Cathode Ray's

By Frank Diekmann

Where do classic television characters go when the show no longer goes on? To Cathode Ray's Bar & Grill, where each day through its blue, glass door step some of the most beloved folks to have ever spent time in America's living rooms. But when a plot to break Cathode Ray's one prohibition--no TVs--goes awry, it puts in motion a series of mishaps and mayhem in this satirical tribute to classic TV.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank Diekmann
• Release date: Jul 19, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452371139

Frank Diekmann

Frank J. Diekmann is a 25-year veteran of newspaper reporting and editing, having covered sports, travel and financial services. Along the way this included, sadly, many, many nights in hotels, where a TV was usually on in the background, and many years in vehicles and airplanes listening to classici rock and pop music. Diekmann has reported from more than 500 industry conferences and has leaned on a strong sense of humor to get through them all, building a significant following for both is fiction and non-fiction.

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Cathode Ray’s

By Frank J. Diekmann

Published by Frank J. Diekmann at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Frank J Diekmann

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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EPISODE ONE

The waiter and occasional barkeep was hunched slightly forward as he strode hurriedly out of the back hallway and toward the main bar, a serving tray of drained, sudsy beer mugs balanced in hand and cursing in his own homemade way.

Sons of a beachcomber! Sons of a beachcomber! exhorted the man in the short-sleeved, white shirt and the black apron that he had folded over at the waist. He was oblivious as he often was as to whether he was thinking quietly or speaking out loud.

What’s the problem, Coach? the bartender inquired gruffly.

I shoulda known, responded Ernie Pantusso, better known to everyone as Coach from his earlier days in professional baseball. Pantusso was now aware but not particularly self-conscious that he had in fact been thinking out loud for the whole bar to hear. It’s the crew from the U.S.S. Enterprise. They beamed up again without paying.

It’s been that kind of day, groused bartender Archie Bunker as he used a damp towel to wipe down the bar. Some guy named Gilligan called earlier today to make a dinner reservation for a party of seven. But dey ain’t showed up. He said dey’d be in as soon as dey finished with a tree-hour cruise, a tree-hour cruise.

How long does one of doze tree-hour cruises last? asked Coach, whose years of absent-minded questions had become legend at both Cathode Ray’s and at a cozy Boston bar called Cheers, where he spent most of his time. It was widely rumored–and rumors circulated faster than superhero The Flash at Ray’s–that Coach had a metal plate in his head after having taken one too many fastballs on the noggin’ during his playing days, the result being that nearly every day at lunch or dinner Coach would seat the wrong party, introduce himself to tables from which he had already taken orders, and calculate drink tabs that could not even be deciphered by Commander Data, the porcelain-skinned humanoid and walking super-computer who was part of the crew of the starship Enterprise that had beamed up earlier.

Aw, jeez, responded Bunker with an impatient roll of his eyes. One of dem tree-hour cruises takes about an hour.

Ohhhh, answered Coach absently again, the epiphany seen in his brightening face as he placed three new, foamy beer glasses on his tray. Well, Archie, then I’ll give their table to the next party.

He turned around and paged the next name on his lunch list. The party from Car 54, where are you?

* * * * * * * * *

Cathode Ray’s Bar & Grill was crowded tonight. But then there was a crush just about every night, even Saturdays, which for reasons no one really understood was known at Ray’s as the night when you didn’t want to be out. Cathode Ray’s was the place to be seen, and one never knew who might stop by for suds or eats or just to trade pithy observations and insults. The joint was packed with regulars who hadn’t needed to place an order in years, most of whom were familiar enough to be known by their first names and their drinks of choice. There were other regulars, too, yet they could be mysterious and even unknown, such as the comic who on many nights sat at the bar with a brown paper-bag on his head in which he had cut two holes for his eyes and one for his mouth, and whose sarcasm was known, but whose name wasn’t.

There’s somethin’ funny goin’ on back dare tonight, carped Bunker as he nodded toward the back hallway where many of the bar’s customers had taken refuge. He quickly looked to the unknown comic and cut him off, And I don’ need no funny comments from you, dere.

