Who said you can’t teach the old dog new tricks?

The day started with piping-hot Dazbog Russian-roast coffee sipped through a straw. It was tipping toward the end of organized activity as I sipped Willow happy Hour White through a similar ingestion device at the Amen Corner.

The place was jammed: two private parties were in progress, one in the cocktail nook at the street end of the bar and another in the private room in the back near the heads.

“Possibly the best exchange I had today,” I was explaining to the Argonaut, “was with my Legal Beagle in lotus-land San Diego.”

“What did he say?” The Argonaut was drinking iced tea. I was trying to navigate the rocks glass of crisp white without being able to look down due to the nagging pain in my neck.

“He did an analysis of the respective conditions of the national economy and that of his Golden State.”

The Argonaut looked reflective. He is a Stanford man, after all, and well experienced in the ways of the world. “Governor Moonbeam balanced the budget” he said.”He made some tough decisions.”

“Yeah, because he can’t print his own money. The Counselor says we are screwed.”

“Possibly,” said the Argonaut, but he is an optimist. He is even managing a start up business in this environment. I admire his courage. I am trying to be upbeat too, but getting exhausted by the chaos around here.

“Relax, Vic. Just shrug and move on. Que Sera, Sera, you know?”

I tried to look down to see the level of the wine in the rocks glass but couldn’t. Old Jim, Chanteuse Mary and her Ann Arbor Sister showed up somewhere in there someplace- they were a little late, but Jim has traded Bud for Diet Coke in an attempt to vanquish the remaining ravages of that awful flu thing that was going around and the usual immediacy was lacking.

“Hey, Jim,” I said. “for almost dying on us you look great.”

A tall gentleman with a buzz cut and Captain and Tennile granny glasses was shoved into my blind side by the crush of the private party in the front nook. I flinched involuntarily as my neck spasmed. “Sorry,” he said, apologetically.

“Not a problem. It is not usually this busy on a Thursday.”

I waved at Chris-the-Marine to get his attention, and the bald man asked for a McAllister Twelve Year Old, neat, with a glass of ice water on the side. A man of distinction, I thought.

Jon-without-an-H (“for short,” he says, “one in a hundred are born without them. ‘H’ is a recessive”) and the Lovely Bea were there, along with the Argonaut. Owner Tracy O’Grady took time out of her controlled chaos in the kitchen to press the flesh and explain what was going on.

The huge crowd was a function of Restaurant Week kicking off, two private parties and mass crisis fatigue here in town.

Jon-without started a discussion of the various strengths of Irish versus Scotch whiskeys, and the man introduced himself as “I’m-Jeff-not-Geoff.”

As the evening disintegrated, he appeared to be a candidate for admittance to the Amen Corner Corps of regular bar flies. He seemed approachable as we explained the Rules. We think we like him.

Jon-without noticed my straw and said he was not surprised. He always drinks his coffee with a straw, since he had his teeth whitened a while back and the straw delivers the dental staining liquid to the soft palate without deleterious effect. I showed him the new veneer on my front tooth that looks curiously white compared to the rest of my Dazbog-tinged teeth.

We actually did not talk about Senator Hagel’s disastrous appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, or the Q4 GDP numbers, or what was likely to happen with the unemployment figures that were supposed to come out tomorrow.

Jeff-not-G seemed to know something about that, which is not unusual with Fannie and Freddie just up the street, but we decided that we did not care, at least not that night. The joint was rocking, the wine was flowing, and as the Argonaut said, we all have enough money to keep drinking for a while and figure it all out later.

“If you drink iced tea or Diet Coke,” I said, waving at the dark liquid in Jim’s tumbler, “It will last a lot longer.” I found my mouth with the straw and took a refreshing sip.

“No,” growled Jim. “It just seems that way.”

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com