(Tex is triumphant over the new self-serve suds delivery device, known as “the Champagne Bucket.”
The big government shut-down is affecting everything. I strolled into Willow after a day spent in the pursuit of moderation. I exercised moderately, getting my shirt off to capture the last rays of the season, and thought only moderately about what was going on. Other than that, there wasn’t much moderation in town.

Attitudes seem to be hardening, and people were busy painting themselves into corners they are going to have a difficult time getting out of. Regrettably, we are all collateral road kill in their game.

The weather was wonderful; warm and sunny in Washington, though portents of snow were coming in from the higher elevations out West, and it is clear we are on borrowed time. I ordered the components for the Halloween Party, though, and that was my sole concession to the coming change of season.

I did my best to stay away from the toxic mess downtown, but it was hard not to run into it on the radio and with all the email flying around.

Willow was a pleasant diversion from all of that. I walked into the dimness and slid into my usual stool next to Old Jim. He had his ear-buds jammed in, listening to sounds from some other place. He gestured in front of him to something altogether new. I gaped in amazement.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Guess who did it?”

“Brenna?” I asked. He shook his head.

“Nope. Tex figured it out: the perfect delivery system.”

A silver bucket sat at the apex of the Amen Corner. It contained precisely six long-necked Budweiser beers, buried to their dark caramel shoulders in chipped ice.

“It’s a result of the shut-down,” said Tex with a grin. “We have to save manpower wherever we can!”

“Self-serve, just like the monuments downtown,” I said.

Jon-without arrived in a crisp dress shirt and sport-jacket without tie. He has his standards, even between jobs. “Speaking of which,” he said, “did you hear about the guy who set himself on fire on the Mall? The latest reports say that the man is in critical condition.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Yesterday it was the cops gunning down a young mom. Now it is Buddhist monk wannabees. What the hell is next?”

“Self-serve beer,” growled Jim.

“They closed all the Commissaries,” I said. “But the liquor stores on base are still open. I called to make sure. I might want to stock up.”

“Well, at least they have their priorities straight. I heard the golf course at Andrews is open, too, just in case.”

The Lovely Bea and Jamie strolled in. Both had large deadlines in the week and were ready to ignore current events, though it was hard.

The lovely Bea crinkled her brow as Jon-without said: “Is it the situation that is driving people to these terrible acts? Are the politicians fomenting it with their rhetoric? Or is NSA bombarding us with mind control beams like the Navy Yard killer?”

“Knock it off,” said Jim. “You are starting to sound that that pompous John-with.”

“Well, how is it that his Department is working, and I can’t get fresh veggies at the Commissary? All that food is going to rot, and they actually make a slight profit with the surcharge.”

“It is all intentional, isn’t it? Asked Jon-without. “Seems like they want to inflict the maximum pain, even if it means assigning essential Park Service police to arrest people for going to places that don’t have people assigned to them even when the government is open.”

Jon decided he was not going to have a draft beer- he is watching his carbs, and asked Tex if he needed to come behind the bar himself and make something if that would help out during the period of staff reductions. Tex laughed and told him to do something colorful with himself as he bustled off to make a strawberry vodka and soda.

Jim cleared his throat. He is an old-school Democrat, you might remember the kind, though he once ran against Marion Barry for Mayor as a Republican, and actually served briefly in the Nixon White House. “Gail Norton, Bush’s Secretary of the Interior, once told me that the Park Service has always had its jackbooted thugs. She had to watch them like a hawk.”

“You mean Ranger Smith from Jellystone Park is the Administration’s Brown Shirt?”

“Green Shirt, I think. Gail was a fox. She was a Cabinet Secretary I would have done in a New York Minute. She said the retaliatory tactics from the Park Service over budget cuts has always been to maximize the visibility of the “hardships” to the Service by shuttering the most iconic memorials.”

“Yeah, and messing with the Rangers is a Federal beef you want to stay away from. I remember we used to call that the Washington Monument strategy- put the most popular thing in your budget on the cut list when we were told to reduce the budget. But of course, this time it was already closed because of the earthquake damage, so they had to pick other stuff.”

“Politics has always been about high elbows, but this is high-sticking at an entirely new level in national politics.”

“Still just politics.”

“I don’t know. Ranger Smith versus the WW II Vets? Think of the optics of that. It seems like this is nasty and personal. The last guy that tried this level of spite was Dick Nixon, and his was much smaller crap: and it got him tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail.”

“Yeah. I remember the White House tours being cancelled over sequestration,” said Jon-without. “That was right before the $100 million African Safari.”

“Give it a rest,” growled Jim, leaning over to snag a bud from the bucket in front of him. He twisted the cap off and drained the first golden mouthful from the bottle glistening with dew. “We are all going to need one before this is over.”

“Maybe the way to go is just let the Leviathan fail, push this crisis right through the budget ceiling and just say, fuck it.”

“Not going to happen,” said Jim. “Someone is going to blink.”

“I hope you are right, but they are saying that this is really scary.”

“Bullshit.” Said Jim. “The 14th Amendment to the Constitution says the Government can’t default, even if it wanted to. It will just not be able to borrow more money to keep running up new bills.”

“You think? Trying to impose a balanced budget means they may just leave the Commissaries closed, and start talking about your Navy pension,” said Jon-without pensively.

“Crap,” I said. “We can’t have that. But I think I can have another glass of Happy Hour White.”

“I think this is serious enough that I will have an Amaretto,” said Jon-without. “And then go home and write my Congressman about Ranger Smith.”

(A Willow tableaux by Jamie Austin.)

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303