Health Drink
Already they're complaining about the heat: Pittsburgh trapped-in-an-airless, windowless, corrugated aluminum-box-heat. Slow heat. Busted AC heat. But it was only weeks ago cold. Cold that my exhalations turned instantly to frost and icicles hung from my beard. It seemed as if overnight everything white melted, homes showed suddenly their green lawns, roads divulged their potholes and flaws. I could still conjure the mountains of snow that were everywhere the day before, the sheets of ice, the bundled forms digging their cars out from thick blankets of winter. I could only marvel at the now dry streets for their lack of snow; never so happy to see cracked asphalt. Yes it was suddenly weirdly hot, perhaps unseasonably warm, but the streets were passable, the boots hopefully put away for good. (You never really put the boots away in Pittsburgh until well into Spring. Pittsburgh could throw a nice March snowstorm at you faster than you could eat a kielbasa).
Of course my lot at the Cage didn’t appreciate the thaw. Last week it was the frozen tundra, the black slush, the horrible PAT buses spraying salt and gravel from their chained tires. Those in need of a drink had to trudge the permafrost in their ever-present boots, if they were smart enough to put them on, or wearing their ridiculous tennis shoes, wet and heavy with slush by the time they got to the bar. Hey, I grew up in this snow. I was raised in Pittsburgh snow, and can tell you flat out I never accepted snow and freezing cold as part of my life, which is akin to saying I didn’t accept Pittsburgh as part of my life because bad weather and Pittsburgh were intertwined. Why? I thought? Why does anyone live there? But we adapted. We trudged to school in almost any depth of snow. It would take over three feet of hardcore snow on the ground for Pittsburgh to postpone school. Even so, each snowy morning we would listen eagerly to the radio, waiting for our school to be announced on the snow closure list. My school, Whiteman School, was announced alphabetically next to last, right before Zelienople, and if you waited through the list to hear it, you’d be were guaranteed to be late, which was unnecessary anyway because Whiteman school was never closed due to snow. Maybe three times in the 12 or 13 years I attended Pittsburgh schools did they cancel classes due to snow. Pittsburgh was not for the weak or frail. Pittsburghers trudged to the mills in all weather and their kids trudged to school. Trudging was expected. I wasn’t weak or frail, but would have loved not to have to trudge anywhere including to school every morning, then sit in wet, waterlogged boots the entire day, sweltering in overheated classrooms next to boiling hot radiators until it was time to trudge back home.
Upsides to winter? There was sled riding (one of the top five most dangerous activities kids take part in, including working at sawmills, hanging off the sides of riverboats, and attending Pittsburgh public schools. I once collided head on with a parked car), snowman building, snow piss artwork, snowball fights and wars, and to be honest, quite often some fun sliding and skidding and beautiful mornings of soft, quiet white. But mostly it was freezing and annoying and dangerous and my first winter back I thought I was the dumbest fuck out there for choosing voluntarily to come back. Why on god’s formerly green earth would a person move back to the snow? California had no such nonsense. Except earthquakes. People said they would miss the seasons if they moved to California and to those people I wished them a nice, deluded life. Fuck seasons.
But your family is all out there in Pittsburgh.
“Yes, of course.” And I loved my family, but love did not conquer weather.
So finally an early spring day came without snow; a thaw; a day with pleasant sounds of icicles melting, with warmth, with a feeling of renewal, of rebirth. We made it! We hibernated and trudged and finally crawled out the other side. But the day was also unseasonably warm, and so also came the complaining. Suddenly no beer was cold enough to quell the heat-crazed thirsts of the complainers. Suddenly our dank atmosphere was oppressive, was no match for the humidity that lay over the city like a nasty, wool blanket. "Hey this beer is warm." “Is your AC busted?”.
Thompson was the first to complain about the heat, I know because I wrote it down. I wanted to get a record of the first heat complaint for posterity. I wanted confirmation that the complainers, who were incidentally those who shrieked endlessly about the bitter cold, were now, just a week later, complaining about the heat.
Thompson was a skinny, squirrelly, Don Knotts kind of man, one who normally did not bother me too much, so I was surprised that he was the first heat complainer. I had others pegged for that honor, maybe Mickey from the Giant Eagle; Jimbo, the Quail, or one of the several postal workers who graced us with their presence.
