Bar Talk

By S. A. Reagan

Bar Talk presents a litany of colorful personalities who meet at a bar. Some of the bar encounters are sketchy and superficial, while others provide depth about personal matters as well as issues affecting the general human condition. Many of the storys characters are amusing, some are insightful, and a few others are overwhelmed by their circumstances. They include Appalachian playboys and brokenhearted women. The conversations include aimless dialogue as well as chatter about political affairs. The narrative eventually focuses on one person who is riddled by fear and paranoia. This individual believes that years earlier he provoked a felon, who is now pursuing him across the country. This single trauma permeates and virtually controls his entire life. Bar Talk has a breezy quality and is laced with humor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524530440

S. A. Reagan

S. A. Reagan resides in Sarasota, Florida. For more than thirty years, he worked in finance and government. Reagan has two grown children and two granddaughters. Bar Talk is his second book. His first book was Tommie Loves Doggie.

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© 2016 BY STUART A. REAGAN.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER:   2016912737

   ISBN:   HARDCOVER           978-1-5245-3046-4

               SOFTCOVER            978-1-5245-3045-7

               EBOOK                   978-1-5245-3044-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/05/2016

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Fond regards to those with whom

I shared conversations, smiles, and drinks.

Preface

Sometimes, in a bar environment, it is easy to establish a relaxed conversation with a new acquaintance. After a relatively short time, a sense of camaraderie develops even though it is somewhat limited and certainly contrived. With the connection, or rapport, usually comes conversation that is less guarded or inhibited than in many other circumstances.

Once the conversation assumes a smooth flow, some individuals freely share the life struggles they are currently confronting. The articulated problems may seem completely foreign to the listener, but if the listener is an empathetic soul, he/she will learn and gain an insight and understanding that would otherwise take decades to mine from personal experiences. The listeners of bar yarns witness how individuals address the imperfections of life and play the hands they have been dealt.

By sharing a problem or simply reciting it to a stranger, an individual may gain additional intelligence to his/her problem. The chore of organizing a circumstance in order to describe it adds clarity to the entire subject. Sometimes a listener’s perspective is unique and particularly germane to an acquaintance’s struggles. Wisdom may result from two individuals muddling through a subject and tailoring their collective perceptiveness.

Chapter 1

I frequently visit a restaurant and bar, not far from where I live, named the Key Grill and Bar (the locals refer to it as the KGB), which features casual dining. The establishment is on a small island about two miles off the Florida mainland. On occasion, the place gets packed with a combination of tourists and residents who are escaping their normal routines. There also are a handful of regulars who include visits to the bar as part of their daily rituals.

During the busiest times, there is live music and dancing. Servers hustle about with each attempting to move $1,200 of inexpensive food and drink per shift. When the restaurant is busy, the scene is frequently cluttered by first-time visitors who are attempting to get oriented with the establishment by standing in the main aisles surveying their surroundings, previewing the menu, or looking over the shoulder of patrons in order to examine someone else’s food.

The front of the restaurant opens onto the sidewalk. In fact, no fewer than a dozen tables are scattered on the sidewalk amongst the constant stream of pedestrians, who must be from every part of the world, passing the location. A valet service is close to the front of the restaurant. Some of the cars parked by the valets are behind the restaurant since, with regularity, young men dressed in valet-designated shirts come rushing through the eatery. I love the energy that this place generates.

Although I have gone to the restaurant with company, I most often visit it alone. When attending alone, I feel guilty if I use more than a modest amount of space—so I frequently sit at the bar. Late in the evening, the number of customers drops dramatically. At that time, I don’t mind monopolizing a sidewalk table.

The servers are usually perky and pleasant when they are serving. Hell, their livelihood depends on it. Of course, when they are not serving a customer, they run the entire gambit of behaviors—indifferent to friendly.

In defense of the servers, I should add that many are attempting to save time by not writing orders. Instead, they are filling their heads with multiple orders and rushing to a computer terminal so the information can be transferred or regurgitated quickly to the kitchen and bar. As they rush from a table to the terminal, performing this mental balancing act, they may have trouble identifying their own names without some delay. Hence, they are frequently not the epitome of cheerfulness. The faster the service, the quicker a table turns over, and the more tips a server can expect to earn.

Late in the evening on slow nights, I have questioned servers about their complete preoccupation with speed—accompanied, of course, by a pleasant attitude—as the only manner for increasing tip revenue. My thought for an alternative approach is rather simple, but it would involve taking more time with each table. In a nutshell, I think a server should always provide separate tickets for each patron. Their customary approach is to automatically prepare a single bill or ask upfront whether there will be one check or separate checks.

Assuming an attractive waitress is serving two or more men, it would seem she should be as gracious as possible and let the individual guys compete in making a lasting impression in the tip department. The collection of the separate tips would surely surpass the tip on a combined order.

Without a full discussion of the human dynamics associated with who pays what on a combined ticket and what resentments, latent or new, might be kindled, I am convinced separate checks benefit the server in a majority of instances. The servers I talked with were unconvinced and looked at me like I was from Mars when I suggested that something other than speed could be important. They had no interest in learning my detailed thoughts about serving couples, a group of men, or two women.

Actually, it has been over forty years since I waited on a table for a tip. I’m sure much has changed—like the use of computer terminals—but I would think some basic human tendencies remain unchanged. Instead of pondering my comments, or at least patronizing me for a few moments, they testified to their unqualified need to be speedy, and in the process, they sounded like knee-jerk politicians ranting about the virtues of a free market. I agree with the servers that speed is important—as I would also agree with the politicians about the value of free markets—but gee whiz, there is nothing like a little intelligence and insight to improve the profits of a restaurant server and the efficiency of free markets.

The bartenders can be engaging or detached, depending on their personalities and what else might be occupying their time or minds. Some of them are inclined to keep their thoughts to themselves and only deal with customers on a superficial level. That’s okay, but they shouldn’t make it too apparent. After all, their tips, in part, are based on at least acting like a best friend for a minimum of fifteen seconds.

I have noticed that, occasionally, a person with an introverted personality finds himself/herself in a job typically identified with extroverted personalities. An introverted bartender or an introverted politician seems like such an oddity. Are these positions sought by people dissatisfied with their own personalities and seeking to be somebody else?

Getting back to the bartenders, of course, they are really only supporting characters in the atmosphere at the KGB. They are not the reason to visit the place, but they certainly could provide enough reason not to patronize the bar. Occasionally, the lady bartenders, who are capable of displaying a little too much sarcasm or negativity, may need corrective nudging such as, I was under the impression that you work for tips, darling.

I have met quite a variety of people at the KGB. While I go to the place to soak up the energy, a real bonus is when I meet an interesting character. I suppose I should mention a few examples.

One evening, I met a fellow who had worked for an investment company and was writing a screenplay that incorporated the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. During the attack, he was in the second tower and moving down the staircase when an evacuation order was rescinded. He ignored the directive and lived to write about it—or, at least, talk about it. He is incorporating his experience into a work of fiction in which his boss, whom he never liked, is something of a villain.

We had a long conversation on how to depict the evil boss. My suggestion was to portray the fellow as an illegal courier of funds to foreign countries. During the 1990s, there were still a number of US Treasury securities that had been issued in physical form. Some of those securities were stripped into zero-coupon bonds. This action made small pieces of heavy paper worth thousands of dollars. The scheme, which I suggested he weave into