Almost as if they sensed he was referring to them, two of Ray’s customers, a fleshy bus driver named Ralph Kramden, and an odd duck two shakes short of a seizure named Cosmo Kramer, retreated to the back room to escape Bunker’s stare. Dem two’s up to no good, he muttered to himself, and indeed at the time Bunker had spotted them Kramden and Kramer had been knee deep in a top-secret scheme they were sure, this time, would succeed.

The fact was that Cathode Ray’s already had enough regular customers to keep its blue light glowing forever. Yet that never stopped the near constant stream of new faces from appearing with regularity on the half-hour and hour through Cathode Ray’s front door, sometimes in groups of a half-dozen or more. Like those who had come before them, the pilots, as they had been dubbed for reasons no one at Ray’s had ever understood, represented every channel of lifestyle. Cathode Ray’s patrons hailed from all parts of the globe–even other globes–although by great coincidence most claimed Los Angeles or New York City as home. Among the customers nearly every profession–including full-time unemployment and a host of vague job descriptions–was represented, yet there was an unusually high number of doctors, lawyers, private eyes, and most of all, cops. Beneath the men and women in blue’s constant witticisms and wisecracks there were considerable professional pride and petty jealousies always on display, and each night was a showcase of threats, puffed-up chests, arguments over jurisdiction, and put-downs. The Chicago cops sneered at all the small-town sheriffs, the NYPD sneered at the Chicago cops, and the LAPD sneered at all of them.

If Cathode Ray’s had a dress code it was as forgotten as the bar’s original owners, for Ray’s customers popped through the door in a most eclectic array of wardrobe, some in formal suits and ties, others in T-shirts and jeans, still others in hand-sewn deerskin coats and handmade chaps. And for reasons unknown, many of the most attractive women all seemed to shop at the two-sizes-too-small store, which was perhaps the reason most of them also didn’t speak much.

There may indeed be seven-million stories in the Naked City, but there were even more to be found at Cathode Ray’s. Yet what was most intriguing about Ray’s wasn’t its clientele or the stories they told or all of their assorted peculiarities, of which there were many. Instead, it was the bar and grill’s front door. Not unlike the average door in size, it was its composition that made it unique; a smooth, blue-tinted glass that was slightly thicker in the center and then curved ever so gently to its rounded outer edges, the glass not really opaque but not transparent–one could see into the door but not through it. The door had a glass tube for a handle, and perhaps it was because of all the cops who patronized Ray’s, it was absent a lock. To the right of the door as part of its frame were several round knobs that could be used to adjust the door’s color and which had been installed years after Ray’s light was illuminated for the first time, but which now had fallen into disuse. Over all those the years the door to Cathode Ray’s had suffered its share of scratches and nicks and it needed to be wiped down weekly, yet no one ever suggested replacing it. It had remained the center of attention for more than six decades.

But most strange of all about the entrance and exit to Cathode Ray’s, however, was that what was on the other side of the door depended on who was entering and exiting. On that other side the lights, the sounds, the smells, even the century could be different. One moment the newly arrived could be those brawlin’ Cartwright Boys–Little Joe, Eric and Adam–cowboys who worked a ranch near Virginia City, Nevada and whom Bunker always sent back out to scrape off their boots (with Eric, the oversized brute better known as Hoss, the patrons hoped it was just the boots). And then just seconds later another customer could arrive and enter with shoes as clean as fastidious New Yorker Felix Unger’s freshly starched shirt.

Cathode Ray’s could be a place where everybody knows your name or a place as lonely as a little house on the prairie, and it could be and was all those things on the same night. It was a place where everyone was in charge, no one was in charge, and sometimes Charles was in charge. The patrons could be as wealthy as hillbilly oilman Jed Clampett or as poor as city-bred junkman Fred Sanford. It was a Smithsonian of decor--a large jukebox, lava lamps, the word Beer written in neon script behind the bar with the r only occasionally lit, ferns in brass pots, disco lights, Pac Man video games that also served as tables, an old player piano battered by dozens of bar fights yet which remained remarkably in tune, a carved wooden Indian, a hat rack on which fedoras hung like gray fruit, flickering gas lamps, a disco ball, spittoons and Smoke-Free signs.

Where are the free smokes? asked Jack Benny, the entertainer known for his world-class frugality, the first time he had seen that announcement. When Coach explained the sign meant no smoking, Benny affected a pained look, placed his hand on his cheek and replied with a simple, Well. Benny returned to his seat at the bar where he had been nursing along not just a free glass of water but the free entertainment at Ray’s, where a new scheme could be watched live as it was concocted on a nightly basis. And that was precisely what was in the works tonight.

