12/24/2020 0 Comments Crowley's at ChristmasBy, Blaire Alexander Woodberry, Guest Columnist
(Author's note: this is a short story of half-baked truths, woven together from years of observations behind a glass of beer. Laughing and grinning to yourself as the comical circus rolled on through the Christmas night.) The parking lot is littered with broken beer bottles and unexpected potholes wrote one complaint - the parking lines appear slanted and spray painted by hand. Google Crowley's and read some of the complaints registered. Some may leave you chuckling, while others may make you cringe. But perhaps it's fitting around this Christmas, in our quarantined "non-get togethers", that we toast a time of opposites. Here's to a packed bar and late-night restaurant, where late 20-somethings gathered back from college, bragging to high school friends of their inflated career prospects. You're starting a landscaping business too? You don't say. Yes, it's fitting. In fact, let's move to the bar and raise a toast to our bright futures. Damn! Through the tinted windows by the bar, everyone is blinded by the Land Rover pulling up. Headlights glaring into the tinted glass. People begin flicking off the driver like pissed off vampires. Yelling at the bouncer to tell them to "kill their lights!". Drunken debutantes in high-heels begin sliding out of the rear passenger seats, entering what is sure to be an unexpected nighttime military ops course of wet gravel and rain-filled potholes, all meshed together in the dimly lit parking lot. Some make it inside. Yet several rows back, another group of debs are having more challenges with the greater distance between them and the door. One slips and falls, loses a heel, but gracefully continues barefooted to the door, heels in hand. One is throwing up behind the liftgate of a Mercedes SUV. Her friend, holding back her hair, motions to the others to go on as she wipes off her arm with her friend's dress. They finally begin walking towards the door like a pair of zombies or drunken sailors on heavy seas. They meet the bouncer - access denied, cab summoned, good night. The bouncer casts a glance towards the dimly lit sidewalk where young men in camel hair blazers, oxford cloth shirts and jeans smoke cigarettes, bobbing back & forth in the cold. They banter and laugh, occasionally peering into the tinted window, knocking on the glass and motioning a friend to come outside. Meanwhile, the bathroom lines grow, as people seem to be taking longer than usual. Tonight it's "peace on earth" in the parking lot. Everyone's joyful. Old high school feuds are squashed in a night of comradery. Yet it certainly would be a shame to not mention that I once heard a scuffle that broke out in the middle of the night. A drunken argument twisted into a fight where a banjo was thrown at a preppy kid's head. A banjo? Of all the instruments to use as a weapon, I guess the weight alone made it deadly, but accuracy? Oh yes we all sat back watching, anticipating where this would go and grinning as spectators. No, this wasn't to end a St. Michael's midnight mass, that was just the obligatory pre-game.You slipped out of that pew before the fat angel made it down the aisle. You tighten the laces on your wallabies, and had a pint in your hand before the first whiskeypalian joke could be cracked. This was a night to end in laughter, jokes, and old stories. Making laps around the oval shaped bar, catching up with old friends and being reminded of good times. Lamenting things being torn down. Overhearing a conversation: "Can you believe they tore down Fat daddy's? What the hell, I just got into town yesterday!". And then in a flash, Crowley's too was gone. Someone valiantly tried to move the party over to five points but that faded or candidly just lacked the patina. Too much room to maneuver out of those awkward conversations, those obligatory photos. It's okay, you've got your memories. Oh and by the way, your late-night order of potato skins and fried cheese sticks just came up. They're back over at the table, the one with the Humphrey Bogart poster. Enjoy! The curly-haired manager speeds off into the back, occasionally peeking his head out from the kitchen and giving a grin. The line forming at the door, the laughter inside and the acknowledgment that sometimes in life, some things do change. But damn. Let's hold on to this night. Merry Christmas!
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