Sounds

In case you didn’t know, the Kerry Picnic in the 70s and 80s was the original “Burning Man.”

At the store today, in the “Express” line when the lady ahead of me asked for the price of the Fig Newtons she had on the conveyer belt. The clerk tried to scan it but didn’t work so he asked bag boy to check the shelf. She had a few more non-fig items that he started to ring up but took a while for the hapless bag boy to return with the details. I couldn’t hear the price, but she made a face like she was chewing on a wasp, and she shook her head indicating that she didn’t want it. All that time wasted. What was the price, $750??

The boys had had their bachelor party fun in the exotic and remote location of North Beach and before it got too late, and the thousand beers could take hold, they thought it best to continue the session close to home. Because they were in North Beach where parking is sparse – not because they were responsible people back in the day – they all took cabs down there and needed cabs back. Twenty plus guys staggered down to Columbus, waved down a few, piled in, and pointed the confused cabbies in the direction of the Sunset.

Tim and Terry O’Brien’s cab ride was fairly uneventful, but they did manage to chuck a few verbal barbs at the hapless cabbie before they jumped out. Soon they made it back to Ridley’s, and by the looks of it they were the first group to make it. They went in, grabbed a few beers and chatted up the folks that were there. Within a few minutes, the door flew open and in came Rod Kruke, who was in another cab venturing back from North Beach . Kruke is always well-dressed. He often wore pressed, creased jeans and some type of layered collard shirt combo under a leather jacket.  The guy looked like he walked straight out of a 1950s Flatbush men’s catalog. The only thing more legendary than his wardrobe is his one-upsmanship; That is the ability to take any story or situation one is telling and respond with an even more outrageous story. Kruke scanned the room and marched right to the boys. Tim started to recount their cab ride story when Kruke cut him off with his own, surely better story. The boys’ eyes rolled as the one-upsman leaned in.

“We were giving our cab driver so much shit and he was getting all pissed off. We pulled in front of the bar as we were getting out and paying Sully gave the driver a wet willy [lick finger, insert in ear] and he freaked out. He stepped on the gas and took off, dragging me behind the car for a half a block until I fell off. I think I got run over! I looked up and Sully was dangling off the driver-side door with one arm crooked into the open window for support while the other arm was repeatedly punching through the open window and into the cabbies face, trying to get him to stop the car. The car turned the corner and I lost them!”

The one-upsman strikes again.

The boys looked at each other with that “oh-sure-thats-what-happened” look. When he got no reaction, Kruke shrugged, knowing the boys would never believe him. As he walked away, Tim pointed at Kruke’s back and Terry looked over to see a tire mark stretching from Kruke’s calf and all the way up his back and over his shoulder. Kruke walked up to another group of guys to recount the story to try to get someone to believe him.

It was a somewhat typical Sunday evening at Ridley’s Bar in the mid-90’s: Plenty of rough guys and some equally rough girls writhing to the somewhat-muffled sounds emanating  from a DJ booth perched precariously in the upper corner of the bar. I had been to the bar hundreds of times and have to say I never noticed the DJ booth until the night I saw records being flung from it that night at high velocities. The guest DJ that night (they actually never had a house DJ, so they were all guests) was none other than Joe Mc-fuckin-something-or-other: a sizable man with hands the size of extra large Pasquale’s Pizzas and a belly likely full of the same. The booth floorboards bowed as they courageously occupied the space-time between this hulking creature and a frustrated earth’s gravity.

Just as the song tailed off, and on some kind of cosmic cue, the front door to the bar flew open and the silhouette of Stucco Mike appeared in the doorframe. He was holding something over his shoulder and by the time I recognized them as bagpipes, the pipes bellowed to life and he processed into the bar. The people froze in amazement as this man, who we all knew for years but never as a musician, started marching in place and playing the bagpipes…and very, very well.  Stucco with as serious and sober a face as I’ve ever seen on him,  only played for a  few moments when he turned to exit the bar revealing a large boom box strapped to his back, blurting out the droning tones we assumed were coming from yer man’s pipes. The bar erupted with laughter as Stucco walked back out into the night, as quickly and mysteriously as he arrived. The next song started up and people went back to attempted dancing. A moment in time.