The blue-glass front door of Ray’s was in the corner of the large square space that was the main dining room of the establishment. Once through the door customers had to step down two steps from a landing that could be seen from all over the bar and which had long lent itself to grand entrances and dramatic exits. To the left as one entered ran the lengthy, hand-carved wooden bar that Archie Bunker was nearly always behind, pulling the day shift on those days he was tired of watching his Meathead son-in-law, Mike Stivic, not work, and the night shift on those nights he could not bear to listen to his dingbat wife, Edith, at their home. A place on one of the bar stools was prized by many of Ray’s customers, who liked nothing better than to needle Archie and then listen as he ranted for the rest of the night over all that was going wrong with the world using language that at times only touched upon English.

Bartender Archie Bunker was a barrel-chested bigot who wrapped himself in God (although he didn’t go to church), flag (although he didn’t own one) and country (although he never voted), whose bombastic bromides were aimed at everyone and everything he perceived as the guilty co-conspirators in the erosion of the good old US of A, a country that in Bunker’s view had peaked in the days when he had it made and Glenn Miller played and which had been in a freefall ever since. Boy, those were the days. Like a good man did, Archie Bunker had graduated from a white, public high school, done his hitch in the Army, gotten hitched to his wife, Edith, and hitched up his trousers in a two bedroom bungalow on Houser Street in suburban Queens, N.Y. on which he had gotten a mortgage at a time when his neighbors had looked, thought and hitched just like him. With growing fear and anger, Archie Bunker had over the years watched those neighbors move up and out, selling out to the Spics and Wops and Chinks and worst of all–the Negroes who could sometimes be overheard singing about movin’ on up–as they chased after the same suburban dreams Bunker had himself followed so many years earlier. Not that Archie Bunker ever viewed it so magnanimously. The mailboxes changed; Archie Bunker didn’t, and his hair had grown steadily whiter and his round face redder as he railed at a world that was just plain going to Hell in a handcasket, as Archie had thundered at his son-in-law one evening.

None of the gregarious, toothy game show hosts who patronized Ray’s had anything to fear from Archie Bunker, who despite not being what anyone would describe as a people person had nonetheless taken up residence behind Ray’s long bar in part because he was such a foil for many of its customers, but also because Cathode Ray’s, even though there were minorities and women to be found, had remained largely white and male. And that was the way he liked it. The way America should be, and Archie Bunker was a man who knew what he liked. Mostly he liked it simple. He liked American hops in his beer, his beer in a can, his can in a chair, and his chair in front of a TV. Except at Ray’s, where Bunker had prohibited TV, no questions asked.

Archie, you know what you really need in here? It was Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce–his friends called him Hawkeye–a tall, thin man with long black bangs that he frequently swept out of his eyes and who had been drafted by Eisenhower to serve in the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M*A*S*H) unit 4077 in Korea. Pierce could usually be found warming a barstool and sticking the needle not found in his medical bag into Archie Bunker.

Christ, what now? answered Bunker reluctantly, head tilted forward as if facing a headwind, his face all twisted skepticism. Bunker thought Pierce was a women’s libber, homo-loving, liberal, pinko nutjob. Pierce knew all too well what Bunker thought of him, which is why he almost always jumped atop a bar stool even when he came to Ray’s with his mixed assemblage of associates, Dr. Hunnicut, and that pompous windbag, Dr. Charles Emerson Winchester III. Bunker had threatened to all but close the bar the night Pierce first had in tow another of his compatriots, Cpl. Max Klinger, that sissy boy who showed up wearing a dress. Klinger had been banned from Ray’s until an armistice had finally been reached. Grudgingly, Bunker allowed Klinger to patronize Ray’s, but he couldn’t sit at the bar no matter how admirable a figure he might be cutting in a full evening gown. Even now, Bunker would send a complimentary white wine spritzer to Klinger, who was really a just a square, Midwestern boy out of Toledo, Ohio who only wanted out of the Army on a Section 8.

Somethin’ a little light in the fray-grawnce, Bunker would say in a bad Queens mimic of a French accent, for someone a little light in the shoes. Even George Jefferson, the black man who was formerly his neighbor and who spent most of his time in blustery disputes with Bunker over politics and race, would howl at that.

