Mother's Brewing Company

I was just inches from the Mother's Brewing Company's truck. Leading me to think, Everybody's gettin' in on the act! With their own brewing company, since beer is so extremely popular, and has been ever since they overturned Prohibition.

Beer was never popular at our place, though, growing up. The idea of my mother having her own brewing company would be ridiculous. She hated even the existence of beer and never had a good thing to say about it. Grandpa was a mean guy when he was drinking, and Mom said he used to keep a bottle stashed in the outhouse and she'd pee in it occasionally. Which might've been what made him mean. I'd be mean, too, if someone pissed in my hootch...

But mothers aren't all equally made. Of course there's mothers who are up for anything. Which has to be the story behind this mother starting her own brewing company.  But can she stand the competition? Does she even foresee it? From father and the children.

That's the set-up. We now have a scene where mother walks into the room and says she's got her own brewing company, Now we're all set. But father isn't one to be shut out, since he's the man and thinks he's in charge; I've got the damned schlong and it'll be a schlong damned time before you get the best of me! He walks into the room and says he's got his own brewing company, too, Father's Brewing Company. Bold move, especially when he announces, Now we're all set, our family's complete. Because that only rankles the kids, who immediately get together with their pals -- the boy's club and the girl's little clutch of friends. The kids step into the room and announce they've also started breweries, the Son's Brewing Company and the Daughter's Brewing Company. Now, at long last, the family is complete. Everyone's got something they're in charge of.

I like this part. To me this is where it gets interesting. Because it shows it's basically endless. No sooner does it pass the lips of the girl that "Everything's complete" when through a series of doors come Grandma and Grandpa. Who announce that they also now have brewing companies of their own, or the intention to start them. Being shortsighted, however, through the same set of doors appear their parents, older Grandma and Grandpa, with older Grandpa cackling, "Don't put the cart in front of the horse; you're not putting one over on us!" Brewing companies for one, brewing companies for all!

Never let it be said that I myself am shortsighted. I'm nothing like this older Grandpa, who's thinking Now all is complete just because I and older Grandma have our own brewing companies. I can see the implications, with an even older Grandma and Grandpa -- withered and badly bruised from decades in the afterlife -- coming through the door, with even older Grandma cackling malevolently, "Not so fast! You've forgotten us that fast?!" It's true, why wouldn't they also want their own brewing companies?

OK, it goes on like that, even older Grandmas and Grandpas popping in from the afterlife, each generation looking worse than the one before. Until, when you get back too far the degeneration into corpse soup is so pronounced that someone just opens the door and flings in a bucket of slop. It's about there that the generations' desire to have their own brewing companies comes to an end.

The Guy Made That Piano Sing!

It was a wild time in church today. All kinds of wildness. Thanks to the substitute piano player. Where we got him, I don't know, maybe Borneo. He had me rockin' out. It was a great time!

The thing about this Borneo guy was this: He was bouncing on the seat and playing the piano so hard, so feverishly hard, that it was literally moving around the room, even with such force as to push chairs and the people on them out of the way. He blazed a path right through the midsection, turned and bowled over the first couple rows, and toppled the pulpit. The pastor in a robe of black was white as a sheet.

It's hard to believe, I know, but every word of this is true. If you can picture in your mind's eye a guy, the combination of Jo Ann Castle, Big Tiny Little, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Fats Waller, with the hair of Doc Brown, and completely full of the Holy Ghost, you'll have a great idea of what this guy was like. He took off on his instrument, and I gotta tell you, I was wide awake! He made it sing!

And this was from the very first song, an instrumental for gathering, "Jesus, Love of My Soul / Like a River Glorious." We needed a mosh pit! I caught it out of the corner of my eye, the piano in quick motion; that's when I looked up and paid attention. He was making definite, ever greater, movement from the piano's usual spot! The first thing that popped in my mind -- the very first thing -- was Putin gobbling up territory. You don't expect it, then wham, you've lost Alaska.

He ran over a couple older ladies' feet, who simply out of an old sense of propriety stifled a cry of bloody murder. The fierce look of great pain on their faces was a genuine expression of something primal, great pain. I had to wince, then quickly turned my attention back to Borneo's thrilling performance. The pounding of his hands was crazy, his fingers a blur, with even some blood. As the instrument came closer, I was shocked to see keys from the edges coming loose and flying through the air.

