A Sense for These Things

Sometimes the signs all line up.  It was suppertime when I hit town limits.  The town’s name was “Walker.”  The brightest lights on the building were neon beer signs.  The only vehicles in the gravel lot were pickup trucks.  Hank Thompson’s “A Six Pack to Go” was playing when I walked across the porch.  Next to the door there was a stuffed pad of the kind that people buy for their dogs.

I told Duke to stay on the porch, then opened the door of and looked in.  A guy with a gray ponytail and glasses stopped wiping down a table and looked at me.  I paused, trying to think of the best way to get what I wanted.

“Can I get you some food or a beer?” he offered.

“Yeah, I’m about to order some food in a minute,” I said.  I stepped inside.  He seemed like a nice guy.  I went with the direct approach, mainly because I couldn’t think of anything else.  “I’ve got my black lab with me; would it be alright if he came in?”

The guy hesitated and I knew I had him.  I pressed.  “He’s real well behaved,” I said.  “He’ll just sit by my chair if he needs to.  He isn’t going to bother anyone.”

He put his hands on his hips.  Then: “sure, bring him in.”

“Thanks,” I said.  “Okay,” I said to Duke, who had been waiting.  He trotted in behind me.  I sat at a corner table and Duke laid his head on my lap, his tail wagging so hard that his rear end swayed.  “I appreciate it,” I told the guy, “he’s real excited.”  Merle Haggard’s “Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down” came over the speakers.  I knew I’d found a good place.  I picked the menu up off the table and glanced through it for the burger section.  Duke sat on the floor beside my chair.  I figured Duke would win the guy over before too long.

“Man,” I said when he walked over to take my order, “you’ve got some great country drinking songs playing.”

“Yeah, we play a lot of country music.  We’re kind of known for . . .”  He paused, looking for the right words.

I grinned.  “Tying one on?” I asked.

“Every now and then,” he allowed.  “I’m still recovering from the last one.”  He said his wife had died not long ago, and he’d needed to begin the process of moving on.  Needed to forget for awhile.  Needed to have fun.  Needed to get away from Walker.  In such a time of tragedy, country music is instructive, and this man was a scholar of the tunes.  He knew what to do: he went to Nashville and got drunk.

“Yeah, I didn’t mean to get as drunk as I did,” he said.  “I wanted to hit all those bars on Broad Street, but we got to Tootsies at about 4:30.”  I had lived in Nashville for four years – Tootsies was the bar across the street from the old Ryman Auditorium, where Waylon and Willie used to sit between shows and drink on credit.  Live music, old oak bar, pictures all over the walls.  A great place for a scholar.  “And I sat there awhile, and there was this fiddle player . . .”  He whistled.  “Wow, she was good looking.”  I said, yeah, they raise some cute ones in Tennessee.  “And she could fiddle, too.  I love a fiddle.  So I sat there ‘till 7:30 or 8:00 when I got hungry, at dinner, and then I came back.  And they were still playing.  Same band!  This is hours later.  So I listened ‘till they finished the set, and then listened to the next band that came on.  And they were good too.

“So I didn’t leave the place until late.  I mean, late.  So I’m walking out of there, and I’ve had a lot to drink.  I mean, I’m drunk.  And this panhandler hits me up, and I thought, oh hell, but I gave him some money and kept going.  I was staying at the Sheraton, which was a few streets over.  And a couple blocks later I saw another person on a bench up ahead.  So I figured I’d walk past real fast and hope I didn’t get panhandled again, but I’m swaying back and forth and, I mean, I can’t walk fast anywhere.”  A nice guy, I thought.  I normally look panhandlers in the eye and tell them no.  “So I go past the guy on the bench and I look down at him . . . dead as a hammer.”  People passed out on benches, I remembered, were not unusual in downtown Nashville.  “So I kept going.  And there’s this cop and the end of the street, so I walked up to him.”

I grinned.  “Got to be careful doing that,” I said.  “I got picked up for being drunk in downtown Nashville when I was eighteen.”

“Well, I walked up to him,” he continued.  “And I said, ‘there’s a dead guy on the bench back there.’  And the cop said, ‘yeah, okay, go on home.’  So I went back to the hotel, and the next morning there was an ambulance out there, crime scene tape, everything.”

“So the guy really was dead?” I asked.

“Yep.  I knew what I’d seen.”

“Man.”

“But Nashville’s a great town.  I’m definitely going back.”  He knelt on the floor in front of Duke.  “What’s his name?” he asked.

He brought me a burger and some local draft beer, and we talked about country music.  He mentioned Doc Watson, who he’d seen perform.  I mentioned Guy Clark, who sang “I have seen the David / Seen the Mona Lisa, too / And I have seen Doc Watson play the London Stockade Blues.”  Jeff put on a Guy Clark album.  We agreed it was great.  He told me about Willis Alan Ramsey, who had only put out one album but it was a good one, and I wrote the name down on a napkin.  The signs had not lied – I’d stopped into the right place.  Mountain View Barbecue in Walker, California.

I had one more test to run.  “Who’s this town named for?” I asked.

“Joseph Walker.  He was an old fur trapper.”

Jeff in front of the bar he built by hand.

Country Drinking Songs of Note

I’m Home Getting Hammered (And She’s Out Getting Nailed)
Jesus, Are You Drinking with Me?
I’d Rather Have a Bottle in Front of Me than a Frontal Lobotomy
You Look Good Through the Bottom of My Shot Glass
Get Off the Table, Mabel (The Two Dollars is for Beer)

Esmeralda Creek, California.  Along US 50 about twenty miles east of Placerville.