A Night at The Sherwood

A couple weeks ago I stopped in the Sherwood Lounge on a Friday night. I'd been there before. A quiet hole in the wall but a very clean place, almost clinically clean. They serve frozen, monstrous, Texas-sized mugs of draft beer for $3 a pop and I needed one of those badly that night.

There's an old guy named Charlie who runs the Friday night karaoke scene there. Charlie grew up in the area but once lived in New Mexico and then traveled to Las Vegas. He grew tired of the rat race in Vegas and eventually returned to the quiet life. Divorced, about 60 years old, he sports a white cowboy hat and his long sleeved shirt is always sharply pressed. He has a few songs that he sings to warm up the crowd and, let me tell ya, when he sings “Long Gone Lonesome Blues” he puts his whole body into it.

Fortunately for everyone, I'm not much of a karaoke guy (altho, I admit, on my second tour to Okinawa, there was one little joint near Gate 2 that I used to go with a buddy .. .we occasionally did a duet of Sinatra's “My Way” to the delight of the crowd). But I like listening to it and if it's bad, I like it even better. But this Charlie's a real card and not a bad showman. And he introduced me to Dee, for Dierdre, who works behind the bar.

When I first met Dee I thought we might be related. She looks like an aunt I have on my father's side who lives in Wichita. Sort of a square jawed look, with a flat nose, high cheeks and beady eyes. Very western plains, no nonsense, the stern housekeeper meets Calamity Jane kinda thing. It sounds much worse than it is when I spell it out. She's actually kinda cute and cuddly.

But Dee told me her family is from Arkansas, instead. Close enough I guess, since we hit it off right away. Of course, I did spend a small fortune in the place so that might have influenced her graciousness to some degree as well. After some earnest inquiring, she informed me that the Sherwood Lounge did not have a license to serve liquor. But she allowed that thanks to the generous foresight of the city council, I was permitted to bring in my own bottle to enjoy if I chose to do so.

And I did choose to do so on this night. I really did.

Learning this, I quickly ran to Pinkie's Liquor Store and found the bottle of my desire. Perhaps you haven't tried it, maybe you're not of this inclination, but if I may, let me suggest that you indulge in the sweet taste of Wild Turkey's American Honey some day. Just a shot, purely for sipping, it goes down damn good with a frozen, Texas-sized mug of Budweiser beer.

Freedom isn't free and we must always remain vigilant but American Honey and beer is about as close as you can get to unregulated joy. Trust me.

So there I was in The Sherwood with my perfect combination of American Honey and Budweiser, listening to old Charlie belt out a strained version of George Jones' “Bartender Blues” and just loving the good life! Soon, a small crowd had formed around me at the end of the bar, eagerly wanting to know what I had hidden in the brown paper sack.

“Dee,” I called out, “bring some shot glasses for all my friends...they need to try this.” At the risk of injecting the evils of socialism into West Texas society, I decided then to share a little bit of the wealth.

Suddenly I was popular and dare say I was almost cool. Thin ladies were passing me their cell phone numbers and men, darkly tanned men who labored all day for a few dollars of weekend entertainment were inviting me over to meet their families and sit on their back porch and smoke imported cigars. I was king for a day, brother!

So, I fanned out. I took my bottle of Honey traveling around the bar to make sure everybody got a little sip. Down near the middle of the bar, I noticed my pal Kenny was without.

Kenny is a funny guy. I love talking to him. Maybe I should say I love listening to him because, truth be told, I rarely say much around him and he his pleased to get most of the speaking done for me. He's a large man, ex-marine and a housing inspector for the county. He's also damn near blind and when he looks at a person he squints in a strange way that I find amusing. When he speaks, which he does quite often, he has a way of grinning in the midst of his Texas drawl that I can only describe as “frontier” style. Don't know if you've ever noticed a person like this, but he has this sorta side to side head motion and slight, tight-lipped grin on his face that suggests he's thinking while he's talking to you. And generally, based on the grin, one gets the feeling the thought in his head is probably something like, “now, I know you don't believe what I'm saying because, obviously, you're a city-slicker idiot who's never had mud on his boots, but I'm tellin' ya the truth and I'm ready to prove it and if ya don't believe me then I can kick your ass or you can go straight to hell, you're choice!”

