Back in the eighties I used to hang out in this pub called the Quiet Man on 45th St. It was my home away from home. I went there every day for lunch and after work for a few pops before I went home. I might not go both times but I was there at least once a day. It is a lot like how Mat Scudder talks about Armstrongs in the Lawrence Block novels. It was sort of my office and people knew they could find me there or leave a message for me.
I was close friends with a lot of the people who worked there. Well close bar friends. We would go out for drinks after they closed. I would meet up with them in Queens where they lived in Sunnyside or they would come out to Brooklyn. We would go to Atlantic City or the track. A bunch of bartenders and busboys and cute Irish waitresses.
But one week I was busy and for one reason or another I didn't make it to the bar. I was working a lot and I was really tired most of the time so I went straight home. I didn't have time for lunch and called for take out. So you know what happened? They sent out a search party.
A couple of the waitresses came to my office and asked for me. When I went to the reception office they asked me if anybody had pissed me off or if something was wrong. I just told them I was busy but I would be back soon. That Friday I went down for a couple of pops and couldn't pay for a drink. It was a nice feeling that I not only had a place where everybody knew my name but they would miss me if wasn't around.
Or least they would miss my tips.
Anyway I hope I can make this joint be a place like that. Just sayn'
Just leave the corned beef off the menu!
ReplyDeleteThey should serve nothing but beef. All beef all the time. No chicken. No pork. Just sliced up cows.
ReplyDeleteI'm sensing melancholy.
ReplyDeleteNot at all Nick. It is just great that in a small way I can recreate those good times with all you knuckleheads.
ReplyDeleteUs wound lickers have to stick together.
ReplyDeleteAnd I mean that in a good way.
Back in the 70's when I lived in SF it was sort of the same thing. Each neighborhood in the 'big city' was more like a small town. The local taverns, small groceries, restaurants, stores....they all knew who you are. You knew them too.
ReplyDeleteIf you had trouble, you could count on asking for help from someone.
I don't get that sense of community from the city or cities anymore when I visit relatives.
This is why I like living in such a very small town. When you go for breakfast at one of the local cafes: they ask about your kids, grandkids, are concerned about how you are, joke around, talk politics and generally feel like extended family.
Sometimes it is annoying to have breakfast with so much family, but....what are you going to do. They are family.
Troopie, this place IS like the friendly corner bar already. I never was a bar fly, but I consider myself a regular here. If I don't check in at least once a day I wonder what hilarity you knuckleheads are up to.
ReplyDeleteYou provide a warm and inviting place here, we can rib each other, discuss politics without getting all twisted in knots and flirt endlessly, what more could a patron ask for, I ask youse?
Hot wings with ranch dressing maybe. I used to love Killian's Red beer, until local micro brews came to town. I even have had a green beer or two on St. Pattie's day. Love the Irish, their food not so much. A Reuben sounds really good with that beer.
Maybe if I flash a little leg someone will buy me a drink.
I would always buy you a drink Allie.
ReplyDeleteThat is how it should be. We can laugh and joke and flirt and bust each others balls but know that the rest of us will step on anyone who gets out of line.
The best bars are the ones where a woman alone could go out for a drink and not have to worry about being molested or bothered.
I will right a post about that in a few.
Aw thanks Troop, I'll have that Killian's Red. I don't mind a little molestation, but only if it's in love.
ReplyDeleteChicago has some great neighborhood bars. We lived on the northside in a classic German neighborhood. The owner spoke German to all the old timers. I sometimes wondered if there weren't some old Nazi's hanging out in there. Fast forward 3 decades and I'm reading a book about the Nazi saboteurs captured and excecuted in WW2. Several of them had family in this same neighborhood that they used for cover!
ReplyDeleteI'm pleased I misread your mood, Trooper. You had to love Adele last night!
We dressed Adele for Saturday Night Live when she first came to America.
ReplyDeleteWhen the producer of the show asked us who our dream "get" would be we said it was Adele who would come to the shop and sing.
How cool would that be.
Maybe Season five.
Or we might get Sinead O'Conner.
ReplyDeleteShe might be an easier get.
Ethan, are you thinkin' 'bout puttin' together a search party for Darcy?
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ReplyDeleteI loved Adele, her song Someone Like You kind of resonates with me, but boo hoo , won't go into details. I think maybe we all have someone in our lives that we almost make a deep connection with, that slip away and it haunts us for the rest of our lives.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to cry in my beer now, excuse me.
ReplyDelete@Allie
ReplyDeleteI think maybe we all have someone in our lives that we almost make a deep connection with, that slip away and it haunts us for the rest of our lives.
