UNCLE MERL'S BAR & GRILL
By
Peter "Lou" D'Alessio
Copyright 2010
Friend, there are only two Great Constants in the world of men. The first is that the earth will rotate on its axis bringing a never ceasing progression of Days and Nights to create what we comprehend as Time—relentless, pursuing ever onward into an unknown future. Days and Nights either bright and hopeful or dark and foreboding, delineated only in the terms of the lives of men who count them—like balls and strikes, runs and hits, innings and outs.
The other Great Constant is that if you own a 1986 Chrysler LeBaron convertible, you’ll blow out the head gasket and break down in the worst possible place a convertible can break down.
After nearly eight years in abstentia, kindly old Chris Stasheff (a former College Professor and drinking buddy-turned Sci-Fan author) had managed to locate me and solicit my dubious skills as a writer for a collective anthology he was considering on ‘Dragons’. Against my better judgment, I set to work—if for no other reason, to atone for all the classes I cut under his tutelage. Besides, baseball season had barely gotten underway, and the Mets were looking as hapless as ever. That was this year’s excuse for ignoring the game.
Dragons? What the hell do I know about dragons?
Life’s experience has taught me one thing: if you’re going to steal…steal from the best! Shakespeare had known this and it had brought him literary immortality. Hey! Look what stealing did for Ty Cobb! The first thing I did was to mount my trusty steed, Detroit Red, and begin my quest for the dreaded Dragonus Horribilius at the Lizard Section of the Newark Public Library. My plan was to steal…. I mean, er, borrow, from all the noble souls who had been nuts enough to dedicate entire lifetimes in this worthy pursuit.
To get from where I live in Montclair to the Newark Public Library, all one need do is to hop on Bloomfield Avenue and travel in a straight line for five or six miles on a heading of due East. When the road hooks around, forcing you on to Broad Street, you head about seven degrees right (that’s East, South East if you’re following with your compass—if you’re not, it’s like Yogi Berra said, “When you come to the fork in the road, take it!”) for about two or three blocks and hang a sharp right around a small park, a few drunks and a hooker named ‘Irene’. Somewhere off to the left should be the Library. Should be! How the hell did I wind up in the Iron Bound District of Newark, hood up and engine smoking? I knew it was the Iron Bound because across the street was the Polish Falcon’s Hall I had played my first wedding as an aspiring young musician—a rather sordid affair involving a shotgun, a lot of pinstriped suits that didn’t say Yankees across the front, and four young musicians who seriously reconsidered music as a profession afterwards.
It was roughly 1967 since my last visit, but the neighborhood was of a timeless ilk—early Newark—a Polish Falcon’s Hall, a Chicken & Rib joint, a deserted gas station, and Uncle Merl’s Bar & Grill. Now, Uncle Merl’s is a kind of interesting place. Through most of the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s and into the early 70s, it had been a “Before Hours” Sports Bar and an “After Hours” Jazz Club that had well served musicians, jazz fans, and all manners of other unsavory athletic wanna-be types late past the midnight hour. After a large portion of Newark had burned down in the late 60s riot, unfortunately, people had stopped coming down before or after hours. Uncle Merl found himself situated in one of the ‘tougher’ neighborhoods. It was said that this neighborhood had given Jersey the rep as a place where the weak are killed and eaten. After my debut in 1966 (you remember, the Shotgun Serenade) things had been different. I had walked right out of the Polish Falcon’s Hall and straight into Uncle Merl’s to remind myself of the way music was supposed to be made. So, just for ‘Old Time’s Sake,’ I decided to go into Uncle Merl’s to beg and plead for help in my current predicament. As soon as I had entered the joint, I realized just how little it had changed in the last quarter century. Except for the lack of people, it hadn’t, in fact, changed at all! Well, one little change. Where the old Dumont black and white TV had sat, there was a large, full-screen, color TV with three old timers glued in front of a Mets game. When I asked where the phone was, an old geezer at a table who was wearing what appeared to be an original Brooklyn Dodgers’ cap, circa 1950, told me…let’s see, how did he express it?
