The Holidays

So the holidays are upon us, yesterday was my birthday and I started the day in a completely wonderful way, taking an old family friend up on an invitation to attend services at the church she attends. I'm relatively strong in my faith, but that's a strength that can only go so far without being fed inspiration and getting a sense of all I forget to be thankful for, and the fact that there is a world of people out there that go so far beyond my own self-involvement. One of my things on my list of wants, is to become more grounded in my faith, so yesterday and a few other events in my life over the last two months seems to be pointing me towards doing just that.

The older I get, the less I care about receiving gifts on any occasion, and that includes birthdays. Each year as middle age strengthens its foothold on the boy trapped in a man's body, I tell myself that on my birthday I will be good to myself and build myself up. When I was younger, that often meant over indulging in a drum shop or a record store or clothing store. Yesterday I was happy to visit a church and find myself welcomed and appreciate the message that was being given yesterday. It was also nice to see a woman who was good friends with my older sister in high school - which was a long time ago.

Back then I was the younger and probably annoying brother of my older sister, and while I don't have a perfectly clear memory of those days, I do recall forcing my presence on my older sister and her friends at times - but that's what younger siblings do and that was far too long ago to feel guilty about now. I hadn't seen my sister's friend, Becky, for thirty years - and I have no idea the specifics of the last time I saw her, only a vague memory of when that had to have been. Earlier this year I reconnected with another old friend and I hadn't seen him for thirty years - it's a pretty good feeling and while age doesn't seem to register so much to me, time, at least when I stop to realize large periods of it like in these two cases, does indeed register.

These days I try to be mindful of all I have to be grateful for - and no matter how I may want things to change in my life, on my worst days there is still so much to be completely thankful for. Some things get overlooked entirely, yet if any one of them were removed from my life, I'd feel a huge loss. I'm a firm believe in being thankful and doing so invites more good into our lives. As we head into Thanksgiving, I appreciate the message from yesterday morning, I appreciate things like reconnecting with people after 30 years, I appreciate the many wonderful people I have as friends and my family, I appreciate the person who chose to spend the day with me yesterday and I was overwhelmed by how many others offered to spend any part of the day with me. As I told my mother yesterday, I had no idea I would be as popular as I felt yesterday. I'm thankful for all of this and more and I hope that I don't lose sight of any of the multitude of things I have to be grateful for in my life on a daily basis.

While I have long since grown tired of the major marketing campaign that Christmas has become, I do love the season. I'm a little sad for the days of being a kid in school and how having two weeks off from school seemed to make Christmas itself last that long. It's not about presents any more for me, at least not in terms of me getting them, all I want is to be able to see anyone and everyone that matters to me and that gets harder to do with each passing year and how spread out my family and friends are these days. I leave my family on Christmas night, a grown man and one that usually has to return to work the next day - and that makes me long for the Christmas nights I had as a child when I'd go to bed and feel like Christmas and all the wonderful memories I have of it as a child, would continue for a few more days.

Cracking The Code

Sometimes my job means cracking a code and figuring out what a server means when they key in an odd drink request. Most people who don't know much about bartending think that the number of drink recipes out there are far too intimidating and that's what they comment on - "I don't know how you know all those drinks and how to make them - I could never do that." - that type of thing. The fact of the matter is that you don't have to remember every drink recipe out there. As one former coworker put it, recipes are the least of your worries really. There are around 40 drinks that one would need to know how to make, that number being compiled from a list that I put together with my good friend Chris, who used to work with me. I'm not saying that there aren't loads more recipes out there, but those aren't the ones that come up very often, if at all.

Being a seasoned professional, I expect servers to have a basic knowledge of cocktails and I don't really care how many nights a week they work and what else they want to do with their life.  That being said, it's often frustrating at my current place of employment because the service staff - for the most part, is severely lacking in that respect. I shouldn't have to tell the same veteran servers things like a gin & tonic or vodka & tonic gets a lime, basic rules/choices for martinis, the differences between the wines we offer by the glass. But I do - and for the most part, none of the servers retain even the simplest of instructions, which means that what I remind them of today, I will often remind them of later, that same day - and tomorrow.