Andy was the first of us to get married, and he was thankfully doing it on the other side of the country, forcing his Sunset pals to go on a air-n-road trip. The wedding was in upper-state New York but we decided to take the opportunity to hang out in New York City before making the trek northward.

Nick Barrett had some friends from college living in Manhattan and, being the cheap screws we were, we took them up on their obligatory invite to stay with them. As you would expect with five early-20s guys from the neighborhood, we didn’t spend a lot of time  (none) sightseeing but rather sat our asses at McSorley’s bar for about eight hours each day just drinking and bullshitting. McSorleys was and old bar with older patrons. We saw two old dudes square off in a knife fight and then sit back down with each other and continue drinking. The bar had saw dust all over the floors and the beers were served in these mini beer mugs. Either that or the bartender had huge hands. Pictures on the walls showed American legends like Babe Ruth in the very same bar, which still seems surreal for West Coast kids that viewed them as more folklore than actual people.

Now, it may have been jet lag and the booze combined but time flew while we were there. Nick and I got in a heated debate about hard alcohol; While neither of us drank anything but beer at the time, he contended that nobody in the world likes the taste of hard alcohol, they just like the effect of it. I dared to disagree and theorize that someone, just someone in the world probably likes the taste.(I should note that these days Nick and I validate my contention on a nightly basis). At the time, it was so outrageous a thought that Nick accused me of also thinking the moon was made of cheese, which brought levity to the pseudo argument.

The bartender walked up the now sawdust-free path from the bar to our table with the next round of beers, about six mugs in each hand, like a surly St Pauly Girl. I posed the scenario to him and he was placing the mugs in front of us.

“My friend here thinks there is nobody in the world that likes the taste of hard alcohol.”

With an cock of his head and a narrowing of his eyes, and in my fading memory I picture him as Charles Napier, he growled.

“Well, I’d spend a lot of his money proving him wrong.”  Punctuated with a wink and a snap of the head.

Since we couldn’t improve on that line, that was the end of our argument.

That night was more of a blur than the day at the bar. I’m pretty sure someone in our group hooked up with a tranny in Times Square, but that’s a different story. Anyway, we all fell into the apartment and passed out in various corners. At around 4am, I woke up to take a piss. When I walked down the hall, I could hear not just running water but gushing water. I walked into the bathroom and there was a not-at-all-conscious Michael Tate in the shower tub leaning against the tile wall with a stream of shower water bursting off of his shirted shoulder. The water in the tub was just about to crest when I turned the nozzle off and encouraged Tate to dry off and go back to bed.

A few hours later, at about 7am,  it was already getting warm in the apartment. I was exhausted but had enough of a hangover to keep me from falling back to sleep. I needed water. I walked into the kitchen and over to the sink when I smelled one of the worst smells I can ever recall. “Where was it coming from?” I pondered as I hopelessly splashed water from the tap into my face in a failed attempt to ease the pain boring its way from the center of my skull outward. The smell seemed worse now. I blotted my eyes with a paper towel and when I opened them, I saw it. Well, I didn’t just see it  – I experienced it. With at least four senses. There, in the sink, was the largest shit I have ever seen in my life. My first thought was how an IBS-suffering Clydesdale got into the apartment and up onto the sink without waking the rest of us up. I then noticed the sink was quite high compared to other sinks, about lower-chest high. So whoever or whatever did this seemed to go out of their way to do it. But why? But who? I had a sudden flashback – the shower!

Since it was Barrett’s buddy’s place, and I wanted to see his reaction, I gently woke him up and quietly shepherded him into the kitchen. His sleepy eyes widened in disbelief- they were now only half closed – and he started to run down the theories about what could have happened. (Curiously he glossed over my Clydesdale scenario). When he ran out of ideas, I let my early morning shower encounter with Tate loose and Barrett flew into a rage. He was whisper-yelling, flailing his arms wildly to accentuate his anger like he was swatting an imaginary swarm of attacking bees. Start the timer…the premature end to our stay in Manhattan is rapidly approaching.

