(Washington DC in 1971, Mayday.)

Old Jim established a beachhead at the Amen Corner and called me at the office to let me know that the bar was open for business. I glanced at the clock. I had another couple tasks to get through before I could shut things down, but I told him I would be by presently.

I slung my backpack on the hook underneath the corner of the rich dark mahogany and let things flow out. “Krugman says Stockman is an idiot,” growled Jim. A can of Budweiser was sitting on the bar in front of him, one of the minimalist new design and a disturbance in the routine that normally featured a brown glass long-neck bottle.

“I ran out of time this morning,” I said. “All the economists are loony tunes. I was submerged in the news. I got mail from as far away as Australia and the Russian Far East asking what the hell was going on in Korea, and could not concentrate on Keynesian economic theory.”

I shrugged as Tex slid a tulip glass in front of me and filled it with golden sauvignon blanc. “Then I had to write back and tell them that the Northerners are not nuts, but that this is a very disturbing level of venom from them. I honestly don’t know what to make of it, except that I think they will ratchet things down after the exercises in the South are over. On the other hand, they have placed two IRBMs on the pad and God knows what they might do. Lob them in the general direction of Guam?”

“Assholes.”

“That might be the best summary of the situation I have heard,” I said pensively. “And here at home law-abiding, tax-paying former public servants are talking about preparations for a post-American future. I don’t get it.”

“It has a long tradition,” said Jim. “I remember how nuts it was here in the District in the late ‘60s.” Jon-without with bowtie marched in from the double doors and slid onto the stool to my right.

“No job interviews today,” he said quietly. “I went to the strangest dinner last night. Have you ever been to Pier 7?”

Jim and I nodded. “Sure- that place on the Waterfront in SW? Food sucks.”

“It was a professional dinner- Washington Chapter of the Society of Mechanical Engineers.”

“Sounds like fun,” Jim said dubiously. “Not.”

“It was a big round table and I didn’t know anyone. Two Hill staffers were talking about what they were up to in terms of bringing the millennium to pass. This networking crap is a pain. I left.”

“I am about at the end of that stuff. I joined LinkedIn years ago and I keep getting invitations and solicitations from people I have never heard of but I have forgotten my password.”

“I have heard that people have received job offers from headhunters. That is how that Australian recruiter found me,” said Jon. He decided on a martini for his libation, always willing to mix them up. Tex makes a mean one, and has placed in the top three in the local bartenders mixology contest three times. “The next one is coming up soon,” he said, as he poured the clear liquid into the signature glass in front of Jon-without. “The sixth annual contest will be next week at the Beacon Bar. For 25 bucks you can get all the martinis and snacks you want.”

“That sounds like trouble,” I said. “That is why I drink white wine when I am out these days.”

I looked over at Old Jim. “You used to be a bartender downtown, didn’t you? Before you started tilting at political windmills?”

He smiled. “Yeah, I tended the bar at Marshall’s West End in Foggy Bottom. The bartender mafia was a tough one. We all knew each other. It is gone now- I think it is an Indian restaurant now.”

“Was that the pub that your pal Danny owned?”

“No, that was The Airplane up in Dupont. Danny was a wild man back in the day. His bar did a big lunch crowd back in the day. It was sort of a dive, off a side-street, and in the basement. I went in to open up one day- well, the cook actually opened up the place but I opened the bar. My first two customers came in and I went over to ask what they were having and Danny shoots up out of nowhere, and bellows “What do you want to drink!” He had been sleeping all night under the stools.”

“I remember when people drank during the day,” said Jon-without.

“I do too,” I said with a wince. “Some things are better these days.”

“We did all kinds of stuff. I had an evening shift one night and the three of us who were going to be working into the night went out back to smoke a joint. We had a runner who was supposed to support us. He was one of those twenty-somethings you see around here- his Dad was the Governor of New Jersey or something. Apparently he wasn’t used to decent quality pot, and he got really zoned.”

“Far out,” I said, taking a sip of wine.

“When we went back into the bar there were already people two or three deep. Danny told him to get ice, since we were going through it pretty quickly. The kid didn’t go to the ice machine, he went to the walk-in and grabbed a big tub of cubes and dumped it in the sink behind the bar. Danny was waiting on a guy who wanted Scotch on the rocks.”

“People don’t seem to drink Scotch much any more, at least not the blends.”

“Well, this was a blend, all right. The kid had got the container with the cut-up chicken in it. Danny made the drink and looked at the glass like the customer did, but he didn’t miss a beat. “You want breast or thigh with that?” he said.”

“What year was that?” asked Jon-without.

“’68 or ‘69,” growled Jim. “I would have been in my thirties.”

“I first came to the District on my own in 1971,” I said, thinking back to a very strange Spring outing. “It was the Mayday protest. We were going to shut down the Federal Government.”

Jim looked over at me. “So, talking about what comes next is actually a lot more common than you think, isn’t it? That was just like Occupy Wall Street, from what I recall.”

“Well, it didn’t work out that way, and I did not get arrested, which might have changed a lot of stuff. I still have trouble on my polygraph exams with that question about whether I have ever advocated the violent overthrow of the US Government. I don’t think it was that violent.”

“Yes,” said Jon-without. “They seem to take a dim view of that.”

“What goes around,” said Jim, and waggled a finger at Tex for another Bud.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.comRenee Lasche Colorado Springs