"Man," Thompson said flopping his skinny elbows down on the bar, "You know what I'm saying? I mean, I don't want to complain, but... "
No response from me.
" ... but it is as hot as a mother out there, Jesus."
"Is it?" I said.
"Oh come on, what are you, kidding me? You know it’s hot out there," he said, lighting up a cigarette. It seemed to me that a cigarette would just add to the heat.
"Thompson," I said, taking out a pen and scratch paper, "I am writing this moment down. I am noting this because you are the first of the year to complain about the heat. Congratulations." But I knocked twice on the bartop to let him know I was just breaking his balls.
Thompson frowned, which was unusual for him, normally a patient and jovial guy. Perhaps my little riffing offended him, so instead of collecting the money he had set out on the bar, I knocked twice again to indicate that Health Drink number one would be on the house. He brightened considerably, and when I set the drink before him, he slurped happily away.
Thompson purportedly lived and worked nearby, although exactly where nobody knew. In the winter he was one of the dedicated who trudged across the harsh Pittsburgh permafrost and get himself a drink. God only knows he could have simply stayed at home and had one from his own stash, but any alcoholic worth his salt knows that prospect is even crazier than trudging through the snow.
For the duration of the winter Thompson complained about the horrible cold, the wet blizzards, the fucked traffic. Yet day after day, week after week, he sat before me. His drink, in lieu of just guzzling vodka straight from the bottle, which is what he told me he did at work, was to have me fill a tall Coke glass with ice, pour vodka almost to the top, then at the last moment add the tiniest dab of cranberry juice. He once heard that cranberry juice was supposed to be good for your kidneys, so he undoubtedly felt this miniscule pink addition to his giant slug of vodka would stave off any upcoming failure of his poor organs. Alcoholics often mix their drinks this way to guard against death. This triple, slightly pink vodka he called the “Health Drink.”
The Heath Drink was by no means a vodka and cranberry either, which would have been one-third vodka and two-thirds cranberry, have a rather nice, deep-red color, a lime, and have some small nod to something healthy. Thompson’s Health Drink was only the slightest bit pink – ideally, you should only be able to see one lone strand of cranberry curling its way down the center of the glass, like the bloody spit of a gingivitis sufferer. Any accidental redness indicating too much cranberry had been added would result in some quick and rather loud slurping, then a curt request to top the fucker off with more vodka.
Thompson would pop in for two or three Health Drinks at lunch, two more at five o’clock when his (alleged) maniacal, sweatshop bastard boss unchained him from the phone (I wondered if he really did have a job), then a countless number from 6:30, when I left, to closing time at two a.m. By then he’d definitely have had close to a fifth of vodka, if not more. This multiplied by the five days a week I witnessed it, and by the two additional days I didn’t, made for a staggering amount of vodka. I had trouble imagining where the skinny Thompson put it all. He didn’t seem to have the room in him by volume alone, let alone for the toxic effects of that much booze. Maybe he had some kind of weird high metabolism like a Chihuahua, which when he smiled, he often resembled.
Thompson was a weird kind of regular, one whose arrival, though ritualistic in its regularity, continually surprised me. It surprised me that a man would choose spend all of his days free time like this, not only coming to the same place and drinking the same drink, but saying and doing the same things in perpetuity. I secretly wished that Thompson, or any of my regulars for that matter, would just one day do something different. Forget drinking a different drink, I knew that would never happen, just say something different, or, hope against hope, choose to not come in at all. Not coming in would have been a present to me, a gift; a cool drink of water on a hot, dusty day. I know that sounds strange, as I made my living from regulars like Thompson and his dollar per Health Drink tip, but his routine was disturbing to me. His massive consumption of vodka was disturbing as was his cavalier and somewhat self-mocking attitude about it all. Perhaps it was my role as enabler and supplier of the Health Drink that was even more upsetting. Would they come looking for me when Thompson finally keeled over from alcohol poisoning? From cirrhoses of the liver? Would they shake their heads and look at me like I was crazy? What did you think was going to happen, serving the guy so much vodka? “… but, but the cranberry,” I heard myself saying to a roomful of scowling judges and family members.
In spite of any moral justifications or legal innocence I might enjoy, I hated the bar regular, I hated Thompson, for forcing me to assist in his suicide.
