

IMG_6070by Dell Franklin

Bob ‘Two-Beer’ Bullnair refuses to listen to reason, especially if he’s into his third beer. Two-Beer works exclusively for Rafe Monk. He is around my height, six feet, but at least 200 beans of non-defined farm-boy strength that is the awe of fellow fishermen, for Two-Beer will outwork, outlift and outlast anybody on the waterfront. His Midwestern pie-face owns tiny black eyes that are pathetically sincere, especially when he hits on women before his second beer. He is totally honest, trustworthy and earnest, will do anything for anybody, is intelligent and has a degree in engineering from the University of Iowa, and yet here he is, a deckhand in Morro Bay, California, living in a windowless shack and unable to get laid and avoid beatings.

On this Sunday evening Two-Beer’s button eyes are pinpricks inviting disaster. He wants a beer but I know we’ll all be in big trouble if I serve him one, and so, for the twentieth time, to distract him, I ask him why he ended up fishing in Morro Bay when he could be a serious person with a high-paying job in the grown-up tech world.

“I don’t wanna be like other people and do what other people do,” he tells me. “I do what I wanna do. And don’t you go mentioning my college degree again. Fuck the degree! I want people to think I’m stupid, but you know I’m not. You probly think you’re smarter than me, ‘cuz you’re a wise-ass, and you write for that shitty paper, but you’re not as smart as me. All you can do is tend bar and write shit. Otherwise, you’re good for nothin’.”

“I drove a cab.”

“Anybody can drive a cab.”

“Not everybody can drive a cab. It’s a harder job than you think.”

“Bullshit. If you can do it, anybody can do it.”

“You couldn’t do it. You couldn’t tend bar, either.”

“I could so. Anybody can tend bar.”

“Not you. A bartender needs diplomatic skills. You argue with everybody. You have no social amenities. You can’t be around booze without drinking, and you’re an idiot of a drunk. And you can’t fight.”

“Bullshit. I’ll kick your ass. I was on the high school wrestling team and won my matches, went to the state championships. The Midwest is wrestling country. I’d squeeze you into a pretzel.”

“You only fight when you’re drunk. Two beers and you’re helpless. You have no idea how many times I’ve saved you from a beating, but you never remember, because three beers and you black out. Rafe, Farraday…, they all have to watch you like hawks when you go up the coast. You go in bars like this, where nobody knows you, somebody’s gonna beat your ass into a bloody pulp.”

“I’ll have my second beer now, Mr. Know-it-all.”

“I’m not gonna serve you a second beer. Know why? There’s women in here, and women are always your natural enemy. Especially after two beers. I mean, you might even get laid in this dive if you had just one beer, or smoked a little weed.”

“Who are you? My social director? My shrink?”

“I’m your bartender, an important person in your milieu. I’m also your friend. I look out for you. I’m sick of seeing you get beaten senseless by people who have no business beating you senseless, and I’m sick of hearing about people beating you senseless. Somebody’s got to protect you from yourself. I care.”

“I know you do, but that doesn’t mean I hafta accept your protection or you caring about me. I’m my own man. I’m not a boy. I’m thirty-two years old. Besides, I’m unimpaired, and indestructible. I can take more punishment than you’d ever take, Mr. Know-it-all-tell-everybody-their-business bartender. Now gimme that beer, if you don’t mind, sir!”

“What are you gonna do if I don’t give it to you?”

He cracks his innocent Howdy Doody/Alfred E. Newman grin. “You know I’d never hurt you. You know the second beer I’m okay. It’s the third one I run into trouble.”

“My guess is you’ve had more than one in your dump or in other bars before coming down here.”

“I want my second beer, Franklin!” He’s becoming angry, pushing.

“I saw you coming out of Legend’s.”

“They wouldn’t serve me. I’m eighty-sixed.”

“I’m absolutely positive you’ve been nipping.”

“Fuck you! Gimme my fucking beer, man!”

“Go away, Two-Beer!”

“Don’t call me Two-Beer! I hate that name. It demeans me. I’m an educated person and I deserve dignity, you arrogant fucker. My name’s Bob Bullnair. Serve me!”

I walk away. Two-Beer looks especially persecuted, tells Homer Carp and Joe Farraday, who are sitting nearby, he’s being picked on because he’s a proud Native American. (He’s only ¼ Osage). Finally, he’s at the front door. He hisses at me, scrooches up his face to show his revulsion at the mere sight of me, and gives me the finger in a very exaggerated, menacing manner, and shouts, “I’m goin’ down to the wharf where they respect me, asshole. Fuck YOU-U-U-U!” He storms out through the swinging doors. Homer, at the end of the bar, flashes his grin, which looks like his teeth are a bunch of misshapen nails protruding from his lips. Farraday, who sits beside Weasel Frazier, displays his grin, which resembles a dog sneering.

Beer Can Bessie shows up and takes her usual stool up front and as far away from the crowd as possible and orders a bottle of beer and we exchange the usual hugs. I light her cigarette with our bar matches, which have no logo on the cover. It’s raining hard outside and she has on her overcoat and hat and doesn’t bother to remove them. She just got off work as an RN at the emergency room at a hospital in San Luis Obispo. Vera, Carp’s live-in woman, diminutive but known for her ferocious manner as “The Wolverine,” comes in through the back door, walks around Homer without acknowledging him or his friends and sits beside Bessie as I draw her a beer and light her cigarette. I sip a shot of top-shelf vodka while they talk. I fetch and devour a burrito from down the street. I’m savoring a cup of coffee with Kahlua when John, who manages the Pizza Palace two blocks down, calls.

The Pizza Palace has a rustic dining room and an enclosed patio with tables and serves pitchers of beer, and evidently Two-Beer came in claiming I’d sent him down. John served him a pitcher of beer and he began bothering some gal who was with a framer called Ortho, and when Two-Beer hissed and insulted his girl and got his pitcher dumped on his head and then got slaughtered before a few regulars pulled Ortho away, John and the crew threw him into the street.

Bessie and the Wolverine turn to see Two-Beer stagger through the front doors looking like he stuck his face in a garbage disposal. His T-shirt is torn half off his body and his hair is soggy with beer as he sidles up to the bar while I hold the phone, his eyes little nasty lasers.

“Do me a favor, Franklin,” says John, on whose Pizza Palace sponsored basketball team I once played point guard and helped lead them to their only city league championship and lone trophy. “Don’t ever send that mongoloid lunatic down here again, okay?”

“I didn’t send him down there, John. I wouldn’t sick the crazy bastard on my worst enemy.”

“He said you told him I’d serve him because we’re big hoop buddies.”

“I never said any of that, John. I’d never pawn the puke off on you.”

Two-Beer yells at me, “GIMME A BEER, YOU GODDAMN BUNION!”

“Oh, I see you got the moron now, huh? He ran everybody out of here. I’m talking families with kids. Thanks a lot, pal. Maybe I’ll send one of my blacked-out drunks to your place, huh?”

“That’s all I got, John.”

“GIMME A FUCKIN’ BEER YOU SEMEN-SUCKIN’ QUEER!”

“He called one of my waitresses, a high school girl, a wart, a bunion, and a cunt, and hissed at her, and she ran out of here crying hysterically.”

“I’m sorry, John, I really am, but I’m telling yah, man, I NEVER sent the puke down there.”

“I gotta go, Dell. I got a mess to clean up. Thanks for sending that crazy person to my establishment and ruining our good name, I really appreciate it.”

After hanging up, Two-Beer is sort of draped over the bar, eyeing me up with persecuted malevolence, blood dripping from his nose and swollen, cut lips, face slack. “How about some coffee, Bob?” I say to him.

“How about some cawww-fee?” he mocks sneeringly. “Don’t try an’ schmooze me. Don’t try an’ outsmart me, cuz yah can’t, yah bunion.”

“Why you calling me, of all things, a bunion, Bob?”

“A boil, a wart, a …pus-tule.”

“Why you callin’ me those awful names, Bob? I’m on your side. I’m your friend.” I pour myself out a vodka, sniff it.

“Fuck you, I got no frenz…damn you, pus-face, I want my fuckin’ BEER!”

“You settle your dumb, sorry ass down,” Bessie says quietly.

Still draped over the bar, his head turns like a turtle’s toward Bessie. “Who the fuck are you?”

“You don’t wanna know, dipshit.”

“Who you callin’ a dipshit?” he says defensively.

Bessie calmly appraises him. “When’s the last time you got laid, stupid?”

Two-Beer’s trying to focus now. “None-a yer bizness, bitch.”