Or someone comes into your life who would have been "the one" if you hadn't already found "the one" and while I'm not haunted, I'll always wonder.
Is this the place where when I have to go here you have to take me in?
ReplyDeleteYes, so true. The wrong time, wrong place, but oh the possibilities of what could've been are haunting.
ReplyDeleteA good craftsman knows his tools
ReplyDeleteAppoggiatura.
I'm haunted. I know most of you don't believe in reincarnation, but I like to play around with the concept of a "do over". Meeting that person who haunts you in another incarnation, have it be just right this time.
ReplyDeleteAh well , maybe I had one too many here in the pub today.
It may be her craft, but music does something to us that's uniquely human. I don't think animals are affected in an emotional way by music. It's known that animals experience sadness, grief, joy, anger.
ReplyDeleteI love a good tearjerker.
Allie wrote: Meeting that person who haunts you in another incarnation, have it be just right this time.
ReplyDeleteIt's OK Allie. You'll get over Ritmo with time.
Chickie, I'm ignoring that comment.
ReplyDeleteOne and Only
This is almost better than Someone Like You.
Well, last night's Downton Abbey certainly was melodramatic. The lame walked but failed to walk the walk. Still gotta wonder how that spring/fall marriage is gonna turn out-if indeed it happens.
ReplyDeletePlease no spoilers, BJM.
If you haven't seem "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" or it's been a awhile, check it out again.
ReplyDeleteI was too young to see it when it came out and had to settle for the Mag Magazine version called "The Prime Of Miss Jean's Body"
Trooper's Pub has some darn good selections in the juke box.Mood music to drink to, good for the till.
ReplyDeleteWhat's odd is how prominent bloggers avoid shows like "Downton Abbey" like the Spanish Flu. Yet WW I is even newsworthy again: link
ReplyDeleteIt didn't say in that story whether they were able to plastercast the body cavities of the victims like they did at Pompeii. I'm thinking not because of the nature of surrounding mud and ash were different at the two places.
ReplyDeleteGawd I'm so damn sick of deleting my own comments to correct spelling error lest I make myself a target for MamaM.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Downton Abbey was excellent last evening. my grandfather was German soldier in WW1. He survived the Spanish Flu, which I've heard was a form of Avain Flu, only to get Encephalitis, which resulted in brain damage. He was committed to an insane asylum in Austria after WW2 , where he died, shortly thereafter.
What an amazing find of those WW1 soldiers, so sad. Makes me wonder what's wrong with Germans, why didn't they learn after WW1?
Oh fuck it, more spelling errors. I give up.
ReplyDeleteMakes me wonder what's wrong with Germans, why didn't they learn after WW1?
ReplyDeleteI mostly blame the French.
Since I couldn't find my valve spring compression tool, I had to go to Stillwater, MN and buy (order) another. I usually listen to a radion station out of River Falls, WI which plays adult contemporary music. I like the station for the music and for the fact that they never clutter up the station with disc jockey BS between songs. One song after another. Unfortunately, I don't know who sings a lot of songs, because I'm not into recording artists. For a month or two there was been a female singer that sang some songs that were good, but different. When the top of the hour came and the news came on, I switched over to a sports station, and they were playing one of those songs that I had been hearing. Then they started to talk about the singer. It was Adele.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little behind the times, I guess.
Because of the Treaty of Versailles?
ReplyDeleteAt least I can spell. :)
ReplyDeleteAllen isn't her voice amazing and the songs , wow! I think a female singer of her caliber hasn't come along for quite some time. I can't get enough of her music lately.
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ReplyDeleteAllie: You've heard of Keynes, right? I cut and pasted this from Wiki:
ReplyDeleteThe total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion Marks (then $31.4 billion, £6.6 billion) in 1921 which is roughly equivalent to US $442 billion or UK £284 billion in 2012, a sum that many economists at the time, notably John Maynard Keynes, deemed to be excessive and counterproductive and would have taken Germany until 1988 to pay.[2][3] The final payments ended up being made on 4 October 2010,[4]
[emphasis added]
I had to go to Stillwater, MN and buy (order) another.
ReplyDeleteI've been there--to a wedding--the reception was on an old slowmoving excursion train with a drinking car. It went up the tracks and back. Party time!
Not only that, Chick, but the French also confiscated some of Germany's land.
ReplyDeleteOf Keynsian Economics, right.
ReplyDeleteMy father talked about post WW1 Germany and the terrible inflation. He was in Yugoslavia, but he made me think they experienced the same thing. Germany was hurting, that was for sure, but not as bad as it hurt after WW2.