Thompson sucked down his first Health Drink in double time, probably because it was free and he still had cash enough for two more. He ordered another and as I went to make it, I noticed that the ice cubes were melting rather too quickly in the ice bin, and that the cubes were smaller and more watery than I liked to see. This was a bad omen. Our ice machine did not perform well in hot weather. But so soon after the cold? Surely the machine had built up some cold reserves within it somewhere over the winter? I could only hope there would be enough ice for a few respectable Health Drinks, and to cover whatever meager business might trickle in before lunch. However, ice machine omens should not be ignored. Plus I guess I should have known that when the snow finally melted in Pittsburgh, that the first thought on anyone’s mind would not to be to get outside and enjoy the thaw, but to immediately find the murkiest, most humid bar they could find, and descend there en mass to celebrate Spring. Which is what suddenly happened – dozens of people poured into the Cage, as if a tour bus from the city of booze suddenly pulled alongside our curb, disgorging its packed contents and throwing the Cage into total disarray.
I was, as we say in the biz, in the weeds. I hated being in the weeds because it meant you were in over your head, that there are too many customers to handle, and that everything in your life was to be going quickly to shit, maybe never to recover. I even hated the phrase itself, first uttered to me by a pasty-faced bar manager at my first gig, one who’s fat face I conjured each time I was in the weeds. The dude wore khaki shorts all year around if you know what I’m saying, and turned orangutan ass red and produced spittle when he had something to say like “you are in the weeds.” He loved the phrase, and said it as much as he could. I’d never heard the phrase before him. When he first said it, I knew what he was getting at, but it didn’t seem to capture the true helplessness of being engulfed by a hungry, thirsty, bad tempered, crowd. In the fucking weeds was more like it, or, as I’ve heard some restaurant people say, being weeded, which if you viewed it as having a sharp object inserted near your body then being ripped forcibly out of the ground by the roots, “weeded” is indeed more accurate.
And that’s where I suddenly found myself on that Thaw, that Health Drink Day, weeded. A thousand fucking fuckers appeared in the bar out of nowhere, and I was ambushed. Drinks were soon spilt and puddles formed. Stock was nonexistent and we ran out of scotch and bourbon and rum and gin and vodka. Glasses broke, rags ran foul, cold food piled high on the service counter, waitresses glared and cursed my good name, soda sprayed wildly, the cash drawer wouldn’t open and there were no fucking quarters. No fucking quarters for the jukebox, cigarette machine, pinball machines, nut dispensers, parking fucking meters! When will one of these machines take a dollar bill, god help me? When will people leave their homes with something other than a $20 in their pockets? People poured in, the goddamned door opened and closed like a revolving, old West, Grand Central Fucking Station turnstile. All was bad, wrong, dirty and messed up. I couldn’t help thinking ahead to when those animals finally left, if they ever did, I would have to bust my sorry ass all across creation to clean everything up. But even that thought wasn’t the icing on the cake, that came when I noticed that, shit on a shingle, Christ on a crutch, we were out of ice.
I mean really out of ice. Like no-ice-in-the-ice machine out-of-ice. Being out of ice was in a category beyond being weeded, beyond being fucked – it was just sad. Sad for me, the helpless bartender who had to work in a place that refused to supply even the most basic necessities in order for bar-business to be transacted. Ice. I was not asking for a freaking dishwasher, or a blender, or a sharp knife that could actually cut a lemon, or any such luxury. Just ice. Folks, if you ever want to start up your own bar, please remember that number one on your list, before all the fantasy beers and designer liquors you would like to stock, before your great idea for the décor and name and the waitresses’ skimpy outfits, should be reliable access to plenty of ice. Because as those of us unlucky enough to work at the Cage knew all too well, your little bar-world will come to a crashing halt when the ice melts away.