“You haven’t been laid in years. You gotta pay for it, like a beggar, though I doubt even the most desperate, drug-ridden hooker’d have you. You’re uncouth. A loser.” She takes out a new cigarette and I light it. She blows out smoke. “Poor stupid fisherman. Eat your poor lonely heart out.” She takes a slug of her beer. Turns back to me. “Give him a beer. I’ll take charge.” Two-Beer gazes at me, mouth agape, horribly bloodshot eyes terribly confused. I draw him a draft. He looks at it.

“Go ahead, drink your beer, stupid ape,” Bessie says. “Dig your own grave. You’re just about the stupidest, lamest male hide and pair of balls in creation, goddamn drooling, slobbering yokel, you’re like somebody’s abandoned goddamn St. Bernard.”

Two-Beer mutters, “My name’s Bob Bullnair and you can kiss my white ass.”

“Oh, that’s real intelligent. You’re a scholar as well as a boor.”

Two-Beer takes a swig of his beer—half of it trickles down his throat. Everybody’s looking on. I turn down the jukebox. Freshen up my shot. Lean back against the bar. These are golden moments, make the job worthwhile.

“Intelligent? I got a diploma from the University of Iowa, white-trash bitch. Whatta you got? Look like a homeless wench t’ me.”

Bessie looks him over. “So you’re gay, huh? A homo?”

“I ain’t a damn queer! Fuck you! I’m a man!”

Bessie snuffs out her cigarette. Finishes off half a bottle of beer, puts it down, studies Two-Beer, who gapes at her, licking his bloody, sliced, swollen lips. “I guess we’ll have to see about that,” she says. She tosses some bills on the bar, squeezes the Wolverine’s arm, stands and walks over to Two-Beer. She withdraws a hanky from her purse and dabs at his face. Two-Beer watches her, half standing now. She looks him up and down. Puts her hanky away. “Look,” she says “if you just shut your trap and follow me out the door like a good dog trying to please his master, you might just get lucky. You up to it, dipshit?”

Two-Beer straightens, teeters. He nods. He swigs his beer, most of it streaming down his neck. He flashes his Howdy Doody/Alfred E. Newman grin. Bessie snags him by his torn T-shirt and tows him lurching out the door while everybody cheers and claps. I lift my shot and bolt it. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his mate, Wilbur, a very needy chocolate lab he rescued from the animal shelter. He is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad, The Ball Player’s Son.

 

NIGHTLIFE IN HAPPY JACK’S: THE REAL COMPUTER VIRUS

IMG_6070by Dell Franklin

I was tending bar at Happy Jack’s in Morro Bay, a notorious fisherman’s dive habituated by a foul, abusive crowd of ex-cons, cranksters, drug-whores, hard-core alkies, and their coteries. I’d been there six years, fighting off the harpies and mayhem, when my hoop pal, Charlie Richardson, who was part owner of a restaurant/bar on a golf course in Los Osos, offered me a job tending bar nights.

Because I was wearing down from the venal clientele in Happy Jack’s, I’d been mulling over a change, feeling, at 56, that I needed a drastic change. I was told by Mr. Richardson that I was perfect for this new venue because its theme was a sports bar and I was a sports media maven as well as an athlete who understood players and games.

The clubhouse was spacious, well-lit, clean, unlike the sewer-rancid, gloomy, grotto-like Happy Jack’s. Scattered throughout the clubhouse were about ten TVs, controlled by two satellite systems that appeared as intricate and extensive as the instrument panel on a jet plane.

The manager, Greg (also a part owner,) was there to break me in. (I was still working at Happy Jack’s, just testing the waters here). Throughout the clubhouse were tables, to which very pretty, very wholesome young girls delivered meals from a nearby kitchen. The atmosphere among customers and employees was sunny, upbeat. Used to being verbally abused and even threatened, occasionally attacked and retaliating, I was more than pleasantly surprised by the friendliness and courtesy of golfers. No cursing or spouting unintelligible gibberish, just a crew of civilized middle-class suburbanites, and good tippers to boot.

But then there was this cash register. Greg felt I already knew how to work such a register, but when I explained I had never done so, he told me it was “a snap” and it wouldn’t take but a few minutes for him to teach me. A very patient person, he did not realize that since l969 I had only worked registers into which I simply pounded out the amount, hit a SALE button, and ka-ching, out popped the tray, and I made a quick transaction.

This new register looked nothing like the solid-state, anvil-heavy registers I was used to, was this skinny, fragile-looking contraption with a big glowing screen.

“You’ll really like this register,” Greg told me. “It’s real simple, once you get used to it. It does all your adding, so there’s no chance of mistakes.”

“I don’t make mistakes with numbers, Greg. I can add. I won a mental arithmetic contest at the Pomona Fair when I was ten years old. I pride myself in being a fast, power bartender.”

Greg raised a hand to stop me. “Look, this machine has a price list for all items, which automatically go into a computer. This makes it easier for you early on, when you don’t know prices. This register keeps track of past purchases, inventory, and makes it easier to do taxes and keep track of checks and credit card transactions….”

“Credit cards? I’ve never used a credit card machine. I’ve worked street bars. We don’t accept credit cards, only cash.”

“There’s a button on this register for checks, cash, credit cards, employee discounts, personal tabs, kitchen food, bar snacks….”

“How many goddamn buttons are there for all these different things?”

“Nine.”

“That’s a lot of buttons to keep up with, man. I’m used to one button.”

He placed a friendly hand on my shoulder. “Once you get used to it, you’ll love this register. I mean, if you won an arithmetic tournament, you can certainly master this register. In fact, I predict, that within a day or two, you’ll LOVE this register….”

“What about credit cards? I don’t know how to operate a credit card machine that’s computerized. Where I work, those pukes aren’t allowed credit cards…most of ‘em don’t have drivers licenses.”

“Dell, calm down.” He squeezed my shoulder to show me reassurance and confidence. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

My first shift, Greg sat at the bar playing a video game, keeping an eye on me. The maze of buttons had me flustered and lost, so that Greg kept having to leave his obsessive playing of a video golf game to push buttons and explain things to me. I felt like a stupid person in front of him and the customers each time this happened. While ringing up one measly drink, I dithered with the register as people held up their empty bottles and glasses. One man asked me to please turn on the Laker game on the TVs while another wanted a hockey game, so Greg had to discontinue his golf video game to regulate the satellite system, which entailed more complications to distract and confuse me. I did manage to mix all the drinks to stem the tide of demands and collected tickets and punched them in the register and commenced hitting buttons.

Suddenly tape streamed out of the register and kept coming, piling up on the floor in folds. Bells dinged. The screen filled with advice to halt the onslaught, but I panicked in following directions, and finally, as customers looked on, Greg peered up from his game and quickly came behind the bar to hit a button and halt the flow. My pride was wounded. Trained at Harrah’s Club and having worked busy clubs and entertained folks at the same time, I considered myself a professional.

Anyway, Greg collected the tape and piled it on the back bar and I started fresh. By this time golfers sitting along the bar were starting to exchange glances, and Greg, despite his constant support and encouragement, was glancing at me with mounting concern. Twice he had to come back and show me how to operate the credit card machine. I finally got it on the third try, but still, I dreaded my next bout with this machine, because, like the cash register and satellite system, it too had its little host of tricks to torment me.

At the end of my first shift my final ring was around forty-grand. Greg and I had a big laugh as he showed me how to close up and operate a complicated burglar alarm, which involved more buttons. The places I’d worked in the past had alarms where a simple turn of a key turned it on or off. The entire bevy of systems and buttons had me intimidated, demoralized, and unnerved.

My second shift, Greg remained patient while I continued to muddle through. Even as I was still struggling with the register, he decided to break me in with the satellite system, which proved, as I feared, more complicated and touchy than the register. There was a thick book with all code numbers of satellite channels, and these proved vexing, not to mention operating the system by itself. But, since I was busy, Greg got all the channels in order while I waited on trade. I was still frustrated by the register. I mean, you could not just ring up a vodka/tonic when in a hurry. You hit two buttons and then had a choice of alcohol, wine, or beer. I pushed alcohol and a barrage of liquors appeared on screen. I picked vodka. Up popped a dozen brands of vodka. I pushed Smirnoff. Hit another button for mixes. Up popped a list. I hit tonic. Then I hit other buttons to make a sale. Still, from time to time, for no known reason I could find, tape flowed and spilled on the floor, and the hateful screen dinged and pointed out advice.

I began to sweat, grow tense, lose heart, wilt. As I continued to fall behind, Greg repeatedly came back to stem the flow of tape. I found myself doubling up a fist with which I desired to violently savage this fucking demented machine. I wanted to pick it up and run out among the happy couples and families eating at tables and slam the thing onto the floor and stomp it into smithereens.

My second night, during which I amassed good tips, I rang up around 25-grand, 23-grand over. Still, I operated the credit card machine flawlessly and, at closing, turned on the alarm without a hitch, impressing Greg, who claimed the crowd was taking a liking to me.

