College Town: Quick and Dirty
Quick and dirty because it sounds so much better than College Town : an Overview or Macomb : A Horror story (wasn't really a horror story but who can resist the drama).
People may notice that there are any of a number of topics that I avoid like the plague. Excepting the previous post, I stay clear of religion or politics in that once you are searchable to the fanatics as a commentator in such arenas the spam brigade steps in to let the world know how exactly terribly wrong and stupid you are for voicing an opinion or belief. I avoid talking about relationships or sex except with occasional vague references to a somewhat unhealthy obsession with the adult film industry. Few mentions are made of my childhood. I don't talk about past intoxicated antics and this leads me to Macomb, IL home of Western Illinois University and myself for a number of years during my twenties.
It's time to buck some trends.
So talking to younger Macomby Homies (as they jokingly referred to themselves) one almost always got the impression that they had a desperate urgent need to move far, far away. One young lady expressed it by saying the only things to do in Macomb are eat, drink, do drugs and fornicate (ok the four letter explicative is really how she expressed herself). My twenty something self thought this to be quite the perfect list. With such a short list of leisure time activities I was sure I might, even with all of my social anxieties, be able to participate in the apparently rampant sex more than on a once every three to four year basis. This may have actually worked out if it hadn't been for all my other fears an neurosis that I may or may not decide to talk about at length in some future posts. The opportunities were there. I just failed to make them happen.
While this younger impression of what small town / college town life isn't exactly accurate it had a large basis in truth. There is a bowling alley. There are a number of small specialty shops on the historic down town square. (Clothes, music food, books anything a bored college student needs). There is a nice coffee shop that always hosts art displays and gatherings for the liberally minded. The Elks, Eagles, Lions and Rotarians all have lodges. Any building that has room for a pool table or two has them. The down town areas is picturesque and can cater to all your consumer needs.
Part of the dirty is that all of theses businesses staff on the cheap. Why pay an adult full time wages when every couple months a new crop of young people come in who are desperate to make a little extra money doing shift work two or three times a week making minimum wage or slightly better. There are no futures in any of these job no lasting promotions and the number of people who make a living as managers or head chefs can be no more than perhaps a hundred at the outside (I think I'm being generous).
Road and building construction is big. I knew at least two crews who made their dollars off the state pork projects. They might compete with each other to get a job or contract but there was little animosity and of course if you weren't a member of these crews or knew the people in charge you weren't in the building trades.
I naturally gravitated to the lowest elements. A friend got me a job in a country western bar as a bouncer and shortly after it made the switch to modern dance and a kid three years my junior was put in charge of the bouncers I asked if perhaps my friend might be able to get me work with the blues bar downstairs. In the blues bar I excelled as a bar back (physical grunt who lugs around the booze and trash) and then was later promoted down to bartender of the basement of the bar and to my level of incompetence.
During the day the basement of the blues bar was all working class people just off of work watching sports and listening to 70s classic rock. At around 10 pm the atmosphere changed. A few college kids would wander in as the older people went home to bed. The local drug culture made my basement bar their home. These were my kind of crazy people and I didn't have a problem with this. The bar owners didn't mind so much as no dealing went on in the bar and of course people kept drinking. My problem is of course I am a sap for a pretty face, so of course I would spend half my tips every night buying drinks for all my crazy ladies. Oh and they were crazy. These were the ones who would be getting the serious anti-psychotic, anti-mood swing meds under a doctors care but as their living situation didn't provide for that, they self medicated with booze and whatever happened to come their way.
It is very hard as a bartender to know when to cut a customer off. The switch from being able to sit and drink and have a good time to falling down drunk stupid can happen instantly without warning. Knowing ones customers and their habits helps, but when you are dealing with the self medicating crazies, all bets are off. Some nights they can come in and toss off whiskey straight like its water. Another night a customer will be on a second or third drink and suddenly become belligerent and start fighting with everyone and their brother. While it fascinating to watch must be a horror to live through.
How many claim to have no memories of the night before. How many hit the bottle to wash away the memory.
And then there are the nights when you are off sitting there next to the forty year old who looks sixty with no money in your wallet and you are almost out of cigarettes and it hits you just how incredibly destructive and awesome (in the overwhelmingly terrible sense of the word) this life really is. And still it hits me that these are my people no matter how far I walk away from it. These are the ones seeking solace from a word that makes more demands on them every day.
There is so much more that can and needs to be said but this was just and introduction and as such it has served it's purpose. Once upon a time in a college town four hours from Chicago, I was a bartender.