Sometimes this is annoying, but there are times when it's very, very amusing. I've gotten to the point where I'm pretty good at deciphering what a server has communicated to me and getting right to what it is that they want. I'll give two examples of this...uhm...talent:


On my bulletin board I have a drink ticket that reads as such:

1 bourbon
rocks
not quick
cherry

W.T.F.? - that was what I thought on a busy Saturday night when I read this ticket. I thought maybe I was supposed to wait a few minutes before I made this drink, because it says, in plain english, "not quick" - surely I don't want to make this drink right away right? Then again, it's Saturday night and that means a sense of urgency that's usually a bit more intense than a week night. I ask my manager, who just happens to be the sister of the woman who rang this drink, what, pray tell, her sister might have meant by these instructions. She has no idea. Says she'll send her sister to me to explain. Fine - until I get an explanation, "not quick" means I'll wait.

A few minutes later, up walks the server who rang this odd request. Here's what she said:


Server:  "oh...I do not know....that man from my big party in back room...he was drinking at bar before everybody coming"

My mind goes back to ninety or so minutes earlier when I had a gentleman sitting at my bar and having a cocktail while he waited for the rest of his party to arrive - ah, got it - the guy was drinking
Knob Creek bourbon...and yes, it was on the rocks and with a cherry. Problem solved. Chuckle saved.


The next example is perhaps my all-time favorite. It was given to me by a coworker who was working a large party and she was a bit in the weeds, or flustered. "Can I give you this list of drinks I need for the party and you make them for me - I'll ring them up as soon as I can?"

I limit the amount of verbal orders I take - generally the rule is that if you need something, you ring it up. If you make exceptions on a regular basis there are servers who will abuse this and see you as a pushover for any and all shortcuts that will save them time and cause you problems. I've learned how to spot the ones who don't abuse making a rare exception to the rules.

Having said that, this is the list that Julie, the server in this part of my story, gave me one night:

1 gl KJ Chardonnay
1 vodka & tonic
1 vodka martini, rocks w/an olive
1 Jack Daniels
Cider box

None of this posed a problem until I got to the last one - huh? Cider box? That's a new one - and I rarely have to consult a book on how to make a drink. C's.....hmmm, nothing under Cider Box, not even close. One more try looking under A, for Apple Cider - I got nothing folks. I wait for Julie to return to the bar, and this is where, with my years of experience, I break through and crack the code:

Me: "Jules, I made your drinks, but I'm coming up blank for the Cider Box...can you ask them how that drink might be made?"

Julie: "I guess, I mean I figured you would know....he just said he wanted Jack Daniels, cider box"

Ah....now I think I've got it! I'm guessing the guy said "Jack Daniels, side of rocks" - and I was right. This particular episode made for quite a few laughs for quite some time. That's all for now!

Really?

I work in a place that raises questions constantly - silly questions that come up over, and over, and over again. Just when I think I'm done scratching my head over how the people I work with and for do things, they throw something else into the mix and the whole thing starts over. Last night I stood in wonder as one of the owners walked behind the bar with what amounts to a very cool junior high school shop project. I say junior high because that's about the age range for someone to actually think what she was intending on putting behind the bar was actually cool and/or appealing.

What did she have? Brace yourself - it's not pretty, not even close. She was holding a half gallon empty Tanqueray Gin bottle, lovely shade of green that those are, that had a light socket fitted on the opening and the wrong kind of light bulb in the socket which made the red lamp shade sit all caddwampus on it.
Oh no she didn't - how could she? Really? Oh but she did - and she was proud of it! Who is proud of such tackiness? She was folks, I swear to you, she was.