“Shot d’hell up, joik! The Mets’re ahead and prob’ly for the last time dis year! We’re concentratin’!” Now I ask you! How are you supposed to argue with logic like that? So I shut up and pulled up a barstool.
The bar was pretty much the same. It still maintained the dark, friendly feeling it had years ago. Oak counter, heavy wooden chairs and tables, fifty-cent beers on tap, Uncle Merl behind the bar—and a pay phone that hadn’t worked since 1969!
“Y’own a LeBaron, huh!” puffed out a voice from behind the bar.
“What?” I said, looking away from the screen whereupon the Mets were relinquishing the lead.
“I said, Y’own a LeBaron? A 1986 Chrysler LeBaron? Ain’t no one stops here this time a’day ‘cepts they own a LeBaron, and son, thas’ a fact!” I affirmatively shook my head and shrugged.
“You’ll be ok…so longs’it ain’t no convertible!”
My anguished groan raised a chorus of giggles, guffaws and assorted “wada-joiks” from the small crowd at the screen.
“Ain’t to worry. A’we got us a reg’ler service, jus’ drives around looking for 86’LeBarons in distress. Be by in a hour or two. Now! Ya still want that Bud I wouldn’t give ya?”
“Huh?”
“That Bud you wanted…October 12, 1966. 1:25 AM. Jimmy “Night Train” Blaine was playin’ here that night. You looked like a fat penguin in that cheap-ass tuxedo! You tried to tell me you were a first class bass player and I said you looked more like second base after it was stolen! And you! A solid three years under drinkin’ age! Um, um, um!” The old guy behind the bar never looked up but went about the business of the tavern, talking half to himself and half to me.
I just grinned, kind of impressed and sort of flattered.
“That was a long time ago, Uncle Merl. Lots of water under the bridge.”
“Not so long, not so much water.” Merl just smiled to himself and ran his fingers over his head. “If ya weighs it against eternity, ain’t so much as a drop!”
All my life I’ve had the knack of wandering blindly into interesting people. I seem to attract them—sort of like the way baseballs attracted Babe Ruth’s bat. Uncle Merl soon began shaping up to be a whole chapter in a book I was never going to write on the subject. He handed me a beer and politely said “ahhh, two dollah, fify cents, please.”
“I thought tap beer is fifty cents?”
“Oh, it is. But you jus’ bought a round for ‘the boys’. Ya see, you just disrupted the Sunshine Social Club while they were at prayer, and that’s the House o’Worship’s rule. If ya talks when the home team’s ahead, in a rally comin’ from behind, or pitchin’ a shut out in the bottom of the ninth, you buy for the bar! Son! You be lucky you didn’t interrupt a double play!!! Hell, they been known to bite off whole body parts for that!” Uncle Merl slammed down a mug on the bar for emphasis. It boomed in the big, empty room.
“Well, that sounds reasonable,” I glanced over my shoulder to see four toothy grins behind raised beer mugs, “and rules being rules, better set up another round. I seem to have trouble keeping my mouth shut these days.” This drew a reciprocal round of applause from the cheap seats and a nod of approval from Uncle Merl.
“So what brings ya down to Iron Bound?”
“Didn’t mean to come here! I was heading for the Library. And how the hell I got here?” I just shrugged and sipped at my beer. The strong, crisp flavor startled me a bit. I looked at the old man who was grinning broadly at me.
“Yeah! I brew it up in the basement for …special occasions.”
“Not…bad! Anyhow, I’m supposed to write a short story on dragons.”
“Uh-huh! Dragonus Horribilius! Marinus or Terraenus?”
“What?”
“Marinus or… sea or land.” Merl blinked at me in a near-scolding glance. “Son, you got a lot to learn! They’re two kinds of dragons, sea and land…”
“Whoa! Wait a minute! You know about dragons?”
“Some.”
This drew a round of chuckles from the cheap seats as the traditional seventh inning stretch was taken.
“A’yo! Kid!” shouted the old duffer in the Dodgers cap. “His foist wife was one!” This drew a howl and assorted catcalls from the crew at the screen.