I worked my four shifts at Happy Jack’s, slamming around, getting drunk, and returned to the clubhouse, still training. My third shift I was close to mastering the register; only one brief flow of tape which I adroitly halted. So, on the following night, Greg saw fit to step out for a little dinner, leaving me alone, expressing confidence in my ability to operate all systems. The moment he slipped out the door a shiver of terror rippled through my body. My mouth went dry. My palms turned clammy. And it turned out to be a very busy night—cheap taco special. I had to ring up food bills for waitresses, credit cards, tabs, employee discounts, etc., all needing separate buttons. I immediately fell behind and tried to do too many things at once and hit a wrong button and tape streamed out and piled up on the floor. Bells dinged. The screen advised me. There was no Greg to help me. Then somebody requested a golf channel and told me the number, but since there were two systems, I tried the wrong system and all 10 TVs blinked off, so there was nothing but static on all 10 TVs while patrons clamored like an unruly mob for drinks and games.

I became sort of petrified, unable to function, to even move, my brain vaporizing. I was lathered in sweat, gulping for air, hands shaking, teeth clacking. I began to go faint and held onto the bar to keep from collapsing on the floor where tape was quickly piling up. Finally, after swigging a shot from a bottle of vodka like a skid-row drunk, I stormed into the kitchen and corralled the sweet 19-year-old waitress, Melody, who recoiled in shocked, pop-eyed horror at the sight of me.

“My God,” she gasped, touching my inflamed, sweaty face, “are you sick?”

“Melody, I’m having a seizure! I’m hyperventilating!” I gnashed my teeth as sweat geysered from my forehead, burning and blinding my eyes. “Things are closing in on me, Melody!” I heard myself shouting in a dry, strangled voice., following her out to the bar and going behind it. “The register,” I cried pointing at it. “I’m no match for it. The sonofabitch is gonna kill me!”

Everybody in the clubhouse had ceased what they were doing to stare at me. “Poor thing….” Melody murmured, very concerned. “Do you want me to call the paramedics?”

“No. Take over, honey. I’ll drive myself to the hospital. The bar, it’s all yours, kid, the tips, everything. I gotta go. Tell Greg I quit.”

I dashed to the door. Glancing back, Melody, with a couple strokes of the finger, had all the games back on and the register working. I ran to my car and drove to Cayucos and went straight to the local tavern and downed several shots of good vodka chased with beer and soon recovered, back on an even keel, dry, calm, relieved.

Next night I was almost giddy facing my scabrous crew at Happy Jack’s. “You worthless faggot piece of shit,” Homer Carp, an obnoxious fisherman with teeth that looked like they belonged to a barracuda needing an orthodontist, snarled at me. “I hear you’re goin’ to work at a pussy golf course.”

I poured myself a vodka and swilled it. “Why don’t you get some new choppers, fatass.” I retorted.” §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his mate, Wilbur, a very needy chocolate lab he rescued from the animal shelter. He is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad, The Ball Player’s Son.

 

Through the window of a train

city-life.through-the-window-of-a-train.IMG_7206by Stacey Warde

Mom called me once to ask if I’d like to come to a party she wanted to throw for a bunch of old pals. She called it a “Geezer Gathering,” made up of high school friends from more than 50 years ago.

“No, not really, mom. That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun,” I told her.

“Well, would you consider coming down to help me set up?”

“OK, sure, mom. I’ll go to your geezer gathering.”

So, I jumped on the train for a six and one-half hour journey along the rickety Amtrak rail to the Santa Ana station, not far from mom’s old Victorian home in Tustin where I grew up and where she planned to have her party. I’m closing on the geezer range myself; mom was just 17 when I was born. I had plenty to ponder as I got on board the train.

The ride along the pristine California coastline that morning was hypnotic, the noise of the train and chatter of passengers muffled by a modern remake of “The Music of Thelonious Monk” jangling through the ear buds plugged into my laptop. It’s heavenly to turn off the world like that, listen to music, drink coffee and peer out the window of a fast moving train.

Even with this technology at my fingertips, however, a laptop at my disposal, I felt “old school.” No tablet, no smart phone, no iPad, just a clunky old laptop and cheap cell phone with pay-as-you-go service. No special features anywhere on my person—unless you’re looking for something non-digital.

The train is generally a good ride, if for no other reason than you don’t have to worry about driving through LA traffic or paying for gas, the view is nice, and it’s easy to tune out the world if you like, indulge in a book, bury yourself in a story, become an obsessive-compulsive thumber, texting nonsense to anyone who will pay attention, or simply take a nap over the hum of the rails.

That day, however, I ignored the passengers as much as possible. I didn’t feel like being social, even though I’m generally a social person and was feeling a touch lonely. Things hadn’t been going so well at home. I needed to get away and so this trip was a welcome diversion from my dysfunctional life.

A cute but annoying little girl swung her legs in the aisle, supporting herself on the seats in front of me, pushing up with her hands, lifting her weight and swinging her legs back and forth. Her grandma ate donut holes and peered at the rugged coastal terrain through the window, paying little attention to the girl. Close they were, but occupying two completely different worlds, I thought.

For some reason, the view from the train that morning evoked a nostalgic kind of hope, the sort of hope I knew and indulged more as a younger man, when the world seemed larger, filled with new and endless possibilities. Wispy clouds turned pink in the distance and the morning light grew bolder, another day of promise rising with the sun. Back in the day, I’d see opportunity everywhere I looked.

As I get older, I’m sadly learning, the possibilities seem to get narrower, and less inviting. I’ve noticed how much more difficult it is for older, boomer types like myself to get too hopeful, especially now with the economy as doubtful and uncertain as it ever was, but even more so as we turn gray and decrepit.

But that day, if it’s not hope that I felt, there was at least the suggestion of something like hope, a mystery, anyhow, that wasn’t shrouded and foreboding but perhaps even gleaming, putting a different—if not new—light on things. I couldn’t put my finger on it. But I knew things were changing. Perhaps it had something to do with breaking up my routine, the sense that I could not go on like I had been, feeling depressed and trapped. What it was, I did not know. Or maybe it was how the light played through the shimmer of gray marine layer hugging the coastal line as the train turned heavily toward the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific, under the glare of light and thick marine layer, summer grey and wet, popped in and out of view through the train window as we rolled further south, stopping momentarily at the Lompoc station, the misty morning holding down the coastline under a white blanket of timelessness. It’s hard to tell time in this coastal purgatory of summer mist. Is it still morning, or afternoon?

In either case, the landscape of scrub oak, green cypress, marshes, and sea birds dropping into view out of the mist kept bringing me back to the present moment—the only moment I know that has any real possibilities—as I looked out the train window.

I wondered at the long, long line of old fence posts tilted and worn, no rails or wire between them, holding nothing, just standing awkwardly erect, one after the other, for a distance that seemed absurd. It was a ghost fence that ran along the tracks between the train and the ocean below. What could that fence line have been built for? How long has it been standing like that with nothing to hold or keep out?

I had other absurdities on my mind as well. My girlfriend of seven years said we should end our love affair. We should try living as roommates, she said, until one of us decides to move. I wanted to move; so, I guess, did she. Neither of us could really afford it. We were both broke, held together by another sort of ghost fence.

“Get out now!” a friend told me. “You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”

I thought he was being alarmist, a little melodramatic, as friends can be when they’re watching out for you. I didn’t know that he’d gone through a similar breakup. I didn’t know that he also had kept separate rooms in the same house with his former girlfriend—for nearly six months.

“It was fine until she started fucking the guy she left me for in the room next to mine,” he told me. “You better get out when you can, dude.”

Not long before I hopped on the train, she asked if I’d thought about finding another place. It’s a good idea, she suggested. It’s nothing personal, she assured me, and I believed her, it’s what’s best.

As I looked out the train window, and pondered the flight of a distant heron, the message sank in: It’s over, it’s time for me to move on, and I’m a lot older now than I was seven years ago when we started, the possibilities for lifelong companionship narrowing ever more precipitously. Ah, the end of another conjoining of minds and bodies that could only wrap themselves into a tangled web of tears and unhappiness instead of blissful companionship.

“We’re not right for each other,” she said.

All those years, we kept pushing the wrong buttons, couldn’t seem to find the right ones, and each time it got so messy and hurtful and confusing.

“I don’t want you to feel sad,” she said.

I wouldn’t feel sad if I wasn’t a bit touched, hounded by a confusing mix of the cynic and the romantic, always hoping, always doubting. It’s a curse, really. I don’t know where it comes from but the tension between hope and doubt seems always to bring my relationships to ruin. I did feel sad.

As the train rolled on, I could feel myself moving on, drifting, searching, hoping, doubting.