There are times when a thought comes to my head and the instant that it does, words come out of my mouth. Most of the time I'm safe from that happening - but there are times when it just happens and last night was one of those times. Here's how it played out:

Me (speaking): "That is the tackiest thing I've ever seen!"

My boss (speaking, assuming she was being informative): "That's a Tanqueray bottle."

Me (thinking, being amazed, confused and a host of other things): Duh. Double duh! Really? Really twice, three, four times. Duh. Fucking duh. Not only is it a Tanqueray bottle, but it's a flippin' half gallon Tanqueray bottle with a handle on the back and now it's sitting behind the bar lit up like it's something to display proudly. Right where my credit card terminal should be so that I don't have to walk all the way across the restaurant when I need to run a credit card for a customer - yes, much better to have an empty gin bottle that's made into a crappy looking lamp, than to have something that would actually make a job I do very well just a little bit easier - but no, you always,always seem to make it harder. I know what that is, I'm amazed that you actually think it's something that looks good and had to be placed there - but it's your place, do what you want. Don't expect me not to laugh though, and boy am I ever laughing. So are my customers I might add - yes, I will add that they too are getting a laugh over this newest addition. So there, I said it.

Yes folks, there is a tacky lamp made from an empty half gallon bottle of gin, sitting right beside the register behind my bar - and yes, it is my bar when I'm back there, 'cause I rule behind that bar, and rule supreme people. Thankfully Halloween has passed and the giant hellish Jester with the light-up demon eyes is gone. My boss said that when she was at Mr. Fun she saw a similar looking figure that was dressed as a waiter with a tray of drinks - said she was going to buy it because it looked like me. Thanks? I shudder to think of what she must have paid for the giant hellish court jester - it can't have been cheap. I scratch my head when I think that the best place she thought to put such a thing, and mind you this hellish looking thing was not well received, was right by the time clock at the front desk - really? From my standpoint, I don't want something like this anywhere near me. I also can't for the life of me wrap my head around anyone, even a Chinese woman, saying that this hellish court jester, all of seven feet tall with its light-up demon eyes is.....wait for it........cute.

Cute is any of the following: puppies, kittens, babies/children, ducklings, bunnies...it is so not some hellish skeleton court jester towering over you with red L.E.D. eyes - Halloween or not. My boss said that the red lamp shade that sits caddywampus on the gin lamp is going to bring me good luck. Luck? I've got better things than luck in my favor, but thank you...I suppose. I'm wondering just how long this gin lamp is going to be there. I'm okay with it as a source of amusement - but I can find more things to laugh at around that place than I can find grains of rice, and I work in a Thai place folks. 

So I write...

Music has been a huge part of my life since I was a child. My father played drums and listened to music whenever he wanted, which often failed to consider things like his children sleeping or his wife not wanting to deal with the noise. Having said that, I learned from my earliest days to appreciate good music and it has carried through to my adult years. I started getting interested in playing drums after watching drummers on television shows like "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" or "The Midnight Special" - until that point I'm not sure that I had much interest in music, I was more interested in sports.

My father had practically no interest in sports, so I could probably count the number of times he tossed a football or baseball with me on one hand. Thankfully my uncle Ron was tireless in tossing footballs and baseballs with me. Looking back at how much he did that and how important it was to me, I can't thank him enough. I simply wouldn't know that experience if it weren't for him. Ron spent loads of his time doing those kinds of things for me and talking to me while he was doing it. To this very day, I can see him standing across from me and I can feel being a bit nervous about how hard he was going to hurl the next one at me - and I'm certain that he wasn't tossing anything anywhere near as hard as he could've.

Not only did Ron know that doing something like this was important to me, he knew exactly how long the game had to last in order for me to get the most out of it. Most young boys want this experience and go through phases where they think they'll be an athlete when they grow up - I was no different. I wanted to experience this kind of thing and I wouldn't have the memory of it if it weren't for Ron. I had other uncles who would take the time to toss a ball with me, I had friends to play football and baseball with, but it's Ron who spent the most time doing this kind of thing with me and making sure I got the kind of energy release that a young boy needs. I'm eternally grateful for that and those moments of tossing a ball back and forth with my uncle Ron are at the top of my favorite childhood memories.

