Last night I was taken to what may now be recognized as the best watering hole I’ve ever encountered. It is in fact the last remaining American Legion post in the city of Chicago. On Friday nights, non-veterans are permitted to drink in its basement bar, a palace of low ceilings and low lighting and patchy acoustic ceiling tiles. The bathroom is behind what was referred to as a “curtain” but is clearly a very old bedsheet. Beers are two bucks, mixed drinks three, all served up by a jovial middle aged Vietnam vet (in leather vest, no less) named Hot Rod. The music is the local classic rock radio station, which in my humble opinion is the best classic rock radio station in the nation. Technically one must pay a yearly $10 subscription fee to become a member of this exclusive club. I have yet to do this, but the folks who invited me out were all members. I think on my next visit, I will go ahead and take the plunge.
The ceiling is so low that two members of my party stood with about half an inch of clearance between the tops of their heads and the acoustic tiles. These two fellows also happened to be the most argumentative of the bunch, starting a long and loud discourse regarding the patented form of midwestern gregariousness that is as ubiquitous here as the glowing Old Style sign. Don, an angry Philadelphian, felt that the friendly polite manner of the flatlander is disingenuous and conciliatory. No one else happened to agree, which stood to reason as the rest of us all hail from the region.
Don compared the midwestern style to that of the southerners, which we of course dismissed out of hand. Southerners are patronizing, we countered, whereas we Illini are simply kind hearted and polite. Alas, upon ruminating further, I think Don might have been onto something. While I still don’t think I necessarily need strangers to treat me as if I am a total asshole and sometimes even vocalize it, at the same time maybe there is something slightly false about blanketed kindnesses. Still, I’d rather have my niceties, contrived or otherwise, delivered in the cadence of long vowels than the slow drawl that will always come off to me as utterly condescending.
This morning I went to a pretty decent thrift store and found a radio in the style I’ve been seeking for awhile now. The further exploration of this radio was thwarted by a very bad smelling old Polish man, however.