And it’s not like there weren’t machines out there, simple machines really, which made plenty of ice for the various institutions that relied on it. You’ve seen them, like in the hallway of your hotel. Or motel. Sure, the Cage had one too, but unfortunately IT SUCKED, and was nothing but a HUGE PIECE OF SHIT by any and all industry standards. We all knew it too, but were helpless in the face of Lonnie, who would never buy anything new upon pain of death, or unless all crazy home repairs and remedies had been exhausted, or until said appliance literally exploded or sank dramatically into the cracked earth. Therefore I lived in fear of hot days and the whims of the ice machine. Each morning I would see my future written in the precious little cubes: was the hopper overflowing with ice, more ice pouring down on your hands to instantly replace what you had just scooped? No? Then I regret to inform you that you are fucked. Did the ice scoop dig into a deep, healthy abundance of lovely, crackling cubes, or did you feel the wet scrape of the scoop scratching the bare metal bottom of the machine? Again, we must inform you of your fucked situation; you unfortunately work in a place with an ironic ice machine, one that really only works correctly when it is so freezing cold outside that the demand for its output is minimal. When the heat and humidity strike, and cold beverages are on everybody’s mind, ice is the last thing this machine produced. At that point there are three potential courses of action:
1) Leave your post, which is never a good idea due to possible anarchist takeover and riot in the bar while you are away, and run across the street to the gas station to buy bags of ice, maybe four at a time, ‘cause that’s all you can carry, and haul the fuckers back to the Cage where they will last approximately ten minutes.
2) Have some brown-noser get in his car, probably half-drunk, for which you would be liable, and run down to the Giant Eagle and buy as much ice as they could, if the Giant Eagle even had it, which they probably didn’t since they operated much the same way the Cage did; but if they did, have the brown-noser haul it back to the Cage in his hot car, where most of it will melt, and where it may last you for 45 minutes.
3) Refuse to serve anything on ice.
This was my preferred solution, and the one I choose on that first hot day after winter. I was in the weeds anyway so what the hell, right? It was a fun option really, because it put the whole bar in “disaster mode.” In disaster mode everyone gets a nervous air of excitement about them every time a customer, like Thompson for instance, orders another “Health Drink,” and I say, “Sorry, I can’t make anything on ice. Do you want a beer or something straight-up instead?”
“You can’t make anything on ice?”
“That is correct.”
“Are you fucking with me?”
“I am not. Ice machine is fucked. No ice.”
“No ice.”
“Got cold beers, though... sort of.”
“Cold beers?”
“Sort of.”
“But no ice.”
“Correct again.”
The reasons why a regular like Thompson would not turn tail and run to the bar around the corner, which undoubtedly had ice, were complex. Since he was a true regular he first tried to imagine what a Health Drink would taste like without ice and would there be some kind of discount for its ice-less state?
“No.”
And would having a drink in a bar in disaster mode be fun?
Probably.
So as my luck would have it on that first freakish, hot day, while in the weeds and being weeded, a shitty, busted ice machine actually enhanced business in a backward kind of way. And as business enhanced that meant more drinking and more people to serve without ice, and I had to stop and chuckle at that. And my stopping and chuckling caused a tone shift in the bar. People stopped their clamoring and looked at me like I was crazy. Why wasn’t I panicking? Why wasn’t I running my ass off? Has the lack of ice affected my brain? Was I suffering from heat stroke? Hallucinations? Since it was crazy to attempt to tend bar under no-ice conditions, I might as well go with it and enjoy myself. I took a deep breath and exhaled. I imagined I could see the frost. I happily wiped up all the broken glass, cigarette butts and French fry husks that were covering the bar, and lay flattened cardboard boxes on the floor to soak up the puddles of spilled beverages and melted ice. I could see that there were people three-deep who had been waiting eons for a drink, but instead I located Thompson. I caught sight of him sitting calmly at his space at the bar, wedged in between people neither of us would ever see again, his empty glass before him, a serene smile on his face. A regular, I thought, a friendly face, now that’s how it’s done. Patience. You know you’ll get a drink, you know it will one day cool down again. Or heat up. I approached him and pointed to him and said, “Thompson!” and he said, “Health Drink.” I scraped the last, slippery, miniscule slush I could muster from the bin into his Coke glass and hit him with a gigantic Health Drink number three, mostly booze, and not so cold, but Thompson wasn’t complaining.
“Thompson,” I said, “where do you put it all?” and I knocked twice on the bar to indicate that this disaster mode Health Drink, was indeed on the house.
“Anywhere it will fit,” he said grinning, sweating, “as long as you keep ‘em coming.” And he raised his glass to me.
And I knocked twice again on the bar, this time for his continued good luck.
I think one can consume the drink by dosage..I mean they should not drink more..If they consume little day by day it becomes healthy drink..
Posted by: Diamond Core Drill | November 10, 2011 at 03:34 AM