I suppose I gravitated towards the drums because seeing various drummers on television made me feel like rock drumming was pretty close to athletics and if I couldn't convince my own father to toss a baseball or a football with me, maybe I stood a chance of him spending time with me at the drum kit. That never happened - but my own interest in the drums and in music did take off on it's own. It was often frustrating, particularly at the start. My parents did not have a healthy marriage and my father was completely narcissistic - which never bodes well in a marriage or a family. My parents divorced and things got tougher for all of us for a bit. My mother held our family together and gave my sisters and I every worthy value that any of us hold as adults. I don't know how she did it when I think about those days now - I didn't care how she did it when we were all in the midst of things all those years ago, and I had no concept of how hard things must have been for her then. Those kinds of things change when you grow up - boy do they ever!

Over the years I would pick up and drop my interest in drums and music. I loved music then, and I love it now - though more as a listener. I never liked so much of what goes with being a musician - even on the best days. I'm fine with practicing, playing - but the reality is that there are so many more things that go along with being a musician, even as a hobby, that I simply don't like. To me, those things took away from the actual playing and the music. Things like driving home after playing four sets in a bar with your ears fried and not wanting to hear a thing on the drive home. I hated driving home when I simply wanted to be home.

In the end, after many years of going back and forth with my love of music and absorbing myself in it only to remove myself from it, I felt that on my best days behind a drum kit that I was a mere imitator and as much fun as that was at times, I felt that I should be more after the number of years I'd been at it. While I've got a long ways to go as a writer - particularly when I think of people like my friend Dianne, who writes so well that I often feel like she invented the entire English language, I've always, from my earliest memories of writing assignments in school, felt that I have a unique voice/way of saying something. So I've always written and always felt like I've wanted to write. That writing takes several forms and there are times when I don't like the solitude of it, but I write through those moments. I like words, I like how mere words can have such an effect and do so much good - so I write.

Friend Rich

Friend rich is a term I use a lot these days. Having friends has never felt better than it does at this stage of the journey. I recently reconnected with a very dear old friend after far too many years of being completely out of touch with him. The return of this particular friend is the high point of this year that is now nearly over with. It's funny, a bit ironic that when my parents divorced all those years ago and my mother moved my sisters and I to another town & school system, my friend suggested some kind of CB radio that would enable us to talk endlessly, like teenagers did on the phone in those days.

No one had cell phones in those days - I guess CB radios were the precursors to cellular phones and not everyone had those. I never got one and eventually I fell out of touch with one of the best friends I've ever had. We stayed in touch a bit after the move, but things just seemed to have a different course for us both. The last time I saw my old friend - until last week that is, was in 1980 on a Kent State bus. Ten minutes or so of gab about nothing much at all - the band I was in at the time, that's about all I can remember talking about all those years ago. Some years later I worked in a drum shop and my old friend's cousin came in now & then to buy sticks. I remember asking about my friend, Joe, and his cousin said he thought he'd moved to Florida - though he didn't stay in touch w/him and wasn't really sure.

Somehow that made me give up hope of getting in touch with Joe again, and that was sad. Early this summer I did a google search and found him on Face Book. When I saw his hometown, I knew that was him - it's sometimes tough to tell much from the tiny thumbnail pictures that are on Face Book when you reach middle age. I suppose I wondered if Joe had forgotten me - I should've known better really, but when you get to be middle aged, memory isn't quite as clear as it used to be. It's all a matter of degrees though.

Now is where the irony of Joe's suggestion of a CB radio all those years ago comes in. Through Face Book two old friends can reconnect. I can see pictures that fill in some of the space of a hole that spanned more years than I would've liked. In a matter of split seconds, I can get an IM or a text from Joe for no reason at all other than a good morning or a laugh. There were always serious laughs when Joe and I hung out - always. We pursued all things funny like it was our job - and maybe it was. All these years later, it's a complete joy to know that we still laugh like the 13 year old boys we were several lifetimes ago.