“Campy, shut your damn’mouth and watch the game! She was a good woman, uh…in her own way!” Uncle Merl shook his head. “All these years these boys been sittin’ in them same damn seats watchin’ baseball! The only time they open their mouths is when they should be mindin’ their own!”
Eventually, the Mets washed, but Uncle Merl sure didn’t. He was a walking, talking encyclopedia of the most useless beer-tap bull-muffins any bar anywhere in space and time had ever known! Forget baseball! He knew every batting average, earned run average and slugging percentage right back to the first game played! The man knew politics, music, religion—the guy could (and did) name every Miss America and all the runner-ups right back to the first contest! But every time I tried to get him talking about dragons, the cheap seats would howl relentlessly.
Between the home brews and the pleasant (if not eccentric) company, the hours began to fly by. Somewhere around five o’clock a tow truck from a garage that touted ‘all night service’ carted Detroit Red away. By 5:30, Uncle Merl and the entire peanut gallery (Dodger cap and all) and I were chewing on pepperoni and mushroom pizzas and screaming at the Boston Red Sox catcher for letting the Yankees run all over him. Watching baseball, I learned, was like riding a bike—you never forget how! Merl kept mumbling something about a damned curse. Somewhere around six o’clock the phone (which hadn’t worked since 1969) rang and Uncle Merl left, promising to drive my car back when he returned to close up, somewhere around midnight. Evidently, the old fart got a cut of the auto repair business (I was to later learn the old boy used a wrench like a magic wand), and left me with the instruction to keep my MasterCard at the ready. So there I sat with about six hours of nothing to do but watch baseball off a satellite feed.
Ah hell, why not! I was having a great time! I hadn’t watched a game all the way through since my college days (cutting one of Stash’s classes no doubt). The thought never occurred to any of us to exchange introductions. Outside of Campy (so dubbed for a conspicuously Dodger-autographed baseball displayed prominently atop a beer mug at the end of the bar), I still really didn’t know any of these old coots, but they seemed to be regular guys… who all belonged to the First Church of the Holy Horsehide Sphere.
About 6:30, the Gods of Bat & Ball finally began to smile on the hapless Red Sox catcher—thunder, lightning and heavy rain started falling on him instead of Yankee runners headed for home plate. I sat contently at the head of the table we had moved to, eyes glued to the screen and hands glued to the mug (which, oddly, never seemed to empty) watching the rainout program.
“Da’bums!” Campy growled. “Dey should’ve never traded Babe to the Yankees! It’s…Da Coise! Da Coise a’Ruth! Boston ain’t won all the marbles since the last year he pitched for dem! 19…1918! Not even Ted Williams could help ’em! Hell, they won’t win another Woild Series until the century and the millennium start touchin’ and toyn.” The rest of us nodded in knowing agreement even though I didn’t have a clue as to what the hell the old guy was talking about!
Now, after four or five hours of Uncle Merl’s Home Brew De House, I figure I should’ve been loose enough to be rolled up in a ball and left for dead. I was still on the reasonable side of mellow, no doubt of that, but I was still hanging in there. Three of the old guys had moved off to the bar and were attempting to establish détente with a beer tap at Uncle Merl’s expense. Campy and I sat watching the rainout movie—Dragonslayer. Somewhere around the point in the movie where the dragon awakes, fries a few peasants and flies off, what was left of my mind returned to the original problem at hand.
“So this is it?” I quipped, mimicking an old radio program. “Out of the lair, into the air!”
“Hell, no! In the old days we use to say ‘flip’em d’boid, and head fa’ thoid! Las’ one in the dugout’s da batboy’!” offered the Dodger-capped voice behind me.
I had to think about that for a while. Boid, thoid, dugout? Then I realized Campy was talking baseball again.
“Chris’ sake,” I chuckled, eyes still affixed to the screen, “You guys are gonna turn into baseballs!”
“Nah, we’re gonna turn into dragons! Well, it’s the same thing.”