Much later, at the close of the service, I heard that one guy's hearing aid had blown up, apparently doing him a lot of harm when it comes to ears. He was staggering around, clutching the air. More evident in real time were the organ pipes on the wall toppling over from the pounding vibrations. I recalled Jericho, whose walls were breached by a series of trumpets, when all they needed was a rampaging pianist.

One totally strange moment came when the floor opened up and swallowed three or four of the church's worst heretics, proponents of the so-called New Thought. Since there's no basement, it's anyone's guess where they ended up. Wherever, no doubt it's giving them something new to think about. I was happy to escape, having been to only one of their New Thought meetings. Looked like I shunned them in the nick of time.

The minister threw up his hands and made a throat-cutting gesture to the sound guy, who threw up his hands in despair. He cut the mics but the piano itself, with Borneo's jackhammer fingers, was its own source of power. I noticed terrific phenomena in the light fixtures above as they swayed back and forth. They alternated bright and dark, like angelic visitations, then demonic irruptions. Which once you've had troubles with, I can personally attest, everything in life's harder to deal with.

Anyway, so much of the stuff of the sanctuary was totally demolished, there's no telling what'll happen next week. Certainly the usual pianist will be there, but whether there's anything left for her to play, that's another matter. The church wasn't doing that great on money as it was; now what we'll do is hard to predict. I see a sausage and pancake supper in our future.

I'll tell you what I'd love to see, and we could make some money on the beer. I'd love to get Borneo back, and make him wear gloves, and everyone hook arms together while singing "Blessed Be the Name of the Lord," with everyone sloshing beer steins in time. We did that at youth camp once and it was a lot of fun.

The Pink Professor -- The Importance Of Shaking Hands

Things at the Roadhog Roadhouse have been going as usual. Guys show up, guys drink, guys get in fights. It can be so bad, I hate to think of it, what ruffians do.

I just hear of it, since I don't go out there much, and I shake my head and inwardly wonder: Why is the heart of man so against his fellow man, especially when he's got a belly full of beer?

But I have to smile, since I know I have a man on the scene to handle these matters, the eruptions of one man against another. Of course that's the Pink Professor, who can't be there all the time, but when he is, things get straightened out real fast. He doesn't take any crap from any of them.

Gotta love him! And of course I do! Our relationship, you will recall, goes back now more than a year! And what a year! We met a year ago in September. And now September has come and gone again, October, too, and we're already into November. We've quit celebrating monthly anniversaries, which is usually the way it goes. Of course we weren't an item right away, but still once we became one we started looking back on those months as counting. Certainly they counted for the one year anniversary, because it wouldn't make a bit of sense to postdate something other than our first get-together of any kind.

Anyway, the P.P. is still on the job at the Roadhouse, bringing a softening influence to the otherwise coarse atmosphere of the place. Coarse is really the word I'd use, which is why most bikers' bars in recent years have taken the positive step of bringing a Pink Professor figure on board. Sometimes they're paid, sometimes they're just goodhearted volunteers, like my guy is. He likes to make a difference, that's one thing. And another, it makes his life more interesting than just teaching classes and grading essays all night.

He was telling me of the most recent craziness out there. Remember the 14-piece pool cue the one guy had? Well, now everyone has one. Which has an interesting benefit on the side: If someone gets in a fight before getting the damned thing assembled, it delays things enough so no real damage is done. Cross your fingers!

That happened the other night. Two guys got into it over something, something to do with one of the waitresses winking at them. They were at loggerheads, staring at each other with evil looks as they hastily assembled their cues. Then one hit on a brainchild, to take a whack at the other guy with his only half assembled, seven easy pieces. He took a swat, knocking a glass of beer across the room, and the other guy backed up.

They both saw the futility of fighting with just half a cue, so back they went, feverishly assembling them, but having a harder time, because the narrowest part of the cue is the trickiest to assemble, with the smaller threads. Now the other guy got ¾ the way done and came up swinging. The other guy dodged, because one of the pieces, not screwed in fully, flew across the room and broke a mirror, meaning seven years bad luck for someone.

He went running for it, slipped on the beer that had spilled, and fell on his butt. To make a long story short, he feigned injury while unscrewing a chair leg. He came up like a pack of bears spilling out of their den, with the biggest gaping maw anyone remembered seeing, chair leg in hand, right when the Pink Professor entered the room. Then both men stood there ... silent ... ashamed ... immediately convicted of the error of their ways.

