the dharma blog

I don’t know how we picked St. Patrick’s Day, but I took the day off work and we headed out for some early season fishing. The day went well. The weather was raw, but we got a couple decent fish and both enjoyed being on the stream again.

We left the river about 5:00 so we could get home and hit the bars in celebration of Ireland and all things Irish. We didn’t make it.

I had had some problem with my car about two weeks prior. The Jetta Warrior had stalled as I pulled out of the car wash. It exhibited all the symptoms of bad sparkplugs or wires. After struggling through that night, it seemed like things got dried out and the car ran okay for the next couple days until I replaced the plugs and wires. I assumed I had fixed the problem, and had no further problems. Until St. Patrick’s Day.

We got to the river without any problems, which was good, because it would have sucked to have not been able to fish. We fished innocentl The river happened to be about an hour from home and about a half hour from a town of any size. I was driving away from the river when the car began to stutter and skip and miss and lurch and all kinds of bad things.

Uh oh.

I ran it in low gear to get the RPMs up, hoping to dry something off, or at least to keep moving north and west. We climbed out of the river valley and then across the farm fields. The road T-ed. There was a stop sign. The car came to a stop. The car did not start moving again. We fiddled with fuses and the owner’s manual for a bit, then gave it up. I use my cell phone with hardly any reception to call my wife, to call some friends, to see if anyone can come rescue us and my car. We fail to put together such a plan.

Across the road was the El Dorado Bar. A place that would have fit in at any country crossroads 100 years ago. False wood front. Square shape. Abandoned porch. We had gone in there a few times after fishing for burgers and beers. Not a bad place, though a couple fly fishing fellas from Minnesota might raise an eyebrow.

Enter bar. Bartender, in his 30s, skin brown and tough from too long spent in this dingy, smoky place. His shirt opened halfway down his chest. Unkempt. Old man at the bar who had sat in his Buick for way too long behind us when we were in the paralyzed car at the stop sign. It took him a good couple minutes to figure it out and go around. He is drunk; he has been here perhaps five minutes. Few other folks playing pool. Drunk.

We take stools at the end of the bar. Eventually the bartender comes down.

“Hey guys,” he says.

“Hey, know anyone who could give us a tow?”

“What’s that?”

“My car broke down out there, I need a tow. Do you know anyone around here?”

“Oh, shit. Uh, let me think. Hey,” he says, “looking in the direction of the drunk old man with the hat pulled down low over his eyes and the can of Michelob Golden Light in his hand, “do you think Kenny would be around to give these guys a tow?”

The old man doesn’t move his head or his eyes, but just says, “I suppose.”

“Here, I’ll call him.”

I follow him down to the other end of the bar and he dials and then talks into the phone and then says to me, “Yeah, he thinks he can do it. Wanna talk to him?”

“Hi,” I say into the phone.

“Hello.”

“Can you give us a tow up to Hudson?”

“I could do that. I gotta feed the chickens and get my son’s truck off the flatbed, then I’ll come on up there.”

“Great.”

I go back down to the other end of the bar and join Fisherman, give him the report. He’s got us a couple beers.

“Did you ask him how much?”

“Uh, no, I didn’t. Shit.”

Fisherman looks concerned. He’s worried that I’m gonna get fleeced. I try to console him.

We have some more beer and I go out front to update my wife on the situation. I go back in.

“Should we get a burger or something?” I say to Fisherman.

“Yeah.”

We move down to the middle of the bar and ask the bartender about getting some food.

“Oh, yeah, sure. I’ll grab some menus,” he goes around back. He comes back out. “Shit! I completely forgot! My wife made corned beef and cabbage ‘cuz it’s St. Patty’s Day. You guys want some corned beef and cabbage?”

The bartender has a frenetic energy. Unnatural. He is distracted, constantly cracking jokes and not waiting for your laughter. There’s a lot about him that suggests he is both drunk and high on crystal meth.

We order corned beef and cabbage.

He brings it out. It is delicious. Plate of beef for each of us that is probably four servings apiece, potatoes on the side. A salad bowl full of cabbage. We commence consuming. Bartender reappears with a handful of little plastic single-serving butters. He opens up several of them for each of us and puts them on the bar. For the potatoes.

Denny comes in when we’re halfway through our meal. Easy-going guy in a one-piece Carhartt suit. He says “hello” to us and the bartender. I tell him we’ll finish up quick, he says it’s no problem and orders a Michelob from the bartender, stands at the bar next to us and drinks. He’s a soft-spoken guy.

I eat as much of the beef as I can, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to eat all of it. The Leinie’s washes it down nice. We pay up and leave the bar with Denny. Across the road, drag my car up onto the flatbed, head off for Hudson. Not the usual main highways and then freeway that Fisherman and I would take, but Denny’s own rambling route through his home country. The night is dark out here, the road is bumpy and the truck’s suspension stiff. I sit against the passenger door, Fisherman in the middle next to Denny.

They strike up conversation, turns out Denny really likes going out to Montana big game hunting. Fisherman lived in the part of Montana for a few years where Denny likes going. They talk about Montana and hunting. Denny drops us and the car at an auto shop in Hudson where my lovely wife comes to rescue us. We drop Fisherman at home and then go back to our apartment. I find out the next day that my sparkplug wires had never been the problem, that I had had a cracked ignition coil.