Pierce let the always-impatient Archie Bunker agonize a little longer before continuing. Archie, I think you need one of those kareoke machines in here, Pierce offered with his trademark half-smirk, referring to a machine he had never actually seen but was rumored to allow someone to sing the lyrics to popular songs as the music played. There are some real singers you got as regulars. And I’ll bet that Lucy Ricardo can carry a tune.

Seeking any respite from the daily harshness of the Korean War, Pierce could not resist pricking Bunker with that last needle, knowing full well the barman had long bristled in agonized disbelief at the thought of Lucy–that gorgeous, redheaded All-American–being married to that spic Cuban, Ricky Ricardo.

We don’ need no Jap carrot cake in here, jeered Bunker, who walked to the other end of the bar and began pulling beers for customers who didn’t always have a wise remark to make. Archie Bunker was already in something of a cranky mood–even for him–after having the bejesus scared out of him earlier in the night by Max Headroom, a computer-generated wiseacre who moved at will among electronic devices and who appeared in somewhat jerky motions and was fond of popping up in the cash register to surprise Archie. Meanwhile, his work done, Hawkeye shrugged and turned to the attractive brunette to his left, a Mary Hartman, and began flirting with her.

If flirting was love, American-style at Ray’s, then just about every customer of the joint was a patriot. Immediately inside the door to the right and opposite the bar began a dozen or so deep booths with well-worn, faux red leather seats for which there was always a waiting list. Those on the list flirted openly, and nearly every booth contained a relationship heating up or breaking up, usually the result of a misunderstanding that required just about a half-hour to explain and make right. The booths wrapped around the right wall at a right-angle to continue along that wall, too, forming a little half-frame before coming to the doorway that led to Ray’s many backrooms. In each of the booths customers could find menus, packets of sugar that some customers took home to use as currency, and a silver mini-jukebox that played three rock-and-roll 45s for two bits.

Framed by the booths and the long bar were dozens of high-riser tables in the center of Ray’s, most with the kind of high-backed chrome and black leather chairs that had once been popular, in addition to what remained in stock of Ray’s original wooden stools. The latter inventory was in constant threat of reduction, thanks the never-ending bar fights between the cowboys and the private investigators, the cops and the secret government agents. A recent melee led by a rag-tag group that called themselves the A-Team had left little more than kindling (which the Cartwrights promptly took home). According to Bunker, who was more or less the bar’s de facto manager, the proprietor of Cathode Ray’s, a Mr. Philo Farnsworth whom no one had ever met, reportedly had refused to buy any more of the wooden stools. (In Ray’s early years Farnsworth had ruled with an iron fist, but as the years had gone on the customers had increasingly come to almost own the place.) Beyond the high-riser tables were a half-dozen smaller tables for two–two of which included Pac-Man video screens that endlessly fascinated the otherwise tough guy Wyatt Earp. The tables were graced with blue-checked tablecloths, small candles and a petite vases with fresh flowers that bartender Bunker had sarcastically observed were for yer lovers and yer homos.

The lovers and the homos had to be careful–and not just of Bunker’s disapproval–for along the back wall of the quirky Cathode Ray’s was one of most bizarre features–small, square doors at different heights that would occasionally pop open to reveal some dingy blonde in a bright bikini telling a goofy knock-knock joke or posing a riddle. Regulars at Ray’s knew not to take a table toward the back when two entertainers named Dan Rowan and Dick Martin were in from beautiful downtown Burbank, but they also knew to sit close enough when the Dan and Dick duo took a table for dinner, just to watch some unsuspecting pilot spit out his or her meal when one of the little doors popped open tableside and blondie shouted Sock it to me!

Just beyond all the tables were the prize territory at Cathode Ray’s: five overstuffed and battered reclining chairs with adjustable footrests that everyone agreed were the worse for all the wear and which everyone just as adamantly also refused to see parted with. The chairs had proven to be so popular that they had led to the posting on the wall of Ray’s Recliner Rules, which were constantly being updated, changed and debated, and, thanks to all the attorneys, worded in ways few understood. For now, the rules read: 1) Chairs are for eating, not to be eaten. 2) When done eating, move. 3) Cowboys must dust themselves off and remove their spurs before sitting. 3) One person in a chair at a time (this especially goes for you, Roseanne & Dan Conner!). 4) Superheroes are not to use the chairs in juggling competitions. 5) Food dropped behind the cushions is to be left for Uncle Fester or ALF. And on and on went the Rules, to which the overabundance of lawyers at Ray’s had added more whereas’s and clauses than the Rifleman had bullets.

