Remembrance of things Pabst

Another of the characters that is immediately recognizable is "Caroline from the Carolina's" who is the erstwhile girlfriend of Tommy Tillary who is the villain of "When the Sacred Ginmill Closes."

Now Caroline is one of those regulars you always meet in a bar. A woman who is superficially attractive when you first walk into a joint. There she is sitting all alone and she kinda looks good you know. She looks clean and healthy and has all her teeth. Well most of them anyway. She comes there everyday and has a story. They all have stories. The first time you hear it you can feign interest because you are thinking "Let me buy her a few drinks and I am gonna get laid." But you are making a big mistake.

Back in the day we used to hang out in Cousins on Court St and there was this babe we used to call the "Real Estate Babe." She was a short little blond but the rumor was that she was a killer in the sack. Now they had just really started the real estate boom in Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens back then. A realtor named Penelope Karagias went to all the homeowners in Carroll Gardens and told them they could rent their apartments for $500 a month to people on Wall Street. Now the apartments at the time were going for $200 to $300 a week but there were a lot of widows of longshoreman who were paying $50 and the homeowners forced them out as fast as they could. The Realtor set up a business where she would rent out the apartment and get a finders fee or a percentage of the first years rent from the person who was renting. It started a big business in the neighborhood although it didn't turn out so good for her when she got the wrong person tossed on the street.

Anyway the Real Estate Babe used to turn up in bars in all of the neighborhood with a different dude every night. Often it was someone she had rented an apartment to and who was looking at this as a bonus. What was bad about it was that she had a kid who was about ten years old at the time. He used to show up looking for his Mom and try to drag her out of the bar and the clutches of the latest dummy who thought he found a good thing. Whenever the kid showed up....my friend and I would turn to each other and say the same thing....future serial killer.

When she didn't have fresh meat she would turn her eye to the other regulars at the bar. She was usually so drunk half the time that she didn't remember if she had met you before. Or fifty times before.

Imagine this. You are sitting at the bar minding your own business. She rolls in about three in the morning and staggers over to sit one barstool away from you. She roots around in her bag and fishes around till she comes up with a $5 dollar bill that she pulls out of her purse. It is covered in dust and pieces of tissue and an old Life Saver is stuck to it. She dusts it off and cleans it and tries to brush off the wrinkles. She orders a double vodka. Waits till it comes to her. Picks it up. Looks at it. And drinks about 75% of it in one shot. Slowly turns towards you and goes "How you do-in?"

That's Caroline from the Carolina's. There's one in every joint in America.