SKI BUM: A TRUE CHRISTMAS TALE
Over the weekend, just before "Last Call" on Sunday night, I ran into my old pool-tournament partner "Red-Head" Randy at the local bar. A skinny 30-year-old commercial fisherman who I hadn't seen in a while, he was sitting forlornly watching Bugs Bunny cartoons on the 60-inch flat-screen plasma-TV wearing a dirty green "Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer" tee-shirt and ripped Levis, waiting patiently for a Yellow Cab. Hunched over a warm bottle of BUD, he was sipping it slowly through a long blue straw with both of his arms extended in front of him like a praying mantis, encased in plaster-casts from wrist to shoulder. His ex-girlfriend Gisele, a dredge-doll who works on a scallop boat, decorated them with colorful Magic Marker Polynesian tattoo-art illustrations of mermaids, sea serpents and octopus's. Feeling sorry for him, everyone in the joint had been buying him drinks all night. ~ Turns out he'd gone by himself on an early holiday ski trip to Vermont ~ and, dead-drunk on his first run up the freezing mountain, had fallen off the lift onto an icy snow-bank, breaking both arms. He stayed in the over-crowded hospital ER until two pals came up from New Jersey and drove him back home. ~ It was getting late and obviously we weren't going to be playing any pool. The only other customers were two loaded, beefy middle-aged undercover cops dressed in Harley biker-gear, who were drinking heavily and shouting at each other on the far-side of the bar, and two lucky lesbians who were smooching in the pool room. Twinkling vintage 1950s multi-colored Christmas lights gave the place a warm greeting card glow as "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" was playing on the juke-box and an aluminum "holiday tree", decorated with beer-distributor balls, ornaments and tinsel, stood revolving in the corner by the front door next to the gas-fed artificial fireplace, blocking the dart-board. ~ "Slowly But Shirley", the buxom brunette tender, was sitting nearby dressed like one of Santa's helpers, resting her weary head on her out-stretched arms, nodding-off on the bar by the cash register. I remember one unforgettable Christmas Eve a few years back when she had been working by herself with only two Moose Lodge old-timers for customers, and one of them, Wild Bill, who had a wooden leg and was buying drinks for his broke pal Petey, dropped dead in the men's room at midnight, without paying his tab first. Fortunately I wasn't there that night. ~ "Hey bro, can I bum a cigarette?" Randy asked sadly. Chuckling involuntarily, I said "Sure," noting that old "Uncle" Vinnie, the night-manager, had already fired one up, violating the recent state-wide "No Smoking" ban. Not many people know it but he has a fading B-52 bomber dropping bombs tattooed across his chest which dates back to his days in the U.S. Air Force during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when he was flying eight miles high over Greenland and ready to drop H-Bombs on Moscow. His big shiny bi-focals, receeding hair-line and perpetual scowl gave him an owlish look and he was already methodically counting out the night's meager receipts. ~ Pulling a butt out of my pack, I leaned over and slid a Camel Filter between Randy's puckered-lips and lit the tobacco with my trusty Zippo as he inhaled deeply, then exhaled through his sunburned nose and sat back buzzed on the bar-stool, letting the cigarette hang Bogart-style from his lower lip, the gray smoke curling up around his blood-shot blue-eyes and making them water. Lighting up one myself, I ordered a rum and coke and a back-up for my buddy. "So, um, what do you do when you gotta pee?" I inquired gingerly as he finished his beer. Looking down at his tattoo-colored plaster-casts, Randy slowly shook his head, then smiled philosophically and groaned "Well, that's when I find out who my real friends are..."