Unique to recliner diners, too, was that a customer’s dinner order was served on little tables with scissors-legs that were unfolded by the waiter or waitress who brought the order. The tables were then placed next to the recliner and their dinner orders set on the tacky tin tops.

Past the chairs along the back wall were a couple of dartboards, a billiards table and a set a stairs that led to the second floor. Leaning on the banister on the landing one could usually find an attractive, sometimes sassy woman known in these parts and others as Miss Kitty, always in a long, red dress with black fringe. Beyond her were Miss Kitty’s girls, although it was never specifically mentioned how the girls occupied their time. In the center of the back wall was the entrance to the hallway that led to the many smaller dining rooms in the back: the Blue Room, the Green Room, the Falcon Crest Room, the DDS Room (mostly for the game show hosts), and a small, poorly furnished room with low lighting where distraught teachers often gathered to drink away their career choice, Room 222.

Sometimes on Saturday the tables would be pushed aside for the house band, but only on bartender Archie Bunker’s night off. Actually, it was more accurate to say house bands at Cathode Ray’s–there were the Monkees, Lawrence Welk and his Orchestra, a 50’s greaser band that went by the name Sha Na Na, and on occasion, the gang from Soul Train. The latter was especially on Archie’s night off.

In the brooding and sardonic Benjamin Hawkeye Pierce on the barstool, perplexed by mankind’s simultaneous capacity for callous inhumanity and passionate self-sacrificing humanity, and the cynical and simple Bunker behind the bar, perplexed over how the world was going to Hell at precisely the same time his Budweiser delivery driver was late, were found the polarity that was so common among Ray’s regulars. A man given more to distillation that rumination, Bunker had never noticed anything of the sort, preferring to grouse that many of his customers hailed from lifestyles he didn’t approve of. But his son-in-law, the one he always derided as Meathead, could not help being struck by the disparity of Ray’s clientele. A college student studying sociology and who was mooching off Bunker’s room and board, Meathead knew all too well that people of certain ethnic, age and income groups tended to patronize separate establishments, to stick to their own kind. Meathead, whose real name was Mike Stivic, had intended it as a compliment when he told Archie that Cathode Ray’s was as an extraordinary a tribute to diversity as a place could be–at least in a place where the customers were 95% white.

I don’ need none of dat diversion crapola. What it means is I gotta order a lot of doze foreign beers, your Hineykin and loggers and even some of that spic stuff, that Coronary beer, responded Bunker.

That’s Corona, Arch, his son-in-law corrected.

Whatever, winced Archie, who didn’t like the Meathead interrupting. In the good old US of A, Miller and Bud’s all a man needs in a saloon. And the wines, which some of these heah people expect to be in bottles with corks even doe it’s a helluva lot easier just to screw off a cap. I just leave dat for the French guy.

You mean Mr. French, corrected Stivic again.

Whatever, Archie repeated even more impatiently, his eyes bulging, his face flush.

Mr. Giles French was a rotund, refined English gentleman who worked in the service of Mr. Bill Davis, a wealthy, Manhattan consulting engineer, and the three orphans who had come into Mr. Davis’ care: Buffy, Jody and Cissy. With the children–whose manners were impeccable–in tow, Mr. French had found himself appalled at what passed for a wine list at Cathode Ray’s, and he had taken it upon himself to oversee the ordering a selection of wines anyone would be proud to have in their cellar. A regular customer, Mr. French kept the house list updated.

You really should know his name, Arch, suggested Stivic, offended that Mr. French had done his father-in-law such a favor and that Archie had never even taken time to learn his name.

Whaaaateeevvver, jumped Archie, his hands upturned. Jeez, French guy, french fries, what does it matter? He’s a foreigner and we don’t need any more of dose, he sputtered in Stivic’s direction.

