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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I looked at Liz-S across the bar. \u201cHey, is this the last day you are the bar manager?\u201d She smiled broadly, tossing her chestnut ponytail.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will stay, part time, but as of Monday I am an official grown up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAwesome. It is about time. You are on your way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s at Willow are transitional days from the perils of the working week to the full-on activities of the weekend. People tend to skip happy hour to go home and get changed for date nights or clubbing, so we had the place to ourselves. Old Jim was in Vegas with Mary, and whatever they were up to is going to have to stay there. A week without him growling at us would have made me feel a little lonely, but Mac was there to buck us up.<\/p>\n
Tracey O\u2019Grady was standing at the end of the bar, hands on the hips of her white coat. \u201cHey, Tracey!\u201d I called. \u201cWhat is the special today?\u201d She has been putting items on the menu for a limited time, like the Buffalo Beef Sandwiches on kemmelweck rolls.<\/p>\n
\u201cGotta keep it fresh,\u201d she said with a broad Irish grin. \u201cI think you will like it. I have sushi with soft-shell crab or shrimp, or some all-beef Sahlen’s mini-wieners from my home town of Buffalo, New York, served with pomme frites and tempura pickles.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHoly smokes,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSort of like half-smokes, yes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I mean I never thought I would see wieners on the menu at a fine dining place,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the nosh for the night,\u201d she said, and swept off toward the kitchen. Mac smiled in appreciation. This was another virgin night for him, damn the Doctors, and he liked to see the kids enjoy themselves in consolation.<\/p>\n
The Master Chief swaggered in through the doors to the patio and slid into Jim\u2019s usual chair next to Mac, and John-with-an-H pulled out the earbuds to his iPod. \u201cWhaddaya think,\u201d I asked. \u201cWieners or Sushi?\u201d<\/p>\n
Jasper, the other Guamanian to Mac, grinned from across the bar. \u201cSushi for me. It is like back in the islands.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Master Chief said he would try the wieners, and Mac took a sip of his Virgin Mary. I took a long pull from the crisp white wine, and asked Mac if we could tally the number of wars we had experience with. He wrinkled his brow. \u201cI had two big ones on active duty,\u201d he said. \u201cI missed Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to serve there, but no one died while I was there, or, better said, only the ones who were going to die anyway. No Red Letter days.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a Red Letter Day for me,\u201d said John-with. He produced a slip of paper from his pocket. \u201cI paid off my car.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe FX35?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He nodded. \u201cYep. Only 28,000 miles on the odometer. I am going to own it until I die. Of course they asked me if I wanted to shop for a new one and I said Hell No.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a nice raise every month, though the Infiniti people would rather have you replace it. Why aren\u2019t you doing something to enhance the economy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will have to do it without me. That is one thing. The other is that this is the day the wheels came off the Obama Presidency.\u201d<\/p>\n
I snorted. \u201cYou mean the Brietbart discovery of that publishing brochure for his first book that claimed he was born in Kenya?\u201d asked ISCM.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw that. That site is pretty strange. It took about fifteen minutes for the Huffington Post to change the caption on the story to reflect the spin from the White House. I bet no one pays any attention to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
John-with looked disappointed. \u201cWell, it turns out that the First Birther was actually the President himself. I remember when I first heard about Monica Lewinski. I was convinced Clinton was toast.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were wrong about that, and the media will just ignore this like they do everything,\u201d said Mac. \u201cI don\u2019t blame them. I have seen about everything in this town since we came back from the war.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he actually was born in Hawaii, don\u2019t get me wrong. I think what it means is that he wasn\u2019t thinking about the Presidency at the time and thought that was an advantage to seem foreign born.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, you mean that stuff about him getting tuition aid as a foreign student? No one cares about that stuff anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they have to pay attention to it. This is huge.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe White House says he never even saw the blurb from the publishers, and they just had it wrong, or were hyping the foreign-born aspect on that first book.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t Dreams of My Father,\u201d said the Master Chief. \u201cIt was some other project about race relations that he abandoned.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that explains a lot,\u201d said John-with.<\/p>\n
Jon-without and the Lovely Bea came in and sat down the bar. \u201cWait till you see what the Friday specials are,\u201d I said. The Lovely Bea gave me one of those smiles that lights the whole dark bar.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, it really does explain a lot,\u201d repeated John-with. \u201cThe whole stonewalling thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we are sort of beyond all this,\u201d I said. \u201cThere is enough to talk about that is really screwed up rather than rehash whether the President claimed to be a foreigner when he was a kid. He might only have been thinking about being Mayor of Chicago at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is still an issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
I said it was just a war story from another war that had already been fought. Mac shook his head in agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know something about that,\u201d he said firmly. \u201cEnough wars. Mine are pretty much done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Master Chief looked dubious, and then smiled with the little plate with the tempura pickles, delicate French fries and lump little hot-dog on Kate Jansen\u2019s delicate roll arrived in front of him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat looks fantastic,\u201d I said, and snapped a shot of the Friday Special.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan we talk about something besides the presidential campaign? Something not so controversial?\u201d<\/p>\n
ISCM nodded. \u201cHow about chasing war criminals in Bosnia. That was interesting.\u201d And so we did. Mac chimed in with his tales about the former Yugoslavia, back when it was a nation.<\/p>\n
That, at least, was a war that was over.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I looked at Liz-S across the bar. \u201cHey, is this the last day you are the bar manager?\u201d She smiled broadly, tossing her chestnut ponytail. \u201cI will stay, part time, but as of Monday I am an official grown up.\u201d \u201cAwesome. It is about time. You are on your way.\u201d Friday\u2019s at Willow are transitional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14804"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14809,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14804\/revisions\/14809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}