I turned to the voice. Over my shoulder I could see two large but beady eyes set in a short-snouted, elongated face that sported a strange gatorish grin.
“Uncle Moil said we should gives ya…da facts!” the grin said.
Now, put yourself into my place. Here I am in a seedy little bar in Newark, New Jersey. I’m eating pizza, drinking home-brewed beer and damning Umpires—with a dragon! A small dragon, assuming what I’d already read was accurate, but a dragon nonetheless.
“Uh…’scuse me?” I said as coolly as possible. “You’re a dragon?”
The beast put down its beer mug and mockingly examined its claws, glanced behind him at the pair of wings on his back and then lifted his tail off the floor and swung it over his shoulder. He tilted back in his chair and picked up his mug again.
“Nah, this is Town Hall and I’m the mayor! Those guys over there? That’s the Newark Town Council!” He pointed over to the bar where sat…well, actually, they were sort of leaning on the bar—three other dragons of various shapes and sizes.
I’m not certain if it was the two and a half gallons of Uncle Merl’s Best & Only or the ridiculousness of watching a nine-foot-long creature in a cabby’s cap, sucking a semi-lit cigar stub and snapping an imaginary baseball while trying to explain Whitey Ford’s fast ball to an eight-foot-long Sea Serpent who was sucking down a Schlitz, that I found disalarming. According to the reports, I should have been hauling tail myself lest a single fiery blast from snapping jaws do me mortal harm. But looking at this crew, the only danger I’d be in would be to refuse to go on a pizza run for them!
“Okay Okay Okay! Foist dings foist! Forget all that crap you read about “fiery blast” and “snapping jaws”. Bad press! There ain’t nuttin’ on God’s green oith that breathes fire! Okay okay! Every once in a looooong while, one of us may loose it and belch a little fire. Like when da Ump said Yogi missed Jackie wid the tag! The noive a’dat…”
I just shook my head in semi-disbelief.
“What? Youse guys usually have a million questions when we do this. You’re jus’ gonna sit there wid your head bobbin’ up n’ down like one a dose dog-dings in the back of a ‘68 Chebby?”
“No questions? Ten minutes ago I was blasting down boilermakers with the Newark Retiree All-Stars, now here I am in the Lair of the White Worm!”
“Heyyy, da White Woim! Quadracornutus Serpens! That’s cute! Hey, you’re smarter than you look! I like dat! Yo, Maxie, draw two more and c’mon over! This guy’s a riot!” The largest of the three at the bar rose slowly and went for the beer tap, filled a couple of pitchers and lumber towards us.
“Hoy! Wad-a-jolt! This schtuff’ll make you mashuga!”
“You’re Jewish?”
“No, schmuck! I just look Jewish!”
“Okay Okay Okay. You wanted dragons, ya got dragons! Uncle Moil said we should give youse da facts so’s that somebody finally gets the story right for once! Old Moil, he…”
“WHO THE HELL IS UNCLE MOIL? ER, MERL?”
“Moil! You hoid a’ him. Moilen? Da Magician? Use to hang out wid Fast Artie and those other iron-bottomed dorks.” Campy spied my empty mug and looked at me with mock anger. “Hey, empty glasses here are OUT! Max! Fill’em up!”
“Wait a minute!” I shouted, trying to stop the pour of the larger of the two creatures, but he beat me to the draw. Since the mug had already been filled, I decided that the wisest course was the Roman approach. So I did as my two apparitions were doing. I stuck the mug in my face and kicked back in my chair.
“You mean to tell me, Merlin—King Arthur’s Merlin—runs a bar in Newark? New Jersey? We’re not even talkin’ Manhattan?”
“Yo! You knockin’ Nawk? Remember one thing! New Yawk may be a Summer Festival—but Nawk’s a riot!”
The bad joke caught me off guard. I stared blankly at the Dodger-capped reptile, not knowing quite how to respond. Once he figured out that the gag wasn’t going over, he assumed an air of disappointed seriousness and continued.