“So, you gonna find yourself another cute hot young thang—huh?” an older friend asked after I’d told her that my gal, nearly 20 years younger, wanted to separate.

“I’m not looking, really. I’m happy to be a free agent, that’s all.”

My friend moved her body close to mine, and put her lips next to my ear: “You like young pussy, don’t you?” she whispered.

I gagged. Well, that’s not the only thing, I stammered.

Yes, I thought, my gal’s young, and beautiful, no doubt, but she’s smart and caring and, for some damn reason, we couldn’t get along very well. We agreed on that. We had some fine moments amid the turmoil and troubled times. I seldom felt the difference in our ages, only when the occasional stranger mistook her as my daughter. Sex wasn’t the only thing that kept us together.

Still, it felt absurd, in a way, if not entirely liberating, to be moving on, at least at that point in my life, where I wanted to be more settled, and it becomes clearer by the moment that my days are numbered, that soon I will also be a geezer. I tried not to think too hard that life is short, or at least not get morbidly obsessed with the idea, just acknowledge the fact, that I’m older now. I’m no spring chicken, as mom likes to remind me, and it’s quite possible that I will remain alone.

No one my age wants to be alone. I learned this a long time ago from an older friend, a monk, whose entire life was dedicated to celibacy, solitude and prayer.

“The thing I fear most,” he said of death, “is that no one will notice that I’m gone.”

Even in his solitude, he wished not to be alone or forgotten. Even in that final separation through death, he wished to be remembered.

I had high hopes, and so did my young girlfriend, that we could work things out, work through our troubles and stay together until the end—and be remembered. Along the way, perhaps, we both knew it wasn’t going to work, but we’re stubborn, and kept at it, and maybe, in the end, our stubbornness is what brought us to that painful juncture of breaking away.

Now, I’m left with this thought: “Why did I hold on for so long? Will I soon be living in a trailer park, sad, lonely, broken up and finished like so many other geezers who grow old and die in their aluminum fire traps without so much as a hint of their loss?”

Or what about this thought: “Will the white blanket of timelessness that has obscured my view of things and seemed to rule my mind then be swept away, as the coastal breezes outside the train window now lift the misty veil, to uncover lighter, more hopeful possibilities? Are any possibilities left?”

The damned romantic and cynic in me were at it again, stirring up the ridiculous inner tension between hope and doubt, as the train rolled on. Where do these feelings come from?

At the geezer gathering, I’d be co-host with mom to a party of older folks, but not much older, people in their 70s who are closer to the precipice than I am, whose view of any sort of timelessness or aloneness is probably much sharper and more poignant than my own. Perhaps that precipitous view is where the romantic and cynic in me may actually, one day, finally find common, quiet ground.

Like my monk friend, in death I fear not being remembered; in life, I fear being alone.

I looked through the train window into the distant fields where farm workers hunched low from the waist to pick strawberries. I ate a piece of strawberry with my yogurt that morning; it was surprisingly sweet and delicious. The breeze outside the train finally broke up the timeless white sheet of marine layer into patchy clouds and blue haze, a perfect August day along the Pacific Ocean. The beaches of Southern California were assuredly crowded by then as the train barreled down into L.A. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice.

Night life in Happy Jack’s: Mitzi comes to the rescue

IMG_6070

Editor’s note: This episode of Dell Franklin’s “Night life in Happy Jack’s” is the first chapter of a book he’s written, titled “Bartender.”

by Dell Franklin

Sunday evening in Happy Jack’s Saloon in Morro Bay and they’ve been at it all day in the murky crumbling grotto, sharks and barracuda and minnows swarming in the cavernous dank dark tank. Some in this crowd have been up for days without sleep or nourishment and are engrossed in babbling conversations or playing pool in the area off the back door or jerking spasmodically at video games up front where horrific sounds of mayhem mingle with the reverberating beat and wailings from the jukebox at nonstop full volume—as requested by the riffraff.

I’m nipping. By 9 p.m.,  I’ve had my burrito from down the street and topshelf vodka makes everything copacetic. Earlier I’d had to deal with little Johnny at the urgency of even some of the most gnarly fisherman, because Johnny, no longer employable as a deckhand, was walking around bare-footed like a somnambulist, dreamy smile on his face, making small-talk with terrified barflies while a rod with a Dirty Harry barrel protruded loosely from his belt line, as if the baggy over-sized Hawaiian shirt could hide it!

Anybody who looks into Johnny’s eyes recognizes cornered animal darkness. “Please,  get that crazy person outta here!” begged Mitzi, the former stripper gone a little chunky around the edges but still with the best walk in town. “He’s scarin’ the shit outta me, and I don’t scare easy.”

“Who do you think I am? Clint Eastwood? Take him to bed, Mitz.”

“You’re NOT funny, Dell! Look, everybody’s freaked!”

I eventually motioned Johnny over like an old pal. He came to the end of the bar where I leaned on the board that lifts so one can go in and out without ducking under. I offered my hand. His soft shake and stare unnerved me. We’d hardly talked before.

Johnny, how yah doin’, man? Everything cool with you?”

“Right on, I’m way cool…,” his voice far, far away.

“Look, I don’t want anybody fuckin’ with you, Johnny. I’m here to watch over you, bro’. I don’t want any asshole tryna take your piece away from you, man. That’s YOUR rod, man.”

“Thanks, man. I appreciate that.”

“So what I’d like to do, to be on the safe side, is I’d like to hide your rod in the safe in the office, you know, lock it up, and then you can have your drink and enjoy yourself without worrying about some asshole hasslin’ you over it, or callin’ the heat, bro’.”

Like a child, he asked, “You think it’s a good idea, bro’?”

“I do, Johnny.”

“Okay, bro’. You’re the boss. It is what it is.”

My arm around Johnny, I walked him into the office. He handed me his rod, which I carefully placed in the safe. “See, Johnny, now your piece is safe, bro’.”

“Thanks, man.”

Back in the bar, Johnny resumed his sleep-walking, slow-talking, directionless prowl and everything was fine. Somebody bought him a drink. I got very busy. Around 10 p.m., he was at the end of the bar.

“Bro’, I need my piece. I’m leavin’.”

“You got it, bro’.”

Happy Jack’s is the oldest bar in the county, has a reputation from Alaska to San Diego for its wild brawls, which over the years have involved knifings, bludgeon-bashing and shootings. And here I am, a fisherman’s bartender who hates fishing and fish, suffers chronic seasickness, fears water, and is allergic to drudge work, which they all know, but as long as I pour good drinks when they want them and manage to keep the peace when it counts, I am accepted grudgingly though, at this point, deservedly disrespected.

 ***

So this late crowd forges on, propelled by the powder. The fishermen have cash, and the sea hags yap continuously. Yet cropping up is a new paranoia: A couple from Fresno that nobody likes and seem inauthentic bikers. It’s the female spreading the panic, a glaring moll with an astounding pair of jugs and ass in tight jeans. Again, it’s Mitzi who’s at the bar.

“What’s with THAT dish?” she asks.

“She came up to me, and commented how everybody in here is either drunk out of their minds, zonked on downers, or buzzed to the max on coke or crank. When I shrugged, she asked ME what I was gonna do about it. I told her this was Happy Jack’s in Morro Bay, which meant we were unusual, and I was not the DEA, and she informed me she was a police officer from Fresno.”

“No shit?”

“I asked if she was on duty. She warned me not to mess with her, even if she was off duty, because she’s still the law. I told her there were other bars in town. She just gave me a filthy look and walked off with her Miller Lite. Didn’t even leave a tip, but the husband in leather vest and chaps did.”

Mitzi peers at the lady cop as she chews on her man in the poolroom. “She’s too gorgeous to be a cop; unless she’s undercover as a hooker or porno queen. She’s really hard, Dell.”

“Maybe you can soften here up, ey, Mitz?” I leer.

Five minutes later, Mitzi engages her in conversation. Mitzi is in black heels, black jeans, black V-necked T-shirt, her jet-black hair curved like crow’s wings at her chin, highlighting her cheekbones.

The cop suddenly lashes out at her man and he throws up his hands and storms out of the poolroom and out of the bar and across the street to the Circle Inn, our competition and my former employer. The cop grits her teeth, steaming. Meanwhile, Mitzi catches my eye as she sort of leads the woman toward the area where I’d previously visited with Johnny and motions me over. When I arrive, the cop glowers at me. I stand before the two women drumming my fingers on the bar as the joint fills up as usual on Sunday nights with off-duty wait-people and bartenders from restaurants down on the embarcadero, three blocks away.

Mitzi whispers in the cop’s ear and she opens her purse and reluctantly tosses a twenty on the bar and Mitzi takes my hand and whispers in my ear, “Two Miller Lites and two shots of Goldschlager.”

