1.14.2009

My Best Holiday Story

One of my most memorable experiences over the holidays happened at a cozy downtown bar where you find the daytime drunks and the evening idlers. Its a local dive that only serves beer in cans and pours it's mixers from a bottle (Your Coke is carbonated? Hey, lucky day!). Not only can you smoke indoors, but you're sort of expected to.

The decor falls within three categories:

Product Signage: Not sure what is on the beer/liquor menu? Look at the wall. With the abundance of tacky mirrors, half-lit neon lights, and stock car hood replicas you'll get a good idea of what libations are available. You might even find something they don't make anymore (Still brewing Rhinelander? I thought the Hodags took over the brewery.)



"Hey Rhinelander Area Visitor's Bureau, I have a scam you are going to love."


Things That Were Alive: The bar has never had a problem with mice or rats because there are enough taxidermic game animals to scare the shit out of anything not strong enough to fight a coyote. With foxes, deer and beavers (Local adage: "You always know what bar to find beaver at.") this place is a backwoods Field Museum.

Burnt Wood: No, not a fireplace, but a piece of wood that has been burnt in an "artistic sense". I don't know why it's locally fashionable to take a hot rod into wood, but this bar is a veritable treasury of pyrography through the ages.

But I digress, I was sitting at the bar waiting for my friend Marcus Lewis.


"An Incidental Minority composes Incidental Music."


The jukebox went silent; I could now hear the individual voices of the intoxicated crowd. Amidst it all, I heard a rasp that I will never forget. It was the old man next to me. The scrape of his voice sounded like he needed a tracheotomy about 25 years ago. His voice was the personification of sandpaper and cigarettes forcibly enjoined.

Lets try to recreate his voice. Sit in a comfortable chair. Now, growl in the lowest tone you possibly can. No, even lower. Ease all constriction of your vocal cords and let the pliable tissue of your larynx sit absolutely still.

Okay, take a steak knife and shred your trachea. Not your throat, silly; that would kill you. Just cut up the talking part. A few decades of smoking could pull this off, but a decent amount of inner-throat stabbing will work in a pinch.

Now that you've serrated your voice-box, your speech is probably close to the harrowing cacophony of syllabic grunts I had to hear from this guy.

But I, yet again, digress, the old man sitting to my left had two beers in front of him. Both were open and both were in use. I had an inclination that the woman next to him was his wife, but wasn't sure.

After I saw the pure disgust towards him in her eyes and words, I was assured they were married. That is just how married people talk; gazes of disappointment and liberal amounts of unrequited staring that mostly involve the question: "Why?".

After his apparent spouse left, I heard his abrasive voice:

"Gimme a shot of Wild Turkey...I don't wanna feel feelings anymore."

Afterwards he took a strong breath, held it and let it go slowly. Even when he received his shot, he sat and stared at it for a while; almost like he didn't want to take it. He knew how this snap of liquor would pickle his liver, numb his mind from reality, make him stumble home.

After much consternation, he swallowed it down quickly, picked up his coat and headed toward the door. As he was putting on his hat and gloves he exclaimed:

"I can't wait until I'm dead and outta this goddamn hell."

That was the last night I spent in my hometown.

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