More Laters
People may notice that there are any of a number of topics that I avoid like the plague. Excepting the previous post, I stay clear of religion or politics in that once you are searchable to the fanatics as a commentator in such arenas the spam brigade steps in to let the world know how exactly terribly wrong and stupid you are for voicing an opinion or belief. I avoid talking about relationships or sex except with occasional vague references to a somewhat unhealthy obsession with the adult film industry. Few mentions are made of my childhood. I don't talk about past intoxicated antics and this leads me to Macomb, IL home of Western Illinois University and myself for a number of years during my twenties.
It's time to buck some trends.
So talking to younger Macomby Homies (as they jokingly referred to themselves) one almost always got the impression that they had a desperate urgent need to move far, far away. One young lady expressed it by saying the only things to do in Macomb are eat, drink, do drugs and fornicate (ok the four letter explicative is really how she expressed herself). My twenty something self thought this to be quite the perfect list. With such a short list of leisure time activities I was sure I might, even with all of my social anxieties, be able to participate in the apparently rampant sex more than on a once every three to four year basis. This may have actually worked out if it hadn't been for all my other fears an neurosis that I may or may not decide to talk about at length in some future posts. The opportunities were there. I just failed to make them happen.
While this younger impression of what small town / college town life isn't exactly accurate it had a large basis in truth. There is a bowling alley. There are a number of small specialty shops on the historic down town square. (Clothes, music food, books anything a bored college student needs). There is a nice coffee shop that always hosts art displays and gatherings for the liberally minded. The Elks, Eagles, Lions and Rotarians all have lodges. Any building that has room for a pool table or two has them. The down town areas is picturesque and can cater to all your consumer needs.
Part of the dirty is that all of theses businesses staff on the cheap. Why pay an adult full time wages when every couple months a new crop of young people come in who are desperate to make a little extra money doing shift work two or three times a week making minimum wage or slightly better. There are no futures in any of these job no lasting promotions and the number of people who make a living as managers or head chefs can be no more than perhaps a hundred at the outside (I think I'm being generous).
Road and building construction is big. I knew at least two crews who made their dollars off the state pork projects. They might compete with each other to get a job or contract but there was little animosity and of course if you weren't a member of these crews or knew the people in charge you weren't in the building trades.
I naturally gravitated to the lowest elements. A friend got me a job in a country western bar as a bouncer and shortly after it made the switch to modern dance and a kid three years my junior was put in charge of the bouncers I asked if perhaps my friend might be able to get me work with the blues bar downstairs. In the blues bar I excelled as a bar back (physical grunt who lugs around the booze and trash) and then was later promoted down to bartender of the basement of the bar and to my level of incompetence.
During the day the basement of the blues bar was all working class people just off of work watching sports and listening to 70s classic rock. At around 10 pm the atmosphere changed. A few college kids would wander in as the older people went home to bed. The local drug culture made my basement bar their home. These were my kind of crazy people and I didn't have a problem with this. The bar owners didn't mind so much as no dealing went on in the bar and of course people kept drinking. My problem is of course I am a sap for a pretty face, so of course I would spend half my tips every night buying drinks for all my crazy ladies. Oh and they were crazy. These were the ones who would be getting the serious anti-psychotic, anti-mood swing meds under a doctors care but as their living situation didn't provide for that, they self medicated with booze and whatever happened to come their way.
It is very hard as a bartender to know when to cut a customer off. The switch from being able to sit and drink and have a good time to falling down drunk stupid can happen instantly without warning. Knowing ones customers and their habits helps, but when you are dealing with the self medicating crazies, all bets are off. Some nights they can come in and toss off whiskey straight like its water. Another night a customer will be on a second or third drink and suddenly become belligerent and start fighting with everyone and their brother. While it fascinating to watch must be a horror to live through.
How many claim to have no memories of the night before. How many hit the bottle to wash away the memory.
And then there are the nights when you are off sitting there next to the forty year old who looks sixty with no money in your wallet and you are almost out of cigarettes and it hits you just how incredibly destructive and awesome (in the overwhelmingly terrible sense of the word) this life really is. And still it hits me that these are my people no matter how far I walk away from it. These are the ones seeking solace from a word that makes more demands on them every day.
There is so much more that can and needs to be said but this was just and introduction and as such it has served it's purpose. Once upon a time in a college town four hours from Chicago, I was a bartender.
More Laters
posted by Rich Rosenthal II at 1:16 AM
3 Comments:
I worked in a bar briefly. I feel your pain man! One time this guy fell off his bar stool while smoking a cigar, never let the cigar fall. I thought it was amazing. I do miss the nightlife though.....
Ooooh, great story. Can't wait to hear more.
I had considered starting yet another blog for my college town stories but It works out here I think. I miss the people mostly not booze or the hangovers.
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