I was playing tag in front of my friend Jeff’s house and dying for a drink. I went over to the spicket at the side of the house and placed my mouth about one half inch from the spout. Just as I turned the knob to release the water, I felt a spider crawl into my yap. Too late, the water gushed out and shot the spider down my throat. Even as a kid I was repulsed by that one.
My friend Andy was well known for teasing dogs, especially his own. One day he was doing a particularly offensive dance in front of the mutt when the dog bit him. In the balls. Sadly (for Andy), the story gets better. At the hospital, as a means of isolating the damaged area, the nurse asked Andy to stand up, covered him from head to toe in a sheet and stuck his ten year old balls through a tiny (very?) slit for treatment. He would have been less traumatized bleeding to death.
I took tap dance lessons after school. Not bad enough? I pissed my pants because I didn’t want to interrupt the critical instruction from my muse, Mr. Jimmy. This may go a long way explaining why you never see me on a dance floor at a club. Memories of urine past.
I went to an outing for altar boys at Camp Dearborn. After a day courting melanoma, all I wanted was to win a transistor radio in the raffle (Christ, I really am old). Instead I won a Ball-Net-O! This stupid fucking toy was no more than a rubber ball and a cheap net used to catch and sling the rubber ball. On the way home, I threw the damn thing out on I-96.
In a moment that all kids dream of, I came to bat in the last inning of the championship game at Ten Eyck Park in Dearborn with the bases loaded and two outs, my team trailing by a run. I never took the bat off my shoulder, and my prayer to be walked never came true. I struck out and walked home crying. I don’t recall that being part of the dream.
My best friend Rob had a weight problem growing up (I think this is all right to bring up as I did also, and Rob has since slimmed down and is now just a big sonofabitch). One day while driving in a car with his mom, young Rob looked over at the car next to them while stopped at a red light. The asshole called Rob a “fatso”. Bad enough, right. It then dawned on Rob that the guy based his name calling on his round face only, that being the part of his body visible above the window. I believe he yelled at his mom for letting him get fat.
One day, a bunch of us were playing football in the backyard at the home of this oddball kid named Craig. Older brother of Jeff, Bobby, was drawing up a play in the dirt. He used a small stick to represent me, a bit of leaf was Jeff and a bottle cap was Craig. Bobby’s diagram of the play was interrupted by a stream of piss from Jeff raining down on the bottle cap that represented Craig. Bobby flip hopped the fence into his own backyard and squealed on Jeff. Game over.
Next week, I will go over some of the stuff that happened to me during puberty. It’ll break your heart. Meanwhile, this is the crap that happened to me this past Friday:
First, I must admit that Tony and I are having a devil of a time deciding what bars to haunt. We have exhausted our immediate area and are expanding our coverage, though the drive home is limiting that distance. This week, the debate raged, east side versus west side. The east side has been tough on us in the past, The Village Idiot and Hard Luck Lounge are two joints that broke our hearts.
But, courage is an important component in the Tour, so we made our way east through heavy rains to The Coyote Station on the west side of Harper, north of Ten Mile in St. Clair Shores. We were encouraged to see a lot of cars in the parking lot just north of the building and crestfallen when we walked inside the club (no cover) and saw only a handful of revelers.
Where were the people that belonged to the cars? I know the Allies would sometimes try to fake the Krauts into believing their numbers were larger by using wooden cutouts of airplanes. Was Coyote Station capable of such subterfuge?
Tony seemed particularly disgusted by the numbers, thoughts of previous east side disasters danced through his head. We took in the lighted dance floor in the middle of the place surrounded by a rail for standing, a bar at each end of the room for better service, countless televisions for sports, pool tables/video games/pinball/foosball/dome hockey for diversion. That these areas were largely empty led little brother to declare Coyote “One and out”.
Getting the “one” from the bar proved to be a bit tough, as I had to bear witness to a dispute between barmaid and waitress. My wish to see this feud morph into a wrestling match never developed, and after a while I was given a pair of beers for six bucks.
There was not much to look at, no crowd to speak of and a Tiger broadcast in rain delay, so we decided to have it out at the dome hockey game. If Tony and I are seeing who can throw little bits of stick into a sewer grate, I want to win (by the way, that is a real contest that we play when going for our lunch time walks). So, I was not thrilled to get my ass handed to me in every game played. I was thrilled, however, to see that the bar filled up nicely while we were busy cursing and playing.
We decided to grab a second drink and stand at the rail in the center of the room and soak up Coyote Station. The room, now bustling and filling rapidly, had a friendly feel to it. Mostly twenty and thirty somethings, with a few of us older geezers mixed in. If there are ethnic groups in the St. Clair Shores area, word of this place has not reached them.
The dance floor never filled up, but was used on occasion, groups of girls dancing to Prince and Afrika Bambaataa, tunes endorsed by Tony (I sometimes forget that, like Prince, Tony is almost black).
If not for dome hockey and the immaturity of my need to keep playing until I best Tony (I gave up on that after twenty minutes and four ass kickings), we might have left after one beer and declared Coyote Station shit. Hmm...this whole bar review thing might not be an exact science.
Still, we had traveled to the east side to look over two bars, and so we ventured back out into the rain and headed to Pepperbottoms. This barn was also on Harper, south of Ten Mile in St. Clair Shores. Parking was a snap in front of and behind the huge building, though I looked suspiciously at the glut of cars surrounding the bar. No subterfuge here, Pepperbottoms was jammed.
After parting with two bucks per for cover, we grabbed a pair of beers ($6 again) from the ice chest near the front door. Strangely, we rarely get our beers from the ubiquitous ice chest near the front door. The beer was easy to fetch, ice cold and going down my gullet in seconds. We may have to rethink the ubiquitous ice chest near the front door (ubiquitous is my word of the day).
Soon after soaking in the ambience of Pepperbottoms, Tony stole one of my favorite lines and stated that, “We are the oldest people in here by miles.” Tony further believed that we were being sized up by the kids in this joint as cops, an accusation made to our faces in at least two other bars (J Dubs and Stilettos...weirdly, the accusation at Stilettos came from a lesbian while we were trying to piss in their unisex bathroom).
These young ‘uns were ready to live it up and had no trouble lubricating at the multiple bars or from the highly attentive waitstaff. The music had less to do with the 80’s and more to do with unending beats. Whatever... it worked and the dance floor was filled all night, including one number that featured a contest between broads passing a dildo around in a smutty version of musical chairs (musical dicks?). Pool tables and other games provided further diversion for the hordes.
Pepperbottoms had more broads, was louder and more crazy than Coyote Station. So why did I give a slight edge to Coyote Station? Not sure, though Tony may have felt the same way as we split to make a return voyage to Coyote for last call. Wet minds think alike.
Cheers!
-Jim
Coyote Station: 25117 Harper Ave. St. Clair Shores, MI 48081
Pepperbottom's: 24301 Harper Ave. St. Clair Shores, MI 48080
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