I do as told while regulars along the 22 wobbly stools wave bills and hold up glasses to get my attention. I make change and, before the cop can snatch her money, Mitzi flips me two dollars and I cram it in my crowded snifter and move down the bar to wait on two young sweeties from the Sea Horse Bar & Grill, Tiffany and Kelly. Just old enough to drink, they are now cocktailing and adorable and make big-time tips and come here on Sunday nights to slum and be outraged as they become indoctrinated into the serious bar society in Morro Bay. I prepare their foofoo drinks and they smile and tip appropriately and I tread the boards and when I look down to the end of the bar Mitzi smiles impishly and waggles her index finger at me and points to the bottles and shot glasses and I do it again and, before the cop can snatch change from a new twenty, Mitzi flips me three dollars.

During a lull, I slip out from behind the bar to collect glasses and bottles piling up in the poolroom and on tables and ledges in the lounge area off the dance floor and band stage. I place them all on the bar for future disposal or washing and when I arrive at the end of the bar Mitzi and the cop are facing each other and Mitzi has her hand on her shoulder like a comforting sister and the shrew seems to be softening ever so slowly. When Mitzi points to the bottles and glasses I quickly fill the order and, this time the cop doesn’t try to snatch her money, and Mitzi flips me a sawbuck and puts a sympathetic hug on her before they turn back to the bar.

One of the diminutive Mexican immigrants in the poolroom catches my eye and nods at me and heads to the john, which is down the hall away from the poolroom and past the office. I wait a minute and join him pissing in twin commodes as he shoves two spoonfuls of coke under my nose. I snort hard, feeling the dust shoot up my nostril and down my throat. When I return to the bar, Mitzi has her hand on the cop’s ass and her middle finger riding up under her snatch.

Back behind the bar I down a double shot to even out the immediate rush and then wait on and schmooze with a couple off-duty harbor patrol guys and a fisherman named Homer Carp, and the next time I look up Mitzi and the cop are gone. Tiffany motions me over with a cutesy-cutesy smile she charms the old droolers in the Sea Horse with. “Can you please please watch our drinks, Mr. Super bartender, sir? We’re going to the little girls room.”

“Sure, babies.”

About two minutes later Tiffany and Kelly scurry up to the bar looking like they saw a ghost. Tiffany, hands on hips, stern as a schoolmarm, exclaims, “Do you know what’s going on in the lady’s room, sir?”

“No I don’t.”

“There’s two naked women in there, and that Mitzi, she’s on her knees eating the other woman’s pussy!”

I shrug. “Well, shit happens in Happy Jack’s.”

“Shit HAPPENS? That all you have to say? You CONDONE it?”

“Not necessarily, no, but nor do I disapprove,” I explain, pouring myself one more, lifting it in a mindless salute, and to what I do not know, and certainly not lesbian shenanigans in the head. With glee, I down it.

She glances at Carp and the harbor patrol boys, then back at me. “You don’t DIS-approve? What would you do if two men were in the men’s room and one was giving the other a blow job?”

“I’d throw their asses out!” I snarl. “Happy Jack’s is not a gay bar!”

“Oh, but it’s okay with women, right?” Very sassy.

“Look,” I say, trying to be reasonable. “Sex between two men is repulsive, and it spreads AIDS. But two women? I find that sensual and exotic and…titillating. It really turns me on.”

They slam down their drinks and storm out. They’ll be back another time.

Meanwhile, half an hour later, Mitzi and the cop, who looks like she’s been tranquilized with an ecstasy pill, are headed toward the front swinging doors, possibly to find a motel room, if I know Mitzi. The husband comes in later, asking around for his woman, but nobody gives him a straight answer. The last words to me from Mitzi, before they left, with a wink, were: “I own this bitch. I’m gonna make a real woman outta her.” §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his mate, Wilbur, a very needy chocolate lab he rescued from the animal shelter. He is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad, The Ball Player’s Son.

Night Life in Happy Jack’s: Moolyaks

IMG_6070by Dell Franklin

Jessi, my fellow bartender, pulls me aside on a busy Friday night around 10, the band on a break. She points at the two men sitting on my end of the bar, up front. “Dell,” she says, stressing, “those guys gimme the creeps. They scare me.”

For a woman as blustery, foul-mouthed and often intimidating and confrontational as Jessie, she is easily spooked. Blond Amazon ex-nude stripper and biker moll from down south, her sensing of danger leads to immediate panic; one minute cloyingly needy, the next she has physically attacked men and women in this bar. I see her point with these two guys—the way they stare at women—but so far I have managed to build a sort of rapport with them, if that is possible.

“They’re from Crescent City, Jess,” I explain. “They’re commercial fishermen and loggers. They’re down here for the albacore run.”

“But all the boys are out fishin’,” she says. “Even my Bruce, with his bad back, he’s fishin’.” She stares at the men. She’s got a voice like a meat-grinder from booze, smokes and drugs. “Dell, they look like those apes they showed us in high school.”

“You mean, Neanderthals.”

“Yeh! Like…gorillas. They got weird, slitty eyes. They don’t look like other people. They don’t even look like Rafe Monk. I wish Rafe was here. Those guys give me the willies.”

Fact is, these two are giving a few folks up front a case of the heebie-jeebies. There are crude wooden booths adjacent the tables ringing the dance floor, and sitting in one closest to the door, directly behind the Neanderthals, are two slumming yuppie couples I’d guess are in their thirties. They sip foofoo drinks and left me two quarters instead of a dollar or two as tip, which immediately places them on my shit list.

The man who ordered the drinks has perm-frizzed hair and eyeglasses and keeps gazing over at me as if to get my attention as one of the thugs turns in their direction and says something to the table. Both men are around thirty-five, probably stand 5 feet 9 inches, and their squat, thick trunks hold block heads on no-neck shoulders. In Levi’s and tank-tops, heavily tattooed, their eyes possess a challenging surliness

The women in the booth are attractively presented and well endowed, and when I ask Jessi if she thinks their boobs are real, she says with decisive defiance, “They’re phony. Mine are real, baby. I’m thirty-six and my titties still stand tall and proud.” She grins at me. She wears a red skin-tight mini-skirt and halter top exposing cleavage. “Those high-end bitches think their shit don’t stink. They oughta be down on the embarcadero in the fancy joints. Let’s do a shot, honey.”

We do shots of Crown Royal, her preference. The thugs leer at me. I mosey over to them after mixing some drinks. One of them has short blond hair and blunt, snubbed features, while the other has long greasy black hair and could be part Indian. The blond says, “That’s yer wife, huh? You own this joint?”

“Nah, don’t own anything, pal.”

“She yer woman?”

“Nah. Just work together.”

“That’s some woman. Reminds me of the barmaid at the Bear Flag in Moss Landing.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Them two fags in the booth behind us, they mouth off t’ me one more time I’m gonna kick ass. Me and Shep, we don’t take no shit from no man.”

Shep adds, “Them bitches, they give us the come-on, man.”

I offer my hand to Jed, the blond, and then shake with Shep. Jessi, mixing highballs, watches. “Welcome to Morro Bay,” I say, my hand still feeling their crushing grips, which I matched. “Try and ignore those folks.”

I get busy. The frizzy-haired yuppie comes up for another round. Makes sure to wedge in at the middle of the bar, places his order. I fill it. He pays, leaving fifty cents. Then he leans forward, peers down the bar at my new friends, who are eyeing us, and says, “Those two sub-humans, you shouldn’t be serving them; they’re really too drunk. Isn’t there a policy on cutting people off these days?”

I fold my arms. “I have my own policy. This is Happy Jack’s.”

“The blond bozo, he flicked his tongue at my lady and grabbed his crotch. They’re bad news. You’re the bartender here. If this were my bar, I’d have those two out of here before they start big trouble. Don’t you have a bouncer?”

“No. Sometimes the fishermen help, but they’re all out to sea.”

“Well, I’m an attorney in San Luis Obispo, and my advice right now is to get the cops in here and get those two out of here for lewd behavior.” He hands me a business card from his wallet. “This is your responsibility. I’m holding you to that. Those two are beyond offensive. They’re downright…ghoulish.” He issues me a look of disappointment and takes his drinks back to his table.

The thugs, who’ve watched our conversation, motion me over. “What’d that faggot tell yah?” Jed asks.

I fold my arms. “He thinks you’re making a pass at his wife.”

Shep almost comes off his stool. “She done made a pass at US!”

“She give us the goo-goo eye,” Jed adds.

“She wants it,” Shep maintains. “Them girly boys ain’t givin’ her no play. They starvin’ for real men.”

Jed grins at me. “Where we come from, them punks be fucked over already.”

I place my palms wide apart on the bar and lean forward. “Look, best thing to do, if those babes really got the hots for you, is wait for them to make THEIR move. Right now you can’t be horning in on ‘em if they’re sitting with those stiffs.”

