I am being evicted from The Pond

(704 words)

It’s not the kind of thing sensible adults brag about, but a long time ago on a weekend roadtrip I was thrown out of every bar in Oxford, Ohio, home of Miami University.

It was in, gee, 1984, I guess.

I wouldn’t exactly call it a quest. It just kind of occurred.

That kind of thing is bound to happen when you’re drunk, dressed head-to-toe in Ohio University Bobcat gear and yelling, “Miami Sucks!” which is what we yelled even when we roadtripped to unrelated places like Michigan.

Looking back, I have to admire their efficiency. It’s like they had some kind of campus watch out to make sure I wouldn’t get served for more than two or three drinks in any of the town’s five lame bars.

Sort of like an Amber Alert for common assholes.

I hope there are no hard feelings. By now, I’m sure most of the Miami students involved in tossing me from their bars are gainfully employed tapping your phone for their NSA overlords while I’m sitting here blogging about a childish 31-year-old grudge.

Maybe now they’ll realize I was right all along.

I’ve been thinking about all the bars I didn’t care getting thrown out of because I’m getting thrown out of a bar I really care about.

I’m getting thrown out of The Pond.

The comparison might be a bit on the audacious side, but it feels to me like Elvis getting thrown out of Graceland.

I have no proprietary claim on Latrobe’s best bar, but it sure feels like home. One of three second-floor apartments has been my office since 2007. 

The bar (and the building), owned by three generations of the same wonderful family for 61 years, has been for sale for about eight months. 

A solid group of friendly buyers is coming in. I won’t deal with any of the speculation, but this is looking like a best-case scenario for Pond drinkers.

Just not for Pond renters.

It’s a stipulation of the closing that the second floor be vacated. The eviction notice says I have to be gone by July 11.

Where will I go? What will I do? 

Will I be forced to work from, gulp, home?

I think I speak for my family in saying we’re all praying it never comes to that.

See, I call this an office, but it’s more like a little clubhouse, what a 10-year-old boy would call a fort.

Here a guy can do what guys do. My unofficial motto’s always been: “Welcome Men! My door’s always open and my toilet seat is always up!” 

By most male standards, it’s tidy. Sure, there’s mustache clippings all over the sink and I only bother to vacuum once a year, but it’s no pig stye.

More like a guy stye.

It’s been a place I can come any time of the day to write, blast music, read, juggle or just organize my thoughts without interruption.

Josie says she’s going to miss all the times on “Take Your Daughter to Work Day” when we’d hide behind the curtain and push my car fob’s red horn button the instant some unsuspecting lunch guest tried to remotely lock their car.

The sound of my nearby car honking madly would invariably startle them into pushing their own buttons. Parking lot mayhem would ensue.

What will I miss most?

The Pond the way it was.

Because for 7 years, I could at any moment slam the lid on my laptop and walk downstairs and be greeted by Dave and up to 20 friends who were glad to see me and eager to laugh. 

We’ve had so many magical times together. The regulars have been such a great mix of guys — football coaches, executives, teachers, farmers, businessmen, lawyers, newspaper reporters, plumbers, the mayor and just enough jackasses to keep it lively.

We’re all naturally resistant to even healthy change. Why wouldn’t we be?

Who in their right mind would want to change something that for so long seemed so perfect?

So am I angry I was given an eviction notice June 10?

Furious.

See, June 6 was the day I chose to do the yearly vacuum.

Related . . .

“Use All The Crayons!” YouTube promo (from my office!)

The Pond is for sale! Anyone wanna buy a bar?

Someone keyed my car! Suspects abound . . .

Christmas office party recap (2009)

I pranked the trash man today

It’s a bobblehead world

Merry March Madness!

You can judge how much a guy dislikes any given holiday based on the number of greeting cards he has to send or see.

So far, there are no “Happy March Madness!” greeting cards.

And, make no mistake, March Madness is the number one guy holiday on the whole guy calendar. It has gambling, drinking, saturation coverage and the kind of buddy-buddy camaraderie that’s been absent from even professional football ever since the NFL decided to feminize the sport with women’s outreach programs and things like Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez.

I have gainfully employed friends who are taking the day off because their employers don’t put March Madness on equal footing with all the repressive religious holidays that involve sermons and in-laws.

So, of course, I’m taking today off, too. Instead of falling short of my thrice-weekly goal to write one coherent 750-word blog post, I’m posting this multitude of shorter, equally incoherent ones.

And I’ll leave it to you gainfully employed folks to wonder what a guy who doesn’t do or earn anything does differently when he takes a day off from whatever it is he does or doesn’t do.

• If the people who sold beer and booze with ads that earnestly urge “Please Drink Responsibly” were the least bit honest they’d say, “Please drink lots -- just don’t get caught breaking anything!”

• There are well-regarded sitcoms with million-dollar budgets and squads of witty writers that fail to produce anything as funny as either of the Old Spice deodorant commercials involving the black guy on the white horse and the dashing gent who makes an elegant meat portrait out of carved turkey for his girlfriend. If I didn’t already use Old Spice, I’d be switching.

• As a proud alumnus, I couldn’t be more thrilled about the Ohio University upset over Georgetown. It’s the biggest victory in the school’s history. I just had to fill out a questionnaire that asked the offbeat query: “Where would you most like to be?” I put “1985” because it was my senior year at OU in Athens, Ohio. I don’t want to diminish all my other years, but it was just such a great time and, for better or worse, Athens was where I became who I am. Still, I’m happy right where I am. But putting “1985” sounded like a more creative answer than “Outer Banks” or something new agey like “Stuck in a Moment.”

• I like to joke that the only thing I learned during my four years at OU was to never mix Ouzo and beer. It’s an exaggeration, of course, but the essence of the wisdom should not be overlooked: Mixing beer and the volcanic Greek liqueur will inevitably lead a foolhardy drinker to wake up in a strange place, with a killer hangover and no recollection of what happened to his or her pants.

• Anyone who thinks the election of our first black president has done anything to dent our historic racism ought to spend an afternoon watching college basketball in a bar full of rednecks like the one where I imbibe. Your average redneck bases for whom he is rooting solely on the number of blacks on each team. It doesn’t matter if they look like gansta rappers or young Denzel Washingtons. If they’re black, the redneck wants them to lose.

• Still, these are great guys and I prefer their company to that of many more fair-minded bores. It just says something about where the country is right now. And, yes, there’s this: They think Sarah Palin’s going to be a really swell president.

• I’ll be following the recent celebrity breakups of Sandra Bullock and the effervescent Kate Winslet. Too soon for me to play matchmaker, but I’ll figure it all out soon enough. I prefer Winslett to Bullock, but if either of them ends up with Jon Gosselin I’m canceling my People magazine subscription.

• Me and the boys back in Athens used to think we were great wits when we’d say things like, “You can’t spell Ouzo without OU.”

• I’d love to know how many days Tiger Woods devoted to saving his family. By his returning to golf so soon, it’s clear saving his family is driving him right back to the lifestyle that jeopardized it in the first place. I love my wife and kids, but one of the reasons I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize my family is because I know I’d be forced to spend more time with them. We already spend plenty of time together. Any more and they’d be sick of me and all those friendly rednecks would be the poorer without access to my enlightened insights.

• But I wouldn’t recommend the way I live to many others. It’s like the great Capt. Augustus McCrae says in one of my favorite books, “Lonesome Dove.” “Boys, what’s good for me, ain’t necessarily good for the weak-minded.”

• You can’t spell bourbon, voudka or Scoutch without OU either. See, I learned something in Athens!

• Merry March Madness to one and all!