Through Skype, I can video chat with Joe - which is much better than a CB radio and I'm happy to say that the laughs flow every time I talk with Joe, we always laugh about something. We always did laugh about things. I'm glad, blessed actually, that I reconnected with my dear old friend while we're still young enough to remember all the things we laughed about when we were kids. Neither one of us are close to the boys we were when we first became friends, but we still laugh as though we were.

Last week I got to hang out with Joe a bit when he was in town for his niece's wedding. The youngest of 9, Joe had a week to see all kinds of family and friends and when you're only home for that short of time, if you have 4 people that you want and need to see, time runs out pretty quickly. So I was glad to get any hang time with my old friend at all. So much has happened in the far too many years since we were hanging out or talking regularly. Not all of it is good, certainly not all of it is bad and I like the feeling of the best being yet to come - even if I don't really know what that best may be.

We got together for lunch and waited over an hour for hamburgers - albeit good hamburgers, but really, does a hamburger need to take an hour? I'm kind of glad they did take so long actually, because my old friend and I never had the pleasure of having a beer together - at least not that I can recall. So there were lots of laughs while we waited for lunch to arrive. After lunch we decided to go uptown...or is it downtown - and have a drink at a bar. The bar had a really bad beer selection, so I suggested a couple of Rolling Rocks - which was a horrible call, and it was mine.

We drank Newcastle Brown Ale at lunch - which went down pretty easy. Rolling Rocks, on the other hand, were sheer torture with every sip. It felt like I was a kid again and I just hated every sip of beer I took, but kept doing it anyway. I don't know where or how I heard Rolling Rock referred to as "green death", but that's exactly what it seemed like every sip of the 12 ounces I had in front of me. I've had green death before, though not for a long, long time. Joe hated every drink just as I did. Somehow the fact that this bar had Labatt's blue escaped me - because I would've picked that. At one point I jokingly suggested that whiskey would go down easier than the beer we were drinking.


"Give us two shots of Seagram's V.O.!", Joe said after I suggested anything, even whiskey, would taste better than the beers we seemed to be suffering through. I generally stay as far away from whiskey as I can, and I had to work in a couple of hours, so I just couldn't cave on this. As it is, I'd pushed the envelope a bit further than I should have. It wasn't easy to part company with Joe and head into work - I wondered if I'd get to hang with him again before he went back to California. As it turns out, I got to spend all of Tuesday afternoon and most of the evening with Joe. I can't even put into words how much it means to me to have this guy back in my life as a friend after so many years. There may be 3,000 plus miles between us, but the connection is still as strong as it ever was.

This is but one example of how friend rich I am - and make no mistake about it, this one means a lot. The older I get, the more the bonds of longstanding friendships strengthen. How is it that I'm so blessed to pick up friendships that have existed at various points in my life and feel such a true appreciation for how someone has touched my life and I theirs? Seems like divine intervention to me.
I feel so fortunate to have all of the longstanding friendships that I now cherish in my life. Staying in touch and communicating has never been easier and being easier just plays into the fact that I've never forgotten so many wonderful people in my life. The older any of us get, the less it seems that we actually get to spend physical time with people who have come into our lives and then gone out of them - but you don't forget, you mustn't forget - not a single soul who has meant something to you in your life. For me, it's the ones that still remain standing and the fact that they continue to do so having survived pain, sorrow and heartbreaking life events that have only served to highlight the better things that someone can enhance in this journey we're all on. While I'll take live and in person any day of the week over an email, IM, text or a phone call, it's an absolute joy to have someone from my past that I shared days with contact me and let me know that they haven't forgotten me. That my friends is what I call friend rich! By the way, Rolling Rock will never flow down my gullet again and Joe said the same thing!