(The Willow Bar. Photo Willow.)

Boy, there were hot times at Willow last night. I spent almost as much time there as at the office. We have a couple new gentlemen coming on staff, expert hired guns for some specialized opportunities coming up, and I needed to spend time dedicated to getting them oriented to the company culture, which meant lunch at Willow.

That was a rollicking time- there is a new waitress with an asymmetric hair-cut and a silver tongue piercing who served us with saucy intimacy. I had seen her at the bar side of the rich wooden bar earlier in the week, but had no idea that a sweeping change of staff had occurred.

Leeanne and Daniel have been consigned to the dust-bin of Willow staff past along with Peter of the famous martini pour. It is disconcerting, and we had a chance to meet Aimee and Lauren as anchors of the new look behind the bar. Aimee is a mysterious brunette, Lauren a pert blonde, and Elisabeth-with-an-S and Sabrina were showing them the ropes.

Sabrina’s last day is next Friday, since she is going to get her masters in Philosophical Astrology out in San Francisco.

Thank god Elisabeth is staying. She is my favorite public health policy attorney who happens to tend bar, and thank God she is still here with that willowy frame, delicious chestnut hair and shy smile. Big Jim is in Pittsburgh, and I hope he is coming back. When things change this radically, I get a little un-nerved.

Mac was seated with Jake at the middle of the bar when I got there. The weather has been crazy, dark clouds and rain alternating with happy bright sun, and I had driven the 1,500 feet from the office garage to the parking place on Fairfax Drive just in case the cats and dogs began to fall.

Mac was there to finish out his story about the USS Pueblo Damage Assessment, and Jake never misses an opportunity to hear his stories of the old days, and the twisted road by which we arrived in this moment in the continuing crisis.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I decided to drive at the last moment due to threat of getting soaked.”

Jake smiled. “Make that two. I am parked in the garage downstairs.”

“I did as well” said Mac. I nodded, since I had seen the golden Jaguar saloon car at his usual place at the curb. I slapped my notebook on the bar with my Pilot G-2 ink-pen and was prepared to get right to it.

(USS Pueblo before capture. US Navy photo.)

“OK,” I said, “Pueblo was boarded and captured by DPRK naval personnel on January 23, 1968, less than a week after President Johnson’s Sate of the Union and weeks before the Tet Offensive commenced in South Vietnam. The whole of Asia was in an uproar.”

“You get right to it,” said Jake. “Why don’t you let the Admiral get adjusted to your  barrage. And why don’t you meet Lauren.” The pert blonde behind the bar extended a hand in greeting.

“Hello,” I said, “We are the usual suspects.”

“So I can expect to be seeing you again?”

“It verges on the inevitable,” said Mac. She smiled and turned to place napkins and a wine menu in front of a sleek couple who had just sat down at the bar. Mac turned in his seat and raised a hand “Before we get to Pueblo, I wanted to tell you about something that happened while you were gone.”

“I am all ears,” I said.

“While you were in Michigan there was a story that made me think of you.”

“Really? What was it?”

“Ryan Williams on Channel 4 reported that there were 50,000 stray dogs in the Motor City, and a small group of men were picking them up and shipping them to any shelter that would take them in the country.”

“50,000? My God, I had no idea. I was just looking at abandoned buildings, not animals. Are they feral? Do they travel in packs, like the people?”

“Well, of course they span the spectrum. Some are starving, some are lost. They all need help, and the story was that these guys were providing it.”

“The depth of the sadness in that town is literally beyond belief,” I said. “Every aspect of it shows you something new and horrific about how a society can unravel.”

“Well, Ryan just told the story, but it resonated with the audience here. Tens of thousands in donations poured into the city to help out.”

“It is good to know that people still care,” Jake said, sipping his iced tea. “But I bet they just took the money, got in their van and left for Canada.”

Elisabeth was bustling up and down the bar, and finally gave up and brought a silver pitcher of tea sweating in the humidity and wrapped in a white napkin so she would not have to race back to keep jake’s glass filled. She topped up my happy hour white. This version was a crisp dry vintage with a hint of Pinot Grigio.

“I am going to stay focused here,” I declared. “I am not going to get off track like I did last time.”

“Really?” said Mac. “So you don’t want to hear about the Stuart Ford Building in  Northwest? You were interested in the original Document Exploitation Center and the first National Photographic Interpretation Center after World War Two. You were interested in that before.”

“That would have been before they moved to Building 213 on the Navy Yard in Southwest,” said Jake. “Remember walking past it from the baseball game two weeks ago? That was the most secret building in the whole government for a quarter century- that is where the satellite imagery came when it was still two-man control of the pictures and tightly controlled.”

I could feel it slipping away from me. “OK, so the Pueblo damage assessment was conducted at the Naval Security Group headquarters, right? That was sort of like coming home for you.”

Mac smiled. “Building 3801 in the Nebraska Avenue complex where DHS is headquartered now,” he said. “But I remember at the Stuart Ford Dealership, everyone had a parking place inside. It was the only place in Washington where something like that existed. It had been a huge dealership before the war, and there were three levels of parking inside.”

“That’s right. Did you know that Black Jack Bartholomew worked there? He was a photo interpretation officer early in his career. I was the junior Detailer when he was the senior assignments officer,” said Jake. “What a guy.”

I gave up for the moment, because it was more important to discover that dark-haired Aimee had a pretty interesting life. We went back and forth on how she spelled her name, and what the ink said on her left forearm just below the roll of her black uniform sleeve.

“He invited me into his world,” she said, “And I told him I had my own.”

“That sounds like the saying that women need men like fish need bicycles,” I said.

She smiled winsomely. “That is what my mother used to say. She was a hippy.”

As it turns out, and I am not quite sure how, Aimee favors the Avon Foundation for the comprehensive approach it takes in supporting women with breast cancer.

“I am a survivor,” she said.
“I do the Susan Komen walk,” I said. “Is Avon better?”

Aimee pursed her lips. “I think so. They are much better in supporting the poor and the disadvantaged. I was lucky. I was diagnosed early, and since Mom was adopted and my Dad’s mother had a history, so I went ahead and had a dual mastectomy.”

“My God,” I said, thinking about the decision. “That is courageous.”

“No, the girls had to go. But that is not courageous for a middle-class white woman with decent health care. Courage is what you need when you get sick and you are poor. That is why I like Avon.”

“I will support both in the future,” I said.

“Don’t forget about the Alzheimer’s walk,” said Mac.

“I want to talk about that, too,” I said as Aimee walked away toward the cash register. “You lived with it for twenty years. I don’t think Raven is going to last five.”

“You never can tell,” said Mac. “Sometimes these thing go on for a long time.”

We talked about that for quite a while, since it is a topic near to my heart these days.

Eventually Jake had to go, and Mac decided to have dinner back at the Madison across the street where he lives. We got organized, said goodbye to Old Jim and Jon-with-no-H and short-haired Mike.

In the process we did manage to talk about Pueblo, the only ship of the US Navy being held hostage, and the mini-skirts that Wanda wore when she was typing the damage assessment report, but I will have to tell you about that later.

I have to be in Maryland.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com