“Nah,” Campy shook his head, “you just think you’re in a bar in Nawk! None a’dis is really here.” The dragon with the Yiddish accent tapped his glass and rolled one eye shut in a wink. Campy looked at him as if to say ‘What I forget?’ and then shrugged knowingly. “Okay Okay Okay…the stools is here. The Bar is here. You’re sitting at a real table… in fact just as a ‘pernt of interest’, a rrroooouuuunnnndddd table! Eh?”
He smiled a kind of so-now-you-know grin at me. “But as fer the rest of it? We’re sittin’ in the middle of a city-block sized slice of pre-industrialized Nawk forest—circa…eh, what? 1771, ’72? And don’t let dis upset you, but I’m twenny-seben feet long and six feet wide! Maxi here, he’s almost thoidy-fibe feet long and weighs almos’ four tons! Some trick, huh? Let’s see the Amazin’ Randy top dat!”
“I think I’m going to be sick!”
“Relax, kid, you’re doin’ fine! Grover Cleveland pitched his cookies for twenny minutes after he met us, and ole’ Honest Abe almos’ cut loose in his pants! ‘Course, Babe Ruth just got up and tended bar for a couple of hours—he was a total waste of time, but a whole lotta laughs! What could we say? God liked him! I don’t think Babe even noticed we were dragons! Wern’t no use talkin’ to him!”
“Let me see if I’ve got this right! I’m here for you guys to give me ‘the facts’ about dragons?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I’m supposed to do… what? Set the record straight?”
“Uh-huh!”
“And you guys are gonna help me do it…”
“Bright boy!” Max shook his head in disbelief that questions with such obvious answers required actual responses. “Oi, wada schmuck! This one’s gonna h’rank right up there with the Babe!”
“Okay Okay Okay Look! You need a story, we got a story! You need sumpin’ diff’rent, we got sumpin’ diff’rent! You want the Troot, we got the Troot!”
“I want the Truth!”
“Hoy! You mashuga bedbug, you can’t handle the thruth!”
“Well, if you want bullshit, we got dat too! So if you wanna write about fiery breath… Maxie, draw two more!”
It kind of seemed ‘reasonable’. Right from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. So where was a good place to start? The beginning would be too easy with this bunch.
“Look, guys, I’ve been here for four hours already…”
“Y’only has been here ten minutes!” Campy had a provoking grin on his face…snout…whatever! I had a feeling I was better off not asking the obvious questions.
“Forget the time. Who are you guys? Are you, like, you know, like the last four?”
“Kid, ya been watchin’ too many bad movies! Nahhhh, there’s hun’dreds of us. Most of us woik for Intoinal Rev’new! Civil Soy’vus, wada concept! And don’t insult us with obvious questions! Ya sat here for four hours…”
“Ten minutes!” I hastily interjected.
“Okay Okay Okay! Ten minutes! And ya never once knew we was dragons!”
“SO WHO ARE YOU???”
“Hoi, wada dope! We tol’ja! We’re drag…”
“No, I mean—what do I call you? Who are you guys? Rover, Spot, Lassie?”
“Don’t be an idiot. We’re dragons, not collies! Okay Okay Okay I’m Campy. Y’already know dat. If ya wants to get technical about things, I’m Dragonus Brooklynus. Bet’cha didn’t know ya had dragons in America!”
“Bet’cha never met my Landlady!”
“Diff’rent kind of dragon. Anyhow, this guy here Dragonus Medaterrainus Maximus. Jus’call’im Max!”
“Shalom.”
“Maxie here is as big as they come! And he’s from the oldest line of Dragons in the woild! Tell me the troot, does he look like he’s 6,897 years old?” I looked across the table at Max, who was sitting there grinning and flexing his right arm. He sort of reminded me of Charles Atlas—only with scales.
“He doesn’t look a century over five millennia to me!”
“You’re damn right he don’t! And Maxie knew’em all! He knew Solomon, he knew King David, he knew Samson, he knew…”
“h’Every one a’dem, I knew!” Max grinned wider.
“WOW! Who was the greatest of them all?”
