Book preview: Put it on my tab

If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. 

— Jim Valvano

I was sitting on a swivel stool at the end of the bar, feet dangling.

It was September, 1978. Summer is over. Back to school. The bartender, our friend Mike McDowell, had just changed the channel of the black and white TV mounted in the corner of the bar near the door. We were waiting for the boxing match to start. 

It was a big fight. Muhammad Ali was attempting to win back the Heavyweight title from Leon Spinks, who had beaten Ali in a stunning upset earlier in the year to win the heavyweight title. 

All the big fights like this were on free TV then.

Well, almost all. There were certain fights that were shown on closed circuit TV at large venues, like the Lowell Auditorium, for a fee, but for the most part they were on free TV, either in prime time, like this fight, or on a Saturday afternoon, during Wide World of Sports. 

Wide World of Sports was a weekly television show that covered a broad range of sports from around the globe, many of which were not typically shown on mainstream American television at that time. The opening of the show proclaimed: 

"Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport... the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat..."

The show covered everything, and I do mean everything, from popular sports like boxing, track and field, and skiing to obscure (at least to me) events like lumberjack competitions, and motorcycle daredevil acts (Evil Knievel!). But my favorite was cliff diving. 

Yes. Cliff diving.

I loved watching cliff diving. Who wouldn’t want to watch someone jump off of a 100 foot cliff in Acapulco, where they had to perfectly time the waves to avoid serious injury or death? Answer: no one I know. 

Bob and I had gone to the Whipple Cafe in Lowell to watch the fight. The Whipple was one of our favorite spots to watch sports, along with the Glenview Lounge. It had nothing to do with the food—the Whipple had none—but had everything to do with the bartenders. We tipped them generously and they reciprocated with free beer resulting in a heavily discounted bill. I hope the statute of limitations on that would be long expired.

The fight was on! It was a great fight, and Ali, whom everyone at the bar was rooting for, took a unanimous decision, regaining the heavyweight title. Towards the end of the fight, Mike the bartender said to me: “Oh, Fran, it’s Friday, so you have to pay up your tab.”

For convenience, I ran a tab with Mike and paid it off each Friday, payday.

“How much do I owe, Mike? Can’t be too much as I was only here once.”

“You owe $22.50.”

“What? Mike, I only came one night and had three drafts, it should be about three dollars.”

“I know, but your Dad came in for lunch a couple of times. He said that it was OK if he put it on your tab.”

Dad, what the hell?

The Whipple did not technically serve food, but if you were adventurous, you could cobble something together that resembled a lunch. Maybe not a lunch, per se, but several consumable items that contained calories, fat, and shockingly large quantities of sodium.

For example, you could get chips and pretzels, and once in awhile, Cheetos, but those went quickly. Bar mix, of course, which looked suspiciously like Chex Mix. And for the strong of stomach and brave of heart, there were the pickled items that were typically displayed in large, gallon-sized glass jars on the bar counter. 

Back then, and possibly today in some neighborhood bars you could choose from a variety of pickled products, like pickled eggs and pickled pigs' feet (!) sold straight from the jar.

There were a couple of others too, but they escape me. Erased from my memory as a form of self preservation. 

These salty snacks were designed to complement the beer, and by complement I mean make you want to drink more. Bad for you, but good for business.

Knowing Dad, he assembled a nutritious lunch of picked eggs, beer, and chips. Delicious and economical, especially when your son was (unwittingly) paying for it.

The next time I saw Dad, I told him not to do that again. He gave me the impish grin, shrugged, and walked away. No remark. He never said another word about it.

Distance was what we did best. 

He also never paid me back. I wonder if interest accrues in the afterlife?

(The image at the top of the page is most decidedly not the Whipple. But, I like it anyway. Courtesy of Daniel Lobo, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.)