Now I don’t quite remember how Barrett woke Tate up, but Tate, still half asleep not knowing what he was actually being accused of, hopped up and immediately started denying whatever accusations were being volleyed at him.  He staggered around the room and away from Barrett like a loopy boxer just trying to hold out for the bell. When he eventually gained his footing and a bit of his bearings, he took a gamble and lunged out at Barrett with all his remaining energy with a bold assertion, hoping for a lucky knockout punch:

“How could it have been me!?” he got out, barely.

Barrett countered.

“How could it NOT be you!?”

A mortally wounded Tate fell to a proverbial knee. “Well, it was worth a shot,” Tate must have thought. With Tate’s storied history of blacked-out debauchery, he knew that he’d been beat. With his head hung low, he shuffled off into the kitchen to clean up his mess. [In hindsight, I should have yelled “Christ, he’s going back in there to take a piss! Stop him!]

We all started packing in earnest for our inevitable eviction. The roommates awoke and were surprised that we were on our way, but understood why when they caught a whiff of what Tate had just cleaned out of the sink. We all thanked them and sheepishly went on our way.

Tate, the last of us out, stopped at the door and addressed the roommates with nary a hint of emotion:

“Hey, thanks for letting us stay here. And sorry about the shit in the sink.”

He turned and walked out the door and into drunken folklore forever.

A couple of years before the original Good Friday (I have THE BEST Good Friday story, but I’ll tell you that later), the crowd-favorite, Barabbas, was standing trial for the murder of a local man, Lazarus. The trial had been going on for days, and Barabbas’ defense attorney was wrapping things up.

(Transcribed from the original Aramaic)

Defense Attorney:

“Your Honor, Pharisees, Scribes, and good men of the jury. Over the last few days I have laid our a water-tight case to prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, that my client, Mr. Barabbas, is completely innocent in the untimely death of Mr. Lazarus. Now, my esteemed colleague on the other side will try to distract you from the truths of the case and try to rush you to false judgement, but I ask that you keep in thoughtful consideration the facts I’ve presented to you.

But, before the defense rests, your Honor, in the murder trial of John J. Lazarus, I’d like to call my last witness: One…JOHN…J…LAZARUS!

[Huge gasps and groans as Lazarus is helped through the crowd and up to the stand]

Prosecutor: “Oh, Jesus H. Christ!” as he scans the crowd for a familiar face.

Judge: “I declare a mistrial. [Gavel raps three times]. Mr. Barabbas, you are free to go.“

[A few cheers from the crowd as a now-annoyed Lazarus is helped down from the stand, grumbling all the way]

Prosecutor: (under his breath) “This is NOT over, Barabbas! Oh, far from it. I’ll make sure you’re crucified one day. And this time, Jesus won’t be there to save you!” [Foreshadowing]

You may have noticed that some singers are forever-nicknamed by some of their most popular songs or lyrics, even when the songs were not directly written about themselves. John Lennon is often referred to as “The Walrus;” Elton John is “Rocket Man;” Madonna the “Material Girl;” Billy Joel is the “Piano Man;” So, you understand my concern about a song that I recorded that is currently climbing the charts titled “Dopey Cunt.”

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Thanks to everyone who purchased “Grievances” over the past month. The comments I’ve received online and in person have been overwhelmingly positive, which is shocking to me. There must be a lot of repressed anger out there…

[Initiate Begging Routine]

Anyway, if you got any enjoyment at all out of this thing, I’d really appreciate a rating/review on Amazon. Even if you bought the book from LuLu, off of street corner or from the free bin at your local festival, you can still leave a review on Amazon as long as you have an account.

https://www.amazon.com/Grievances-Thomas-McKeon-ebook/dp/B01N3QTBG8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479577312&sr=8-1&keywords=Grievances+McKeon#customerReviews

If you received the book as a holiday gift, I sure hope you got something else with it. Ah, but you too can leave a review if you are so inclined.

Thanks
Thomas