That was a while ago, the train thing stopped some years ago.
ReplyDeleteChicken feed, compared to what our current commie/Keynesian/Kenyan is doing. Obama misplaces a half trillion at a go and never even notices.
ReplyDeleteOf Keynsian Economics, right.
ReplyDeleteThere was nothing wrong with Keynes in his time and place:
In one sense, we are all Keynesians now; in another, nobody is any longer a Keynesian.
~Milton Friedman
Anyways, this conversation is in need of another round.
ReplyDeleteOn me. The barkeep is talking about throwing people out.
I'd like to see him try.
ReplyDeleteNow pour me another shot of liquid courage. STAT!!!
Interesting article about Keynesian Economics from CNN Money
ReplyDeleteWell the Obama administration got Keynes wrong, I sure hope someone gets it right, because it sounds as if Keynes was on to something. Of course this is one of those something's I'm not well versed in and comment anyway.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@Allie: After WW II, we had our own vindictive plan called the "Morgenthau Plan" It was less draconian than what the Dutch and French had in mind but thankfully, the Marshall Plan was the one which got put in place. link
ReplyDeleteAllie, Ben Bernanke is the guy we've really been relying on for the past 5 years. Here's what the most eminent macroeconomist of the past 30 years said during the worst part of the financial crisis:
ReplyDeleteWell I guess everyone is a Keynesian in a foxhole, but I don’t think we are there yet. Explicitly temporary tax cuts do nothing: people just bank them. Supply side tax cuts are fine with me, but they take time to work and at some point we need the revenue to run the government.
I feel the current situation requires a lender of last resort but not a fine tuner.
My son in law the economics major in college gave me Milton Friedman's book to read, maybe I'll have to dig it out and read it after all.
ReplyDeleteChickie, thanks for the link, that does explain it well and also very interesting comments from you and Carol Herman there.
ReplyDelete@Allie: You probably have to give Truman credit for the Marshall Plan, named after his Sec. of State, and the Republican Congress of the time. Roosevelt might have listened to the bankers, represented by Morgenthau.
ReplyDeleteMy son in law the economics major in college gave me Milton Friedman's book to read, maybe I'll have to dig it out and read it after all.
ReplyDeleteYes, do it!!
Your daughter married well.
Not only that, Chick, but the French also confiscated some of Germany's land.
ReplyDeleteOh, don't you get him started, now, Allen! ;-)
Actually, I have story about Alsace-Lorraine: link.
ReplyDeleteI'm such a link whore today I feel like Crack.
Goin' all Whitney on us, eh?
ReplyDeleteIncongruity is one of the key triggers of anger, the emotional signal or warning felt when something is off. Which is why TY can get away with being a beloved asshole. Unparalleled congruity. The same with DBQ, AllenS, and others who used to visit the same place, sit on a certain bar stool and consistently share pieces of their lives along with their opinions. Over time, they could be counted on to be who they were; and who they were frequently added value, laughter, and meaning to the moment or topic at hand.
ReplyDeleteRecent policy changes over at the other place have resulted in behavior by management which oddly enough seems to mirror some of the same Bad Faith being purged. While I find the incongruity frustrating and confusing if not angering, and acknowledge the loss of the one a one-of-a-kind community forum I once enjoyed as sad; what I mostly miss are the tips. Comments from those who consistently left their 15-20% or more.
For me, the best part of waitressing, other than the rush of successfully navigating an ever changing rapids of challenges and characters, was the feeling of walking out at the end of the shift with a pocket full of cash.
...the feeling of walking out at the end of the shift with a pocket full of cash.
ReplyDeleteBrass In Pocket
For no apparent reason other than I think it fits into the gangs all here theme..
ReplyDeleteplaying for change. Stand By Me
DBQ, that was absolutely moving and beautiful. I thinksometimes certain folks are given only one person in a lifetime, who will stand by them through whatever comes. Some lose that person way to soon, I'm missing my husband tremendously tonight.
ReplyDeleteI thinksometimes certain folks are given only one person in a lifetime, who will stand by them through whatever comes
ReplyDeleteMaybe.
Or...you are meant to learn and carry the essence of that one special person forward in your life and be a person to stand by someone else.
Share the wealth, so to speak.
True, his essence is still with me, I need to remember to put It to good use .
ReplyDeleteo/~They say that we live many lives
ReplyDeleteI can believe it
But I'm still not so sure
I don't know if there's
Gonna be a next time
This time I'd like a little more
Time, that is~\o
@DBQ
ReplyDeleteVery nice.