![\"mayday-71-protest_edit\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/mayday-71-protest_edit.jpg\")
\n(Washington DC in 1971, Mayday.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n(Washington DC in 1971, Mayday.)<\/p>\n
Old Jim established a beachhead at the Amen Corner and called me at the office to let me know that the bar was open for business. I glanced at the clock. I had another couple tasks to get through before I could shut things down, but I told him I would be by presently.<\/p>\n
I slung my backpack on the hook underneath the corner of the rich dark mahogany and let things flow out. \u201cKrugman says Stockman is an idiot,\u201d growled Jim. A can of Budweiser was sitting on the bar in front of him, one of the minimalist new design and a disturbance in the routine that normally featured a brown glass long-neck bottle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ran out of time this morning,\u201d I said. \u201cAll the economists are loony tunes. I was submerged in the news. I got mail from as far away as Australia and the Russian Far East asking what the hell was going on in Korea, and could not concentrate on Keynesian economic theory.\u201d<\/p>\n
I shrugged as Tex slid a tulip glass in front of me and filled it with golden sauvignon blanc. \u201cThen I had to write back and tell them that the Northerners are not nuts, but that this is a very disturbing level of venom from them. I honestly don\u2019t know what to make of it, except that I think they will ratchet things down after the exercises in the South are over. On the other hand, they have placed two IRBMs on the pad and God knows what they might do. Lob them in the general direction of Guam?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAssholes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat might be the best summary of the situation I have heard,\u201d I said pensively. \u201cAnd here at home law-abiding, tax-paying former public servants are talking about preparations for a post-American future. I don\u2019t get it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has a long tradition,\u201d said Jim. \u201cI remember how nuts it was here in the District in the late \u201860s.\u201d Jon-without with bowtie marched in from the double doors and slid onto the stool to my right.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo job interviews today,\u201d he said quietly. \u201cI went to the strangest dinner last night. Have you ever been to Pier 7?\u201d<\/p>\n
Jim and I nodded. \u201cSure- that place on the Waterfront in SW? Food sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a professional dinner- Washington Chapter of the Society of Mechanical Engineers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSounds like fun,\u201d Jim said dubiously. \u201cNot.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a big round table and I didn\u2019t know anyone. Two Hill staffers were talking about what they were up to in terms of bringing the millennium to pass. This networking crap is a pain. I left.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am about at the end of that stuff. I joined LinkedIn years ago and I keep getting invitations and solicitations from people I have never heard of but I have forgotten my password.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have heard that people have received job offers from headhunters. That is how that Australian recruiter found me,\u201d said Jon. He decided on a martini for his libation, always willing to mix them up. Tex makes a mean one, and has placed in the top three in the local bartenders mixology contest three times. \u201cThe next one is coming up soon,\u201d he said, as he poured the clear liquid into the signature glass in front of Jon-without. \u201cThe sixth annual contest will be next week at the Beacon Bar. For 25 bucks you can get all the martinis and snacks you want.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat sounds like trouble,\u201d I said. \u201cThat is why I drink white wine when I am out these days.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked over at Old Jim. \u201cYou used to be a bartender downtown, didn\u2019t you? Before you started tilting at political windmills?\u201d<\/p>\n
He smiled. \u201cYeah, I tended the bar at Marshall\u2019s West End in Foggy Bottom. The bartender mafia was a tough one. We all knew each other. It is gone now- I think it is an Indian restaurant now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWas that the pub that your pal Danny owned?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, that was The Airplane up in Dupont. Danny was a wild man back in the day. His bar did a big lunch crowd back in the day. It was sort of a dive, off a side-street, and in the basement. I went in to open up one day- well, the cook actually opened up the place but I opened the bar. My first two customers came in and I went over to ask what they were having and Danny shoots up out of nowhere, and bellows \u201cWhat do you want to drink!\u201d He had been sleeping all night under the stools.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember when people drank during the day,\u201d said Jon-without.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do too,\u201d I said with a wince. \u201cSome things are better these days.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did all kinds of stuff. I had an evening shift one night and the three of us who were going to be working into the night went out back to smoke a joint. We had a runner who was supposed to support us. He was one of those twenty-somethings you see around here- his Dad was the Governor of New Jersey or something. Apparently he wasn\u2019t used to decent quality pot, and he got really zoned.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFar out,\u201d I said, taking a sip of wine.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we went back into the bar there were already people two or three deep. Danny told him to get ice, since we were going through it pretty quickly. The kid didn\u2019t go to the ice machine, he went to the walk-in and grabbed a big tub of cubes and dumped it in the sink behind the bar. Danny was waiting on a guy who wanted Scotch on the rocks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople don’t seem to drink Scotch much any more, at least not the blends.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, this was a blend, all right. The kid had got the container with the cut-up chicken in it. Danny made the drink and looked at the glass like the customer did, but he didn\u2019t miss a beat. \u201cYou want breast or thigh with that?\u201d he said.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat year was that?\u201d asked Jon-without.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u201968 or \u201869,\u201d growled Jim. \u201cI would have been in my thirties.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI first came to the District on my own in 1971,\u201d I said, thinking back to a very strange Spring outing. \u201cIt was the Mayday protest. We were going to shut down the Federal Government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jim looked over at me. \u201cSo, talking about what comes next is actually a lot more common than you think, isn\u2019t it? That was just like Occupy Wall Street, from what I recall.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, it didn\u2019t work out that way, and I did not get arrested, which might have changed a lot of stuff. I still have trouble on my polygraph exams with that question about whether I have ever advocated the violent overthrow of the US Government. I don\u2019t think it was that violent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d said Jon-without. \u201cThey seem to take a dim view of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat goes around,\u201d said Jim, and waggled a finger at Tex for another Bud.<\/p>\n
![\"budweiser-minimal-redesign\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/budweiser-minimal-redesign-159x281.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra (Washington DC in 1971, Mayday.) Old Jim established a beachhead at the Amen Corner and called me at the office to let me know that the bar was open for business. I glanced at the clock. I had another couple tasks to get through before I could shut things down, but I told him […]<\/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-5104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104","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=5104"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5107,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104\/revisions\/5107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwww.vicsocotra.comRenee Lasche Colorado Springs<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"