As I said, I really like Kenny a lot. So I poured a shot and walked behind the bar to lay one down in front of him. Although he had to squint real hard to see the little shot glass, he gladly accepted whatever was put in front of him. Secretly, I was sorta hoping he would get a bit looped and sing his favorite song, Haggard's “Silver Wings”. Last time I was at The Sherwood he destroyed that song, absolutely shredding any worthwhile grace from it, but he made me laugh.

Still the king, I returned to my seat at the end of the bar and took in the loud party going on around me, the party that in my mind I had proudly helped sponsor.

Just then, Dee waddled up next to me and asked, “What's your name again?”

“Bamboo,” I answered, thinking, “She doesn't remember my name? I already told her my name. She's a bartender. I am the king! Why doesn't she remember?”

“Bamboo?” she confirmed.

“Yeah,” I said, thinking, “What the fuck is going on here? How can she not remember who I am? I brought the goddamn American Honey in The Sherwood, for crying out loud. This is a night they'll be talking about for years to come!”

“Uh, Bamboo,” she began haltingly, “don't go behind the bar.” Then with a swish of her beady eyes over towards the opposite end of the room she added, “It's illegal for patrons to go behind the bar.”

“Right, right,” I answered coolly, thinking, “Lady, have you any idea how many bars I've been behind around the world? Do you have any idea who the hell you're talking to? I am the goddamn king, man! Don't tell me about what I can and can't do behind bars, little missy, whatever you're name is.”

Admittedly wobbling just a bit from the compound effects of beer, whiskey and painful karaoke, about that time my unfocused eyes wandered towards the end of the bar and there I saw the source of my displeasure. Hunched over at the other dark end of the room was The Owner of The Sherwood, a skinny, bald and spinelessly mute old man eying me back in his sinister fashion. I stood up, placed my Texas-sized mug of beer slowly on the bar and tried to give the old man the fiercest stare I could muster. “Bring it on, mother fucker,” I thought. “The Man! Why is the Man always tryin' to ruin my fun every where I go?”

Bobbing and weaving visibly, I quickly turned back to see Dee nodding at me, that understanding nod that all good bartenders have when a customer has clearly gone over the edge.

“Don' wurry, Duh-eedrah,” I slurred, “I got-it unner control.”

But I could see she didn't believe me. Her beady eyes burned two pin-sized holes in the back of my throbbing brain. With a stunning moment of sobriety, I sat on my barstool and realized how foolish I had been. The people of The Sherwood had just used me to get what they want. Dee was not my aunt from Wichita. She couldn't even remember my name. Those losers probably didn't even own any imported cigars and she still owed it to The Man. Once again, I'd fallen into the trap and I had no idea what was happening around me. Based on Dee's look, I thought she might as well take a sturdy two-by-four and start whacking my numbed skull right there, grunting and announcing loudly to the public with each swing of the board, “Dumb! ... when! ... will! ... you! ... ever! ... fuckin'! ... learn!”


So, now, a few weeks later, I'm looking out from my cell, reading and maybe learning something more.

In one particularly concise message from the past, I see a numbered list of summaries which question the ease which I regularly make the jump from assumptions to conclusions. Yes, yes, right, correct, GUILTY, I admit to each and every accusation. Mistakes were surely made, as they say. It's what I do best.

In my defense, I could argue that “criminal intent” was never a question before the court. They certainly admonished and rebuked the defendant for impropriety but, as far as anyone was concerned, yeah, everything could be attributed to a fleeting clerical error. The action was punishable, ignorance was no excuse, property rights were infringed upon under questionable circumstances, but there were never any fines involved. Experienced judges, it seems, can make quick work of easy assumptions.

Disenfranchised or disrespected, it probably makes no difference. In other circumstances, no doubt the accused would have wore union blue instead of rebel red one hot summer night. And please notice that the defendant honorably stood before the court and took the heat in person. That, at the very least, still means something to me.

But it comes to mind that if true friends would come around a bit more often to remind and admonish in their own way, long before the courts get involved, things would go a lot smoother around here. Then cigar-offering scalawags, evil landlords and fake relatives wouldn't have to get so personal. We could meet in the pub for a brew and conversation, arguments could be sounded off the uncritical walls, and then urgent, baseless assumptions might one day lead to easier conclusions after all.

After second and third thoughts, steer clear of American Honey. And don't blame me. It's just not always as sweet as I once believed it was.

Cheers,
Mb