For all their differences, the many regulars of Cathode Ray’s shared more than a few commonalties. Like every eight minutes or so they needed to take a break, sitting quietly for 90 seconds or two minutes and then becoming animated again. All tended to converse in short, punchy sentences, with a repartee never heard elsewhere. It was odd, but many would pause when finished speaking, as if waiting for someone to laugh somewhere. Even though it was a saloon, many of those customers also liked to bring along their children. Buffy, Jody and Cissy were among the many kids who were frequent visitors to Ray’s, which prided itself on being a family sort of place even if the menu was aimed at men aged 25-54. There were the Brady kids. Steve Douglas’ three sons, Mike, Robbie and Chip. That menacing Dennis Mitchell. The brood of eight kids who belonged to Tom Bradford. Beaver and Wally Cleaver, and Wally’s friend and every adult’s sycophant, Eddie Haskell ("No, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Bunker.") Freckle-faced Eddie Corbett, who came in with his widowed dad. There was Tom Corbett, the Space Cadet (and no relation to Eddie). Laura and Mary Ingalls when they came in from the prairie. A precocious seven-year old, Webster Long, a wisecracking but adorable black orphan being raised by a former pro football player who was white. The Arnold boys, Kevin and Wayne, and Kevin’s sometimes girlfriend, Winnie Cooper. And on and on, with all of the children sharing one thing in common–they were all wise beyond their years and, in most cases, wiser than their parents.

Some customers of Ray’s would arrive like clockwork on the same night of the week, every week. Others would arrive at different times on different nights, disappear for a while and then resurface. And one didn’t need to be a customer at Ray’s for very long before experiencing what had become known as Ray-ja vu, the queer feeling you knew another Ray’s customer from somewhere. Sheriff Andy Taylor from Mayberry had spent the better part of an evening one night with an eerie Ray-ja vu feeling after meeting a fresh-scrubbed high school kid from Milwaukee named Richie Cunningham. Taylor was sure Cunningham reminded him of someone, but whom? Taylor was hardly alone. Jeannie, an actual magic genie who served Air Force captain and astronaut Tony Nelson, had felt the same unease when she first spied J.R. Ewing, a Texas oilman she was positive she knew from somewhere. (Jeannie felt further discomfort thanks to the plain dress her master had bought for her at Sears after Jeannie’s midriff-baring harem attire had earlier brought Ray’s to a standstill.) And Kelly Robinson, an undercover American agent disguised as a pro tennis player, was positive he knew the man passing himself off as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, a New York City obstetrician. But from where? Like everyone else, Robinson would never find an answer.

Coach emerged again from the hallway that led to the backrooms at Cathode Ray’s

They’re startin’ a partition back there, Arch, he said, setting glasses near the sink at the end of the bar before placing an order. I dunno what it’s about.

There were puzzled stares from around the bar, until Oscar Madison finally deduced Coach’s intent. Madison was a rumpled sports reporter and a fixture at Cathode Ray’s any night he wasn’t covering a game or playing poker with his buddies. It beat spending the night in his apartment with his roommate, neat-freak Felix Unger. On Nov. 13, Unger had been asked to remove himself from his place of residence. The request had come from his wife, and deep down he had known she was right. But he also knew that someday he would return to her. With nowhere else to go, Unger had appeared at the home of his childhood friend, Oscar Madison. The question soon became: could two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy? As long as both Madison and Unger had Ray’s, the answer remained a tentative yes.

You mean a petition, Coach? asked Madison as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

Dat’s what I said, the waiter responded as he dumped more glasses into the dishwasher that just mesmerized Bret and Bart Maverick every time they stopped in from Oblivion (and other small frontier towns). They’re startin’ a partition to get a television in here. I think they’re serious this time.

Bunker didn’t yell. Not right away, anyway. Lemme tell yous about television, he said firmly, his finger wagging at Coach. Television ain’t got no place in a bar, ya see. You want people talkin’ and workin’ up a thirst in a bar and readin’ your menu. A tube’s place is at home with yer family dere, see, with a dingbat and a beer. That’s what family’s all about.

Bunker never breathed a word to anyone about it, but profitability wasn’t the real reason he had wedged himself firmly between a TV and Cathode Ray’s. He had promised his wife, Edith, there would never be a television in the bar. It was an under-protest, Aw-jeez, whattaya-talkin’-about, all right, if-ya-just-shut-your-piehole-dingbat promise,