“We gotcha.” Jed says. “We don’t aim to make no trouble for YOU. We just wanna get laid, and if we can’t do that, we wanna get in a good fight.”

Shep grins. He’s missing two teeth on the side and his nose is dented. “We rather fuck than fight.”

They order another round. I mix it, bring it over. The band starts up. Now the lawyer comes to the middle of the bar. “You’ve lost control of your bar, mister. Those two apes are taking over, and you’re allowing it. They are blatantly sticking their tongues out and grabbing their crotches and making obscene comments to our girl friends. If YOU can’t get rid if them, I’LL call the cops.”

“You’ll sit your ass back down and do nothing of the sort,” I tell him. “You don’t tell me how to run my bar, motherfucker.”

“Oh that’s cool, calling me a ‘motherfucker.’ Lots of class. Look, anything happens to us with those bozos, we’ll sue this bar and you, especially.” He issues me a withering you’d better-believe-I-can fuck-up-your-life look, and adds. “You’re afraid to stand up to those apes and protect your clientele.” He walks back to the booth with his drinks.

Jessi is beside me. My hands are shaking. My stomach flip-flops and roils with heat. “Dell, I feel big trouble comin’, honey. Let’s do a shot.”

We do shots. Jed is now at the booth asking the girl with the lawyer to dance, I would guess. I quickly move past Jessi and out from behind the bar and push through the crowd to the booth, where Shep stands beside Jed as they have words with the lawyer and his friend while their women shrink in mortal fear. I get between them. Frizzy hair stands and starts in on me about taking charge.

“Sit the fuck down!” I roar at him.

He sits down.

“This is my bar! I’m bartender! You keep to your profession and shut your hole, mister, this is MY turf!” I turn to Jed and Shep. “Let’s go outside a minute, guys, we need to talk.”

“We ain’t got no beef with you,” Jed says.

“I know you don’t, Jed.”

The lawyer rises. “You’re kissin’ their asses,” he whines.

“Sit down, motherfucker! Now!”

He sits down.

I gently place my hands on the wrecking-ball shoulders of the two moolyaks and lead them toward the front door while the band roars on and the crowd of wild dancers parts. It is warm and balmy outside.

I stand before Jed and Shep on the sidewalk. “Look, guys, you gotta help me here. Those geeks are lawyers and they’re tryna get me in a position to sue me and my boss, who’s a Marine veteran of the Second World War.”

“We win’t got no beef with you, man,” Jed says. “Do we, Shep?”

“Fuck no, we ain’t got no beef with you.”

“But we got a beef with them punks,” says Jed.

“They’re not worth having a beef with,” I tell Jed.

“We’re gonna kick their asses and take their fuckin’ bitches, cuz they been fuckin’ with us.”

“We ain’t backin’ down from no man,” Shep adds.

“Look, as a favor, guys, I don’t want you fighting in my bar.”

They look at each other. They’re pretty wobbly. Jed grins at me. “But we drove alla way down here cuz we wanna get in a fight.”

“We come a long way to get in a fight in Happy Jack’s,” Shep explains.

“We been in fights in every fisherman’s bar on the coast, clear from Alaska, but we ain’t been in a fight in Happy Jack’s.”

“Look, if you get in a fight in my bar, you’ll end up in jail. I don’t wanna see you guys in jail. I consider you guests of mine to look out for.”

“We ‘preciate that,” Jed says. “But we don’t mind goin’ t’ jail. We been thrown in jail in every port on the coast.”

“Nobody fucks with us in jail,” Shep grins.

“Look,” I say, “there’s nobody in the bar worth fighting. Those lawyers, you can’t fight them—they’re sissies. You won’t get no satisfaction beating up sissies, will yah?”

“Well,” Jed says. “We got to fight somebody in there if them sissy boys won’t fight us.”

“But that’s all we got in the bar tonight. You guys came down at the very worst time to get in a fight. All the tough guys, they’re on the albacore run, won’t be back for a day or two.”

Jed and Shep look at each other. “Shit,” Jed says.

“Fuck,” Shep says.

“Look,” I say. “You guys, you look like you been at it for a long time. How long you been drinking?”

“We been drinkin’ for two days, since we left Moss Landing.” Jed says proudly.

“When’s the last time you ate?”

“Well, we didn’t have no breakfast, did we, Shep?”

“Nah, don’t think so. Just chips and stuff.”

“Well, dammit, guys, since there’s nobody worth a shit to fight in the goddamn bar, and you ain’t eaten all day, why don’t you go on down the street to the Fisherman’s Roost. Serve breakfast day and night. And you get a real steak and eggs, not a runty little thing. All the fisherman in town eat breakfast there before they go out in the morning. You go on down there and tell ‘em Jessi and Dell from Happy Jack’s sent you. They’ll give you the royal treatment.”

Jed glances at Shep. “Well, I’m starvin’, Shep.”

“Yeh, me, too. Best to eat, I guess.” He’s dispirited.

“You guys get a good meal in yah, come on back and see me. Look, around the corner from the diner’s the Anchor Motel; it’s real cheap and clean, get a good night’s sleep. You guys’ve put in a long day.”

They discuss the situation. I fold my arms. They nod. “Guess we’ll eat,” Jed says. “Thanks for the tip, bro’. We ain’t got no beef with you. You been real fair, and we ‘preciate it.”

“Far as I’m concerned, you’re my guest’s in Happy Jack’s, and I aim to look out for you, just like you’d do for me if I was in Crescent City and drank in your bar.”

“Any time you come to Crescent City, we got yer back, bro’.”

We shake hands all around and I watch them wobble down the sidewalk. I take a big breath, exhale. Re-entering the steaming cauldron, as I pass the first booth, frizzy hair stands.

“I don’t appreciate being insulted by you and cursed by you in front of our ladies,” he states, issuing me an official look of reprimand and possible threat.

“I just kept you and your friend from getting beaten to death.”

“That’s your job. You did a lousy job. I’m contacting the owner of this establishment and inform him of what an incompetent jerk you are, and I’m going to make it a point to get your job.”

I pound the table with my fist, shaking their drinks. The girls shrink back as the lawyer jumps. “You want my job, you piss-ant, take it! Get behind the bar! You wanna talk to my boss? He’s a combat vet from the Great War and I’m a vet and we stick together like fucking brothers. Now you get the fuck out of here! You and your trashy bitches are eighty-sixed.” I toss a bill on the table and grab their drinks and walk over and place them on the bar. Jessi grins at me as I shake a fist at the lawyer, who starts to protest. “Get the fuck out! You’re banned for life on the grounds you’re a weasel and a puke, now move OUT!” I’m waving my arms wildly, frothing at the mouth, and they rise, the women grabbing purses, and scurry out the front door.

I receive a standing ovation from the crowd and a toot from the band. Behind the bar, Jessi has two shots of Crown Royal waiting for us. Before we down them, still grinning, she high-fives me.§

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his mate, Wilbur, a very needy chocolate lab he rescued from the animal shelter. He is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad, The Ball Player’s Son.

Fourth of July in Cayucos

Everyone loves a parade, especially the one in Cayucos, Calif.

Cayucos loves a parade, especially the one that celebrates our liberties on the Fourth of July.

The following essay is an account of a typical Fourth of July celebration that happened not many years ago and is repeated annually in our small town by the sea.

by Stacey Warde

I’m raw and unbalanced, hung over from a bout with beer and whisky. I skipped going to work today. It’s gray, overcast and generally gloomy.

Besides, it’s a Saturday, and a Fourth of July weekend. I hate working weekends, especially holidays, but I’m getting used to it. In this economy, few can afford to turn down work.

I awakened early, before 7 a.m, and rode my bicycle to the park to practice aikido, a Japanese martial art designed to defuse conflict, with a friend. We do it regularly, but it’s been a long time since we’ve practiced. It helps me keep an even temper.

Even with a hangover it felt good to tussle and talk. We usually talk politics and the economy. He hasn’t worked in nearly four months; I’m barely employed, working as a farmhand and laborer.

“There’s no work around here,” he says. “I may have to drive down to San Diego to pick up some work.”

He’s a union carpenter and, until recently, supported a family of six. His four children are grown and graduated from high school. Finances aren’t as critical now as they used to be. Still, like everyone else, he needs to pay the bills.

“If I was smart, I’d find something to do with the military,” he says, “that’s where all of the money is.”

Everyone but the banks and military is bankrupt, I say. “What’s wrong with this country?” We launch into another frustrated, cynical litany of ills that plague our nation: Militarism, greed, corruption in government and business, a weak economy and an empire in decline.

“This can’t go on forever,” he says, “we’re more than a trillion dollars in debt.” If anything, the message of the last few years of economic failure has been: The party’s over. The excesses of our revered material lifestyle have drained our accounts and left us empty handed.

