Happy Hour at Joe’s Bar

‘I am a frequent flier. If I get to the airport I am asked to report at the airlines office to collect my tickets or alternate travel papers. It becomes such a nuisance that I wonder if the airlines hold some grudge’. I was among the usual bar flies that flitted from one table to the other.On that particular night I had lost my papers, and time as well. So where would I go but to Joe’s Bar?
Invariably the bar fiends all land around me when all their stories become progressively maudlin. I think they all gather there to salt the wounds for which I have taken to drink. No other explanation. The drinking class these days have no malt in their guts. Whenever one starts telling the job he is angling for I quickly down it and leave the glass so he can leave his tears behind. So much unsettled salt around. So once I holler,’Joe, some french fries, unsalted?’

You see if I can’t help it better know which side of my french fry is unsalted.

Another time I was in Spitzhaven, Germany and to my surprise there was a Joe’s Bar and I straightaway headed to it. Seeing a statue of Baron Münchausen seated on a barrel I could not help referencing him. After much beer flowed I said a joke to which a native asked, ‘choke?’

I knew my leiderhausen was not going burst at its seams but we had a language barrier. Luckily I saw some fellow Americans that made me feel at home.  They were more than willing to paint the town red but also hear my adventures.  Two stories I recollect while beer got the better of my brain.

Like the Baron who lifted himself by his peruke once I lifted myself by my toes. In the hotel room one fine morning stood two brutes on either side one had a bucket full of scalding hot water asking other who had ice cold water,”What will he get? Toss-up?”

I think I lost half my audience at that point. I was not yet finished and there was one still hanging  around so I turned all my boozy charm on him.

There was no helping. He was ever laughing to jokes before I began. So to  irritate him I began with the punchline. He says,’ go on. I hear it backwards.’

benny

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Hazy memories of one evening at the Joe’s Bar

If you want to know what is like in a bar I am the man for you. I have been to Soho London where night life begins pretty early. Always I find fortified with Alcohol not even a pole dancer is a problem. They do their routine while my grey matter is reeling round corpus callosum a watusi. A drinker gets what he wants, bottoms up I mean.
Watusi! Ah it brings memory when I drank under the night sky in the open. I remember that night I had a lion, a stray cat I believe, and it came almost close while the ice in my glass clanked in fright. I looked at the lion and stared him of course the smell of whisky said, shoo! shoo! in a lingo something a lion has nose for. The thing is I am not one to blink easily, except when I was in Joe’s Bar.
While drinking I wanted to take a leak and I went to men’s room and while I stood there holding my own in the crowded john, I felt I was crowded out by strangers whose total liquor must have been pretty awesome. They were letting it all splash out! Imagine I just could not pee! They were doing their own and I was following the universal law,’when you got to go you gotta head towards the john.’It didn’t work that night.
There was no lion but just me and my own need.
That was the last I took a leak at the Joe’s Bar.
benny

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