“Greenboig! HANK… Greenboig! Use to play first base for d’Detroit Tigers! MVP in 1935! Wadda guy, wadda mensch! He clocked baseballs, they still haven’t landed, I mean to tell ya!” Max swung a defiant look at the snout below the Dodger’s cap.
“Greenboig? GREENBOIG? He couldn’t knock the doit outa Jackie Robinson’s spikes!!!” And immediately they set to work throwing stats at each other like spears. It was giving ‘Dragonus Horribilius” a whole new meaning. In the midst of the rising din, a rather distinguished old gent—I mean as far as a dragon can look distinguished—beckoned me to the bar. I left Max and Campy somewhere around the ’48 World Series.
“I say, you really should have another one of these.” He handed me another brew. “They… they can go like that for several months. Strange game, baseball.” The old boy sipped his drink and directed my attentions away from his two companions, who were verbally locked in mortal combat.
“Please allow me to make the remaining introductions. The Chinese fellow here is Dragonus Orientus, Tai Won Hon by name. We prefer to call him ‘Hi’.” Before the sound of the name had faded into the air, the Oriental portion of the quartet had clutched my hand and was pumping it vigorously.
“Hi, a ha’hew, Hi, hi, hi, ha’hew!”
“I’m afraid old boy, that’s rather the extent of his English. Not much on stimulating conversation, but rather smashing at ordering Szechwan, wot?”
“Hi, a ha’hew, Hi, ha’hew!”
“Bit of a gad-about too, I’m afraid…Chinese New Year and all that!”
“And you?” I said, trying to be as cordial as possible under the circumstances.
“Knew I’d forgotten something! Forgive me. Dragonus Anglo-Hibernius Afrikaanus. Choulonga Mamamu. Father was one of the first settlers of Johannesburg.”
I suppose I should have been taken aback by the evening’s proceedings but, in all honesty, the bloodhound in me was coming out. I was more curious about “Da Troot” that Campy had spoken of than anything else. I cut Max and Campy off at the ’67 All-Star game, rounded up the whole crew to the table and got down to the business I seemed to be elected to.
“Okay Okay Okay! It’s simple. Up until the end of the ‘ate’ century—I think it was a Thoisday—everything was Kosher.”
“Yey. Shah! That’s the void! Kosha!”
“See, back in the old days, there was three basic ingredients that kept the woild spinnin’. Foist, there was religion, and everybody had at least two! Then, there was politics and outside of the guys wearin’ da crowns, most folk couldn’t give a Schlitz about it. And las’ but not least, there was magic. Everything was swell. Everybody was ‘jake’! An’ Moilen? Ho’Boy, does he screw things up!”
“Rather!”
“Okay Okay, let me see if I can ‘splain this to ya. You’ve got a problem; go directly to Moil, or one of his boys! A couple a’schwings wid the ole’ wand—Poof! No more problem! I’m tellin’ you, the woild was great! The Boids would sing sweetly in da trees, flowers grew in the fields, everybody got free tickets to the home opener…”
“You guys played baseball?”
“The game is 7,394 years old…nex’ April! Don’t tell me you actually believe Abner Doubleday came up wid the idea! The guy was joiky general in the Union Army! The guy couldn’t tell his bats from his balls! Anyway, along comes Arter. Okay Okay Okay, whenever youse guys hear the name King Arter, ya thinks of Prince Valiant or woise…Disney’s ‘Sword and the Stone”! A cute liddle kid, blonde hair, blue eyes—what a crock! Da guy at his bes’ was fi’foot nuttin’, with greasy black hair and no idea what a bat’tub was for! He had da manners, mentality and morals of a goat! In fact, the only difference between them was that the goat smelled better! Him an’ his buddies used to paint their butts blue and run down hills swingin’ axes, swords, clubs…”
“Their schwances!”
“Their schwances! Anything they could get their hands on, swingin’ them over their heads and yellin’ like wild men! They’d chop down anything in front of them. What a bunch of hooligans!”
“D’guy was a schnook! This is d’guy Moil picks to upgrade the human h’race! Oi! Wada putz!”
