lickhaven

And a damned good one, in this case.

We knew the rain was coming, and I was already pre-sogged. We did have something to look forward to, the “Last Friday Poetry Reading” at Winterland Winery, one of the last two Sullivan County wineries (so far as I know) still turning juice into alcohol. Maybe afterwards we’d have Friday dinner D&D Brew Works, a superbly friendly restaurant with a funny U-shaped counter where we always try to occupy the right-front corner.

We were sad that our friend Ben wouldn’t be making the reading – because he’d just had an eye injection (Jesus Christ, don’t tell me about such things!), but Alan, our frenetic librarian, said he come, and rumored that one of the local high school students would be there; if so, I was pretty sure who it would be, though I’d never met her.

As it turned out, I was right, and she brought along a friend who was living with her family this year. (I’m leaving the names out because there was a sense of necessary privacy to our little group.) 

The first girl read stunning bits of her own poetry, then her friend, a high school junior… poured out some of the most amazing and agonizing personal poetry I’ve heard in years. (Between Greta Thunberg, this girl, and some of the Parkland kids, I’m ready to hand the world over right now to the latest generation, especially its women. Our complacency is shot and should be buried.)

Linda and Alan and I read funny little bits (including some T.S. Eliot snickers and contemporary pieces). It was a fine time, the perfect setup for an evening at D&D’s – until Linda and I got there and found the dining-room door locked. What? What? But lots of cars out front, so maybe the bar was open. Ah, yes – and serving the full restaurant menu. The dining room was closed because they weren’t able to hire enough help to handle the Friday-night dining crowd.

The bar’s a huge room with a flattened oval bar counter (I don’t what to call such a figure – you know: two long parallel sides joined at each end by the arc of a circle – no, it is not an ellipse!), with behind it a smaller rectangular counter, plus a scatter of tables way down there.

I’ve never seen another bartop like this one. Maybe it’s part of some old tradition or taken from a famous hangout in NYC (I don’t know famous hangouts in NYC): The entire flattened-oval top is solidly covered with nickels set under glass or tough, clear plastic. Being compulsive about numbers, I figured that the entire sweep of the bar ran to maybe 30 feet, and counted each line of crosswise nickels: 22. Given that a nickel measures about 2.1 cm, there are roughly 9500 nickels snoozing there, coming to (again very roughly) $475. (And that doesn’t count the similar layout on the smaller bartop behind.)

Our order was taken by a kid standing behind us who looked about 12 but said he was 16. We decided (as so often) to share a Loyal-Sock-It-To-Ya pizza, a clever play on the Loyalsock Creek that defines the county’s water. This is a white pizza with chicken bits and a ranch dressing (does such a thing exist elsewhere?) that’s so good it makes your teeth wander.

We’d already ordered our drinks – Linda’s Blue Moon and my shot of Yukon Jack. Which is where it gets wonderful:

The barkeep is shortish, slightly bent – and never, never, never stops. He scurries like a harried force of nature, slapping down glasses, foaming drinks with his syphon, dashing out into the wider room and back. (When we’d eat as usual at the dining counter, we’d watch him flying past and wonder why the hell he had to personally pick up every dish from the kitchen and express it back to the bar.) Last night I stopped him just long enough to ask if he ever stood still. Not sure what he answered, but when Linda asked what he did at home: “Sleep.”

Listening to the bar regulars we finally found that his name is Bob. Well, of course its Bob. Though he looks nothing like the evil presence in the first Twin Peaks, he’s a Lynchian figure through-and-through. He’s probably the most perfect barkeep in the Western world – not just efficient but epitomizing the place where he works.

Which is not to say that the owners, Deb and Dennis, are slouches. Deb was also at full run, both behind the counter and as liaison to everywhere. Early on, when D&D was new, she seemed to take a cotton to us and would waste a bit of time in blather. Last night, as we were getting ready to leave, she screeched to a halt and chatted for maybe three minutes. It had an interesting effect: As we waved goodbye, everybody on the other side of the bar gave us a big shout. Deb had made us “known.”

So that was the night.

Uhn, wait, whoa. It wasn’t.

When I got home and sat at the computer, where I spend too much time, I was greeted with perhaps the most unlikely email I’ve ever received.

Alan, the frenetic librarian mentioned, has turned the Sullivan County Library into a social powerhouse. Not that it wasn’t always a special, friendly knowledge-center, but he, like Bob the barkeep, never stops.

One thing that got set up after he came (not sure whether it was his doing or the county commissioners) was creation of the Friends of the Sullivan County Library, a membership and fundraising body.

In the five or so years of its existence it’s not only wracked up a funding influx that would make your eyes cross, but established a wide range of adult programs, like GED guidance courses, Wednesday quilters, book discussion groups, that Last Friday Poetry reading, etc., etc.

Because I really like the library and really like Alan, I chose to sit in on one of the Friends’ “board” meetings (not restricted to their board). Oh man… that two and a half hour wander into digressionland near to fused my bureaucratic brain-wires.

Yet because it’s the kind of thing I like to do, I said I’d put out their quarterly newsletter after the first editor left. But this last year – trying to back off local duties to get myself focused on fiction writing – I passed it on to a wonderful woman who, frankly, has much done a better job of it. 

So anyway… coming home for D&D’s, more than slightly sozzled from three slugs of Yukon Jack, I sat down to download and mangle whatever email came in. And there it was – the lead note asking me if I’d like to become president of the Friends of the Library.

What? Which? How? Why would they do that, where did this come from, I’m just the little guy in the corner hunched over his keyboard.

It felt like if I’d walked into Hurley’s, the local grocery, and someone had siddled up to me and whispered, “Sayyyy, you come in here every week – would you like to manage the store, heh, heh?”

This sounds exaggerated, but really, it felt like it fell from the sky. I still can’t figure it… and still don’t know what my response is. I have failed to raise enough to live on for most of my life, don’t promote my own books, have as little sense of how the funding world works as my cat. 

Well, I have a hell of a sense of humor. Is that enough?