Most Americans, hopeful as ever, seem to think the party has merely lapsed into a sustained lull. Things will get better, they say. The markets will regain their vigor, jobs will become available, and spending will save the republic.

Glossy red, white, and blue plastic streamers wave in the wind from houses along Ocean Avenue, which runs through the middle of Cayucos, the small California coastal town where I live, where every Fourth of July floats and troops of scouts, drill teams, and grass-skirted dancers celebrating the Declaration of Independence will march in a show of America’s love for “freedom.”

Cayucos loves a parade, and its freedom. Our small town plays host to more than 20,000 visitors during the Fourth. They come to celebrate their freedoms by eating hotdogs, playing in the sand, and shopping at the “Peddler’s Fair,” known by locals as “Crap on the Creek,” mostly throw-away junk ware.

The word “freedom” gets tossed around pretty easily these days, as if we all agree on what it means: Freedom of the press, speech and religion; the protection of personal effects from government search and seizure, the right to trial by a jury of peers, the right to bear arms.

More often, however, “freedom” becomes an amalgam of unspecified ideas and feelings, which patriots will defend to the death, about what it means to be an American, which usually includes waving the flag, getting goose bumps during the singing of the national anthem, and chanting “U-S-A!” at soccer games.

Upon closer review, this muddle of feelings and ideas about freedom just as likely arises from the belief that Americans are unique in exercising their right to get rich by whatever means possible, to spend money freely without end or hindrance, even when there isn’t any to spend.

“Freedom isn’t free,” we’re told in countless bumper stickers meant to remind us of the sacrifices that have been made on our behalf. Soldiers, mostly young men and women, have given their lives to ensure we continue to enjoy the clear advantages of being an American, including the right to spend our diminished earnings at any big box store outlet of our choosing.

Fourth of July, as often as not, has come to be celebrated not so much for the Declaration of Independence from tyranny as for America’s great military empire and raw technological power, which still has not squelched terrorism, but nonetheless allows us to conduct full-scale war without the requisite sacrifices at home.

We can still shop at Wal-Mart and Costco and spend freely without guilt while others shed blood in foreign lands to stop the amorphous terrorist cells sprouting everywhere like a cancer across the globe.

“The military isn’t protecting me,” my friend says as we grapple. “My tax dollars are supporting the slaughter of civilians. That’s not independence.” Independence is being able to protect yourself, he suggests. “I don’t need the military to do that.”

In my weakened mental state, I don’t argue the point. He’s right, the War on Terror, as most wars, was a sham from the start. It’s a racket for making people rich. We still haven’t stopped terrorism and maybe never will, our invasion of Afghanistan has become America’s longest-ever war, and the Taliban and its cohorts in other parts of the world are as strong as ever.

“Why are we spending all our money over there?” he asks. “We need it here.” We could better use our resources to buttress education, healthcare, improve failing infrastructures but so much of it, he says, gets lost in the shuffle to ship arms and troops to places known and unknown.

CITY-LIFE.4TH-OF-JULY.IMG_3406Already, chairs have been placed in a mass claim for seating along the parade route. Police tape has been pulled through lines of chairs, marking seating sections between groups of the nearly 20,000 spectators who will gather for the parade.

They come from all points: San Francisco, Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles. It’s the busiest day of the year for our little town of less than 4,000.

The parade features the usual Independence Day amusements: Spectators waving American flags, young gymnasts cartwheeling, local bands rocking out on flatbed trucks, grannies dressed in patriotic colors, waving to the crowd from old jalopies.

Once, an outfit of youngsters from Fresno, dressed in paramilitary uniforms, marched crisply in rigid formation, looking distressingly similar to the goose-stepping Brownshirts who helped the Nazis in their rise to power. They were impressive in their military crispness, their quick response to marching commands.

“I’m not that patriotic,” my friend says. “It’s all a gimmick.” If they can get you to believe their story, such as “we need this war,” he adds, they can get you to do anything they want, like put on a uniform and fight their wars, making the “ultimate” sacrifice, in the name of freedom and democracy. Mostly, such rhetoric is pure bullshit, he says.

Still, we love to celebrate our freedoms, even if they have diminished to little more than buying hotdogs and posting bumper stickers with patriotic slogans.

One year, one of the grass-skirted matrons from a beach-chair drill team bolted from the formation as it approached the entry point of the parade. “Hey!” she shouted and waved, beckoning me to wait for her. She ran to me in a heat and threw her arms around my neck, firmly pressed her middle-aged buxomness against my body, and planted her lips on mine.

The rank smell of alcohol at 10 in the morning assaulted my senses. Before I could pull away, I felt her tongue probing my mouth. “Yuck!” I turned my head away and slipped out of her arms. She ran back to her group as if nothing had happened, happy and drunk as ever.

Cayucos is a friendly place. “Did you see that?” I asked my then-girlfriend.

“What?”

“She just rammed her tongue down my throat.”

“Yeah, right.”

You never know what’s going to happen at the Cayucos Fourth of July parade, but one thing’s sure: Just about everyone here’s proud to be an American, with or without their hangovers, and more so because we work hard and take pride in putting on a good show for our love of freedom.§

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice.com.

Night Life in Happy Jack’s: Carp

IMG_6070by Dell Franklin

For Donny Moore, In Memorium. He was a friend, an institution in Morro Bay, who got killed in an auto wreck. 

Homer Carp, a tugboat captain who holds the Morro Bay record for drunk-in-public convictions at 29, ignores my greeting as I slip behind the bar and begin my shift. The happy hour crew has moved to the middle of the bar because Homer sits at the elbow with his coterie—a carpenter, a fisherman, and a Cal Trans employee, Biff Thomas. Once every week or so they play poker and drink beer and eat pizza at one of their residences.

After I get my bank in the register I begin emptying ash trays, mopping the surface, checking fruit, but out of the corner of my eye I spot Carp eyeing me up because his longneck is empty and he’s been drinking since the bar opened at 9 and is ready to transition to CC/coke. He’s sneering at me with these remarkable teeth that buck out and prong in various directions, like every tooth has a mind of its own. His faded black T-shirt is from the Bear Flag Saloon in Moss Landing and his faded Levi’s expose a bulge of fish-scale white belly and the crack of his enormous ass. His ballcap is from a dive in Monterey and pulled low over two protuberant brown suspicious eyes. His head and neck could belong to a buffalo and Homer is basically composed of solid, powerful, whale-like blubber, about 300 pounds of it.

“Hey faggot, you working tonight?” he calls in a voice that could cut through a rock fest.

I ignore him.

“I asked if you’re working tonight, you goddamn swisher.”

I glance over. His ash tray is heaped beside a mash of bills, a pack of Camel nonfilters and a chain with many keys. When he sees me coming he moves his bills back out of my reach. I empty Biffs’ heaping ash tray. All the poker players are chain-smokers.

“How’s it goin’, Biff?” I ask, very friendly.

“Okay, Dell. Hey, I liked your latest article in the New Times. Awesome.”

“I would like a goddamn drink, Dell-Smell.” Carp says nastily. “Can I get a drink in this vermin-infested stink-hole?”

I take my time. He wants his drink in a chimney glass. Everybody watches me go to work. I pack his glass with shaved ice and shoot a quick three-second pour and splash in Coke with the gun, shove in a straw, bounce the drink in front of Homer so that some of it spills in his slopped-up area. I snatch three singles he extends tentatively and ring them up as he stares at his drink with persecuted dissatisfaction. I get busy, treading the boards, but I can hear Homer addressing his cronies and anybody within earshot over the usual jukebox and din of converging voices.

“I been coming in this shit-hole since I was sixteen and in all that time Dell-Smell is by FAR the worst fucking bartender I’ve seen. His service sucks, his attitude stinks, he’s got a putrid personality, he’s lazy and stupid and a know-it-all, considers himself some kind of authority because he gets his shitty articles in a shitty little paper, but what he is is a nothing, a nobody, a wind-bag, and on top of that he’s a flaming faggot!”

I continue to ignore him.

“I’ve drank in every dive from the Aleutians to Mexico, and never have I been served a worse drink by a bigger piece of shit.”

All 22 stools are occupied, the poolroom is packed, and I keep on hopping. Homer quickly drains his drink and pushes his chimney to the edge of the bar with three singles.

“You think that little boy could handle a real job, a man’s job?” He’s standing now—to emphasize his rising discontent. “That ass-packer’s never had a real job in his life, that’s why he’s tending bar in the lowest lowlife dive on the coast.”

I pour myself a shot, sniff it, sip it, put it down and stroll to the front end of the bar to talk to Beer Can Bessie, who’s enjoying Homer’s vituperation.