“I guess he thought it was a challenge. Moil teaches him to read. And what does the joik pick to read? D’only book there is back den…the Bible! Nex’ding ya know, instead of magicians, ya got monks! Little fat guys in gray robes, ridin’ around on donkeys. So now Arter’s got religion. He’s also got a horde of blue-tailed monkeys that could make a tribe of cannibals look like a Boy Scout troop. They looked bad in front of the locals, so to keep ’em busy and outa trouble he puts ’em all in stainless steel union suits, calls ’em ‘Knights a’da Realm’—and what’s the foist thing these clowns do? They start killin’ ev’y Witch, Sorcerer or Magician they can find. And after they run outa dem, these id’jits start choppin’ on us! Da noive!!!”
“Hoi, ge’val, wada mess! Guys we’d been hangin’ out wid for the last 8,000 years is looking to put our heads on a wall! Von day we is buddies, then vooosh! Open season!”
“Whoa! You guys are tellin’ me…”
“Budder, it looked like the wild frickin’ west! They was comin’ out of the woodwoik like roaches, hoopin’ n’ hollerin’ like a pack a’ wild dogs! A dragon couldn’t take a dump widout some screwball in a steel kimono takin’ a poke at ’em!”
“My God! Like crazy people. Before that, if you disagreed with someone, you stomped your feet a few times and charged. It was an honorable duel! And good exercise! The sun would rise and there you’d be, your second at your side! Why, when I was sent to Oxford to study…do you see this scar here?” As Choulonga began pointing out a number of jagged marks across his personage inflicted by numerous adversaries whose names read like an historical ‘who’s who’, the others were quick to join in. Before long, I was in the midst of an unparalleled din as names were shouted out and fingers tossed at scars. From what I was gathering, next to baseball, dueling was the great recreational pastime. I figured it was only a matter of time before the subject of sex came up.
“You mean to tell me that for 8,000 years, all anybody ever did was hang out, fight and play baseball?”
“Okay Okay Okay…we made love a lot, too!”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me!”
“Oh yeah, we’re h’expoits on the subject! OI! The things you guys don’t know! You’ve herd that crap about only a voigin should catch a unicorn? Booschit!”
“Bullshit?”
“Oi’geval, wad Booschit! H’ain’t no sech critter! You ever seen von a’dose critters?”
“Uh…no?”
“H’ok! My point h’egg-zackly!” Max took the cigar stub out of his teeth and examined it absently, as his thought drifted back to the previous subject. “Shah! Before that…we was buddies. Go figure!”
For a moment, a heavy silence hung over the little Round Table gathering.
“I h’remember this one guy,” Max broke the silence, “back in the days of Hammah’rabbi—what the hell vas his name? Gilga…Gilga…I don’t remember, Gilga somethin’! Anyway, he’d come h’runnin’ atcha, screamin’ like a mashuga lion. He’d knock ya a schot, it’d cross your eyes! Wad a schrapper…”
“Gave you a real run for the money, huh Max?”
“Me? Nah! Vone schot n’I’d lay ’em out cold! Don’t forget, I outweighed him by three or four tons!”
“Good point!”
“But the bastid’d get up and keep comin’! Now that… was a Mensch! They don’t make ’em like that anymore!”
“Okay Okay Okay, forget da ‘down-home’ stuff. Here we was. The woild was in toimearl…”
“You mean ‘turmoil’?”
“Yeah! Thas’ wad I sed! Toimearl! The woild was in toimearl and Uncle Moil was kicking himself in the keester for unleashin’ this idiot on the civilized woild. From Europe to the Orient, a dragon…”
“I’m getting confused. You’re telling me that up until the eight century…”
“Coulda been the bottom of the seventh, top of the ninth… who h’remembers dese things?”
“Whenever… you guys are telling me that dragons and people…”
“The world was a rather nice place to be born into. We drank, some of us played baseball…”
“Chou here hates da game. He’d rather play cockroach!”
“Crickettttt!”
“Who d’hell cares, Chou! Dey never played it in Brooklyn, so it ain’t a…”
“But what about all those plagues and wars I used to read about???”