This is the power of one great man! The guy with the chair leg tried to hand it to the Pink Professor, who just shook his head. "I don't need to take it from you. You know where it goes," was all he had to say, and the guy picked up the chair and reattached it. The other guy had stopped in mid-assembly of his cue. The Pink Professor, instead of disarming him, went over and helped him get it together. "You have to baby the last few pieces," he said cheerfully. He knew they guy wouldn't fight now. And that's what happened.

He brought the two combatants together and had them shake hands, which is always an important gesture in putting past grievances behind us. Once you've shaken hands with a man, you can't bear a grudge. It's a physical and mental impossibility. You're immediately one in heart and mind. Their hands joined, the P.P. put both his hands on top, as if to bless their sacred union, then withdrew. Each man looked eye to eye at the other, their big grins confessing they should've been friends all along. Then with gentleness they broke their grip, and went on to grip, each one, another beer, each treating the other and splitting the cost of the Pink Professor's next drink.

To me, that's beautiful. That they would treat each other to a beer and split the cost of the Pink Professor's next drink.

Incredible Atmosphere At This Bar

The minute I walked in the room, she could tell I was a man of distinction.

I was dressed like usual, including your usual brimmed cap. Leading the solitary woman at the bar to ask me if I'd been fishing. Oh, baby, with a come on like that, I love it! "No," I said, "I haven't been fishing for years. Why, do I smell bad?"

"Maybe you do but I can't tell from here," she was direct, "it's just the cap made me think of fishing, that's all."

"No, and I'm not really a cap guy, but my doctor thought I needed to wear one, you know," (I gestured at the ceiling where the sun would be if we were outside and it was daylight), "the dangers of skin cancer..."

Right away, I thought, no one mentions skin cancer, that's crazy, and I'm not -- I'm probably not -- in any danger of skin cancer. But that's what most people think, then, WHAM!, the doctor lays the bad news on them.

I looked around. This bar had an incredible atmosphere, small, cozy, a sweet little place that no one ever goes, except for a group of people out on the fire escape, a few people in the front room, then off to the side a few more, then me, then the bartender, and finally the solitary woman at the bar.

The bartender told her, "I'm cutting you off." She didn't seem sloshed, but she was loose enough to ask about my cap.

She clinked her glass a little, giving the ice something to do. I looked down, thinking this would be a great time to share a laugh if only something funny would happen. The bartender needed to go to the bathroom, so who would he trust to watch the tip jar? It was just her and me. I knew he could trust me; we've met before, whether he realized it or not. But she was telling him he could trust her.

He unzipped his pants and went off to the bathroom, perhaps not in that order. That left two people in the actual barroom, me ... and her. This doesn't happen to me very often, like this is the first time. I told her about the community event I'd just come in from. Then she got a call and complained that her phone doesn't work very well if her fingers are wet.

At that point, I got up and made my way to another room. To be, as it turned out, by myself in the dark. In the room you see in the picture above, with the three dim lights. Incredible atmosphere at this bar!

The bartender came out of the bathroom and was spiffing up the place. He wondered aloud whether the woman at the bar had bothered me. I said no, that I just wanted to be in this other room for a while. I needed to get the picture of the three lights for this blog. So there I am, arranging the tables, propping up the camera. This is one of those cameras where you have to push a virtual button (iPod) to take the picture, so that's what I did. It's a lovely picture, isn't it?

Then I dialed a service I subscribe to, a labeling service, and told them the caption I wanted to put on it, "INCREDIBLE ATMOSPHERE AT THIS BAR." I sat there nursing a Guinness while they worked on it. Then they messaged me right away, so I had to pull the Guinness away from my breast and confirm that I got it back.

I couldn't help thinking later, in one of those reveries that men have -- even well-established, safe-living men like me -- of what might've happened with the solitary woman at the bar. "Hey baby, do you date younger men?" "What do you mean younger men? You're pressing 60!" "Yeah, but with just these three dim lights, I have to look 20 years younger!"

Then, let's say I was married. She'd go, "Are you married?" And I'd go, "My wife! God rest her soul!" "So she's passed on?" "No, I'm just saying God rest her soul!"