“I WANT A DRINK! YOU RODENT! VERMIN! PISS-ANT!”

I take my time moving down the bar, dabbing at certain areas with my towel, empty an ash tray with a single butt before arriving in front of Homer, who growls, “I want a round for my friends and another CC/Coke and I want some goddamn booze in it, Smell!”

I place his chimney on the matt, leave residue in it. I empty the residue in the glasses of his friends, fill them about ¾ full with cubes, pour them generous shots, gun in mix, then cram Carp’s chimney to the rim with shaved ice and quick pour him a weaker shot before gunning in Coke. Then I mop the area of his friends and empty their ash trays before placing their drinks carefully before them on round coasters. Then I bounce Homer’s glass in front of him and sip my shooter with pinky finger extended while he scowls at his drink. The scowl deepens when I return his change, which he scoops quickly.

“You miserable dog-dick worm,” he growls. “You didn’t have this crappy job, you’d be homeless, begging for dimes.”

There’s another rush and I crank on. People are tipping me well. Homer watches me gaze at him with a smug grin as I stuff another bill in my toke jar.

“Can you imagine that weakling fishing for king crab in the Aleutians? He wouldn’t last ten seconds before he’d be puking his guts out and crying for his mommy.”  He swills his entire drink and slams the glass on the bar and points to it. “How about a real drink, you pile of slimy dogshit?”

I snatch the chimney and cram it with shaved ice, tamp down the ice with the scoop like a snow cone, then cram in more ice on top and dribble in CC and shoot in Coke and snag three singles and slam the drink in front of him as his retinue looks on.

“You think you’re pretty goddamn cute, short-pouring me and grabbing my money like a greedy little skunk, don’t yah, faggot?” I empty my toke jar, count singles. “Hey SMELL, I saw your latest article in that cheesy, gutless rag. Couldn’t read it. Pure garbage. You’re no writer. You’re no good at anything. No wonder you’re working in this turd-hole. You’re a turd.” I change singles into a twenty, stuff it in my jar. Homer swills his drink. “You don’t make me a decent drink, I’m coming back there and make my own, puke-breath.”

“You come back here and I’ll crush your thick skull with the Galliano bottle, Fatso.”

“You’ll need more than a Galliano bottle if I come back there.” He’s looking positively vicious now. “Sissies like you can’t fight with your fists. You never been in a real fight in your life. I’ll snap your chicken neck and stomp you ‘til you’re beggin’ for mercy. Any time, boy—right now, in the street! Pussy boy faggot!”

Some newcomers and tourists have come in, and they are shocked at the sight and sound of Homer, who I now purse my lips at and blow him a kiss and wave at him with a limp wrist. He grits his horrible teeth while I address the crowded bar.

“Homer is obviously homophobic. Hates homosexuals. Know why? It’s called self-loathing, because Homer’s a closet fairy. Yeh. He sneaks up to San Francisco and dresses up in sexy evening gowns, has to use a corset to stuff in all that blubber, wears perfume and earrings and lipstick and bra for his fatty boobs, and he swishes his ass in gay bars looking for manly studs in leather!”

His support group chuckles, as do others in the crowd. Activity in the poolroom ceases. “Homer wants romance, and a lotta foreplay and he loves to kiss for hours with his man. Can you imagine a man kissing Homer, with those bulbous lips and caribou teeth?”

They are all laughing now. Homer’s trying to glower, but those choppers are bulging over his lips. I begin prancing around behind the bar, sashaying. “My name is Homer Carp,” I declare in my best attempt at a falsetto. “And I wanna FRENCH KISS my man! I wanna get down and dirty and be a SLUT. I know there’s a woman inside me, just dyin’ to get out, and I can’t control her anymore. I’m GAYYYYY!”

His cronies rollick with laughter. Homer is grinning. His teeth look like a pitchfork that’s been sledge-hammered. He lumbers into the poolroom and starts a game. When he misses a shot (he has an excellent stick), he returns to his area, drains his drink, shoves his glass forward, points to it, tosses a century beside it, and flashes his remarkable smile. I make him a strong drink. When he returns from the pool table he neglects to count his money and flips me a five and I snatch it and stuff it in my jar and walk out from behind the bar and out the back door to stand on the sidewalk and get some air. Across the street Big Bill is taking down the American flag from his hotdog stand. Homer’s un-cherry 1960 Nash Rambler is parked behind my recently purchased and duct-taped, rusted-out and back-bumperless 1981 Chrysler Cordoba, as my Olds died. I stand studying the heaps, until Homer is outside, pool cue in hand.

“What an ugly toad your Rambler is,” I tell him. “It’s a disgrace having that eyesore sitting in front of a respectable place like Happy Jack’s. Why don’t you park it across the street at fancy-pants Circle Inn?”

“That Rambler’ll out-run and out-last that cancer-ridden Chrysler. Look at the duct tape on that thing. Just shows how stupid you are, covering cancer holes with duct tape. Everyone in town knows you’re a clueless idiot when they see you driving around in that ugly piece of shit.”

“That Cordoba, it’s stylish and classy, with Corinthian leather bucket seats. Your Rambler has no sleek lines; it’s like its owner—grotesque, like one of those giant sea turtles on those islands off South America.”

“The Galapagos Islands, dummy. I been there. You’ve never been anywhere but stinky dives.”

We spar a little longer and then I go back to work and stay busy. The after-happy hour crowd drinks themselves out and the dinner hour lull sets in, but Homer remains as the second wave comes in, munching crackers and nuts and beef jerky. He drinks at a methodical pace. Around eleven his eyes acquire a bovine cast, initial signs of his being tipsy. His second wife, diminutive, feisty, alligator-hide, Vera, calls. I hand him the phone and he talks to her briefly. I remark that he, Homer, is afraid of Vera and brag about being my own man, un-monitored by MY woman. He stands and grabs for his keys but I snatch them away. He demands them. I shake my head. He threatens me. I laugh at him. He sits down on his stool and orders another drink. I pour him a strong one. He sips it, settles in.

Rafe Monk shows up, carrying a load, sits beside him. Homer buys him a drink. They shake dice for dollar bills. The bar is clearing out. Vera comes in, tries to prod him home. Homer refuses to budge. I leer and smirk at him. Vera leaves. His son, a studious looking kid, comes in, tries to get him to leave. He won’t budge. The son leaves. Then his daughter comes in, a pretty, plump girl, his pet. Even she can’t budge Homer, who informs me he’s closing the bar.

He and Rafe drink and make slurred, asinine conversation. I have one with them. I play pool with Homer and slaughter him and win $5, which I’d never do if he was sober. Around closing Homer orders a case of beer to go so he and Rafe can drink on his boat down at the embarcadero. I begin cleaning up. Neither man is making sense at this point. They demand their case of beer, tossing bills at me. I get their case from the cooler and take my bank to the safe in the office. I lock the back door and let them out the front door and tell them to wait for me and I’ll drive them to the boat so they don’t get a drunk driving, but no, they’re walking the five blocks or so, and Homer says, “I’d rather go to jail then set foot in yer fuckin’ smelly jalopy, Smell!”

“Well, don’t open that case ‘til you’re on your boat.”

“Fuck off, flamer!”

I step back and adjust the burglar alarm. Lift two stools onto the bar, then step outside and lock the front door and when I look across the street, a squad car is at the intersection facing me and its spotlight pours a stream of light on Homer and Rafe, who are on the sidewalk, both with beer cans. Monk faces the cop in the squad car, while Homer teeters in place as he urinates against the Circle Inn and drinks at the same time. The spotlight moves off them and settles on me. I recognize one of the older cops, Sgt. DeAbrew.

“DELL!” he calls out over his speaker. “ARE YOU SOBER?”

I nod emphatically.

“I’M SICK OF THROWING CARP IN JAIL. WILL YOU TAKE THESE TWO TO WHEREVER THEY ARE GOING? I WANT THEM OFF THE STREET!”

I nod. Homer protests, dick a-dangle, but DeAbrew pulls around the corner, refusing to hear it. I get in my Cordoba and drive over beside them and have to coax them into the car. They toss their case in the back seat and fall in. Homer grumbles about my car—smells bad, music (Miles Davis) sucks, filthy, uncomfortable, etc. I remain silent and drive slowly down to the embarcadero. They manage to get out, cumbersome and gimpy and deliriously drunk, tilting this way and that, Monk holding the case, flashing his incisors in a mad grin.

“Don’t fall in the water and drown,” I warn. “Because I sure as hell ain’t rescuing your sorry asses. I can’t swim.”

Homer grins, his teeth those of a barracuda badly needing an orthodontist. “Comin’ in for a nightcap, stupid?” §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his mate, Wilbur, a very needy chocolate lab he rescued from the animal shelter. He is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad, The Ball Player’s Son.