“I’m sorry, old chap. War is a human concept.”
“Don’t be a joik! Jus ’cause youse guys run around in three-piece suits instead a’ bearskins and loincloths, what makes you think you’re civilized? Civilized was what it was before Arter! Him an’ his boys-in-da-hoods redefined everything! For example—one a’da foist things he did to try an’ control that tribe of ring-tailed gorillas that had been followin’ him around was to institute the ‘Rules of Chivalry’! Big step for civilization? Instant discrimination! Now, nobody was having a problem! Since nobody had nuttin’ anyway, everybody had an equal share of everything! Da rules looked great on paper, but did they woik in the real woild? Not on your life! It caused problems in nearly ev’y aspect of life. To be ‘one’ up on the guy below you, you gotta have ‘one’ in the foist place! So they went out and took it! All these guys in armor kickin’ the b’Jesus outa the little guys in the fields. Land, gold. Wives and daughters—didn’ matter, they took and took! And that’s another ding! Women had always had equal rights with men. Why not? They could pull a plow as well as any man, an’ better than most mules. An’ you didn’ have to water them half as much! They did the woik they got the pay! Complete equal rights. Okay Okay Okay, they had a league of their own but a couple of them even played in the majors! What the hell was that French broad’s name? What a hitter! She was really on fire, right to the end! Went out in a real blaze! Anyway, by and large they had a fifty-fifty deal that woiked!”
“What squashed it was Arter’s inability to get a woman! Since Moil wouldn’t let him rape and boin anymore, he couldn’t catch a goil wid a net! Moil had to send away for a mail-order bride—an’ even SHE booted out for another guy! Ha! Wad a chimp!”
“Uh, can we go back to the part about ‘no war’?”
“Okay Okay Okay, there was no war. Nobody wanted to go to war.”
“But if there wasn’t any war, how did nations settle problems that couldn’t be resolved with diplomacy?”
“Dip… in a s’chivilized and orderly, time tested fashion! On the Diamond!”
“BASEBALL?”
“Naw, joiky… we played mahjong! A’course, baseball! All the great civilizations had teams!”
Na, na, na! You’re not gonna tell me…”
“Baseball!”
“C’mon, History says…”
“Hey! Joik! If you kin read, you kin write! An’ brudder, could those monks write!”
“Oi, an’ did dem boys hate dragons!”
“They changed history, top to bottom! Everything! Seven thousand written years of Dragonus-Humanus… GONE, JACK! Let me give you a ‘for example’ of what got lost. How do you think ole Hannibal got over the Alps? On elephants?”
“Dragons?”
“On-da-nose, paly! An’ why? ‘Cause Hannibal had a coive ball that was killer!”
“Come again?”
“Before Arter had his merry band, if you had a difference with somebody, or they had sompin’ you wanted and they didn’t want to give it up…”
“Best of seven, winner take all?”
“Three of five would do, or seven of eleven but you got the picture. Wad a coive that bastid had...”
“Because a’ dat coive, I was up to my tuchas in ice an’ snow for a month! When we get there he throws three straight shut outs on the road, and it looks a sweep, but they lose the final game to some Roman named Skippy, I think his name was. Still and all, I’d like to see Nolan h’Ryan do that!”
“Ah, he doctored da ball even more than Ryan did! That ding broke four feet over the plate…”
“I say, old boy, still bent out of shape over that called ‘third strike’, are we?”
““Okay Okay Okay! Enough! We was robbed! Hey, uh, I’m gettin’ hungry. Who’s for Chinese? Maxie, you stay here an’ keep talkin’ to the kid about the way dings was. Where d’hell are my car keys?”
They disappeared in a flash—literally. Max and I headed for the nearest beer tap.
“H’every time the subject of Hannibal an’ dat called third strike comes up, he gets hungry. Big deal! Bottom of the twenny-seventh, bases loaded and down by von! Full count. Voooshhh-imah! Campy watches von sail over the plate! It happens! Dat’s da game!” Max eyed the tap. “Here.” He handed me another pitcher and took one for himself.
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