The Journey to the West 19

Here is yet another brief installment of my sort-of memoirs. I am coming to grips with the difficulty of trying to write about one's life. There is simply no way anyone's life can be recorded in the detail necessary to truly understand it. I regard this at best as a kind of bare skeleton of my life which could be fleshed out considerably (almost endlessly), but could never be complete. Confronted with having to present the story of your life, how do you pick and choose those things that are the most salient, or the most interesting, or the most meaningful, or the most satisfactory, or even the most honest and straightforward? Are there some parts of one's life that are by far the most important and some that might simply be ignored? Does your perception of your life change as you stop looking eagerly to the East and Spring, to Autumn and Fall? The journey continues in any case.

Bartending was a welcome change from working as a laborer. One could argue that I wasn’t much of a bartender, as all we served was beer and soft drinks. I guess we could have served wine, but I doubt that any of our customers would have even considered drinking it. Wine was not something men drank in my home town. But it was a fairly long bar, and I did tend it. Because of the four stools in front where we served ice cream and popcorn I had that responsibility as well. I quickly learned that serving ice cream was a nasty, sticky, unpleasant business. Beer was easy once I learned to tap the kegs. I also had to learn to make hard-boiled eggs, serve polish sausages and other snacks that are commonly served in such bars.

As a beginner I started out working the day shift. I would come in an eight o’clock, make popcorn, check everything, mop the bar, and mostly just stand around waiting for business. I learned that even in the morning there were certain problems, partly of an ethical nature. For example, there was a woman who would sometimes come in as soon as I opened and start playing the slot machines. When she lost all her money should would ask me to please give her two quarts of milk for her children. Babe told me that of course I should give her the milk, but he never suggested I should ban her from the machines. It would not have done any good anyway, as she could have gone to other places and “donated” her money there. I should point out that slot machines were illegal, but most everyone had them. They were controlled by a man I will refer to here as the “Slot Machine King.” He furnished machines to most everyone for a generous share of the profits, and they were very profitable. One or two, possibly more places, defied him and owned their own machines. This was the case where my father worked. One night those machines were vandalized and damaged. The story I was told by my father was that his boss, Bill K., took his .45 automatic pistol with him and visited the Slot Machine King in the hotel where he had his headquarters. He informed him, with the gun to his head, that he should never again interfere with his machines. He never did. Eventually slot machines were banished. Interestingly, most people did not seem to want them back. But I digress. There was a well-known town drunk, a young Irishman who was a hopeless alcoholic. He would often come in first thing, begging for a beer. Babe insisted I give it to him, but only one. Of course on the rare occasions when he had money he spent it with us, one beer after another. Most people refused to buy him beer. It was a small town, everyone knew everyone.

We had an old-fashioned antique cash register that was almost unbelievably huge, with dozens of buttons to press for far more things than I could even imagine. It was formidable. But it didn’t bother us because we only used it sparingly. It had a wide marble till from which we made change. We never rang anything up until we had at least ten or more dollars. As all the dollars we saw were silver, as was all the change, we didn’t have to deal with any paper smaller than a five. Babe lived upstairs in a large apartment. Whenever I needed help with something I would pound on the heating pipes with a pool cue and Babe would stick his head out the window while I stood outside looking up at him. I didn’t often need help but it was reassuring to know he was there, especially when the popcorn machine would catch on fire.

Babe had a variety of tricks he used when working behind the bar. He would throw a coin in the air and catch it behind his back, or even kick it back up off his heel and catch it. Or he would perform other coin tricks of various kinds, as well as do flourishes with milk shakes and other things. I tried to emulate him and soon learned some of them although I never attained his expertise. We had dice cups and would play 4-5-6 with customers, double or nothing. As far as I could tell we always broke about even at this but many of the customers insisted on it.
You learned a great deal about human behavior from behind the bar. Not only did customers sometimes tell you their troubles, you could not help but hear them telling each other as well. Many of the tales had to do with marriages, divorces, and domestic issues. And some of our customers were scrupulously honest while others would cheat at every opportunity. For example, we had punch boards, where you paid for each punch and you might win money. It was fairly common for customers to punch when you were not looking and just throw away their losing punches without paying. Sometimes they would lie about how long they had used one of the pool tables. It also happened that someone would be accused of cheating at pool and I would have to intervene. One of the things that always amazed me was the pettiness of some of this behavior (as well as the surprising discovery of who it was that engaged in it). Of course we had a few customers who simply could not hold their liquor (beer) very well and would become belligerent and unpleasant. But we also had the happy drunks that would amuse everyone. For a time we had a pinball machine. You were supposed to win free games, but we paid money under the counter for them. It eventually became so abused it was more trouble than it was worth. The juke box would sometimes blare on endlessly, mostly with country-western music which I quickly came to absolutely despise. All in all I found the job interesting and encountered very little in the way of trouble. Later, when I began working nights, things could become more problematical, but even then I found it much better than digging ditches. It was, however, stressful, and when I went home late at night I would have to sit and relax for an hour or two before I could go to bed and sleep.

At the end of the summer, when I was preparing to return to school, my father was outraged that I had not saved any money. So was I, when I thought about it. I have no idea where my money went, I didn’t drink or take drugs at that time, nor had I gambled much. The only thing I had to claim for my summer of bartending was a .380 automatic handgun and some new clothes. But I believe I had learned quite a lot.