and now, a word from my favorite talking head

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market-player that i've recently become, i've started to watch the financial channels in the morning--and, for the most part, they're all populated by the same bloviating assholes spouting and reinforcing each others' blindly-optimistic bullshit.

except for one guy who, from day one, always made me sit up and take notice--the one who gets derisively dismissed by all the other talking heads whenever he joins squawk box on cnbc as "dr. doom."

first time i heard peter schiff speak, his common sense resonated with me immediately, even as he was being laughed at by the occupants of the other seven boxes on the screen.

so, me being me, i investigated--i went out and got my hands on a copy of the book dr. doom wrote in late 2006 (you know, back when the economy was "sound"), just to see.

and guess what: pretty much everything this guy forecast back then has come to pass today--i.e., had you taken his advice then, you wouldn't be tearing your hair out now.

[and yeah, this is the same peter schiff who was ron paul's chief financial advisor, although i didn't know that at the time.]

for a little glimpse into what got my attention early on, i offer to you a link to a column he wrote for the washington post* last week--it's short and sweet.

the money quote:

Just as prices in a free market are set by supply and demand, financial and real estate markets are governed by the opposing tension between greed and fear [emphasis added]. Everyone wants to make money, but everyone is also afraid of losing what he has. Although few would ascribe their desire for prosperity to greed, it is simply a rose by another name. Greed is the elemental motivation for the economic risk-taking and hard work that are essential to a vibrant economy.

and then he goes on to nail the problem to the wall:

But over the past generation, government has removed the necessary counterbalance of fear from the equation.

truer words were never spoken. and do you think either party presently pandering to the clueless electorate with their laughably unrealistic proposals for a soft landing from this mess has any intention of putting fear back into the mix? hell, no--telling the hard truth to the american people might cost 'em votes.

read the article and think about it before you wholeheartedly assume the policies of either candidate are gonna lead us outta the wilderness, ok?

[and after you do that, go buy yourself some gold and then sit back and watch the fun]

_________________

* on second thought, for those who don't have a washington post account and/or don't wanna jump through the hoops necessary to obtain one, i am hereby thoughtfully providing the article in its entirety below:


Don't Blame Capitalism

By Peter Schiff
Thursday, October 16, 2008; A19

Amid the chaos of recent days, as the federal government has taken gargantuan steps to stabilize the financial markets, realigning the U.S. economic system in the process, comes a nearly universal consensus: This crisis resulted from government reluctance to regulate the unbridled greed of Wall Street. Many economists and market participants who were formerly averse to government interference agree that a more robust regulatory framework must be constructed to cage the destructive forces of capitalism.

For the political left, which has long championed the need for such limits, this crisis is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Absent from such conclusions is the central role the government played in creating the crisis. Yes, many Wall Street leaders were irresponsible, and they should pay. But they were playing the distorted hand dealt them by government policies. Our leaders irrationally promoted home-buying, discouraged savings, and recklessly encouraged borrowing and lending, which together undermined our markets.

Just as prices in a free market are set by supply and demand, financial and real estate markets are governed by the opposing tension between greed and fear. Everyone wants to make money, but everyone is also afraid of losing what he has. Although few would ascribe their desire for prosperity to greed, it is simply a rose by another name. Greed is the elemental motivation for the economic risk-taking and hard work that are essential to a vibrant economy.

But over the past generation, government has removed the necessary counterbalance of fear from the equation. Policies enacted by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Housing Administration, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which were always government entities in disguise), and others created advantages for home-buying and selling and removed disincentives for lending and borrowing. The result was a credit and real estate bubble that could only grow -- until it could grow no more.

Prominent among these wrongheaded advantages are the mortgage interest tax deduction and the exemption of real estate capital gains from taxable income. These policies create unnatural demand for home purchases and a (tax-free) incentive to speculate in real estate.

Similarly, the FHA, Fannie and Freddie were created to encourage lending by allowing primary lenders to turn their long-term risk over to the government. Absent this implicit guarantee, lenders would probably have been much more conservative in approving borrowers and setting interest terms, and in requiring documentation of incomes and higher down payments. Market forces would have kept out unqualified buyers and prevented home-price appreciation from exceeding the growth in household income.

Interest rates contributed the most to creating the housing boom. After the dot-com crash and the slowdown following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Federal Reserve took extraordinary steps to prevent a shallow recession from deepening. By slashing interest rates to 1 percent and holding them below the rate of inflation for years, the government discouraged savings and practically distributed free money.

Artificially low interest rates invigorated the market for adjustable-rate mortgages and gave birth to the teaser rate, which made overpriced homes appear affordable. Alan Greenspan himself actively encouraged home buyers to avail themselves of these seeming benefits. As monetary policy caused houses to become more expensive, it also temporarily provided buyers with the means to overpay. Cheap money gave rise to subprime mortgages and the resulting securitization wave that made these loans appear safe for investors.

And even today, as market forces deflate the credit bubble, the government is stepping in to re-inflate it. First came the Treasury's $700 billion plan to purchase mortgage assets that no one in the private sector would buy. Now it has recapitalized banks to the tune of $250 billion, guaranteeing loans between banks and fully insuring non-interest-bearing accounts. Policymakers say that absent these steps, banks would not be able to extend loans. But given our already staggering debt burden, perhaps more loans are not the answer. That's what the free market is telling us. But the government cannot abide solutions that ask for consumer sacrifice.

Real credit can be supplied only by savings, so artificial steps to stimulate lending will only produce inflation. By refusing to allow market forces to rein in excess spending, liquidate bad investments, replenish depleted savings, fund capital investment and help workers transition from the service sector to the manufacturing sector, government is resisting the cure while exacerbating the disease.

The United States reached its economic preeminence on the strength of its free markets. So far, the economic disaster exacerbated by government policies is creating opportunities for further government interference, which will lead to bigger catastrophes. Binding the country to a tangle of socialist ideals will seal our fate as a second-rate economic power.

The writer, who was economic adviser for Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign, is president of Euro Pacific Capital. He is the author of "The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets."

back to politics for a minute

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[this blog has of late been uncharacteristically silent on the subject of the sickening course of current events, preferring instead to find comfort in the sweet immutability of the past--but never for a second think i'm not payin attention.]

it seems mccain has finally gotten smart--realizing, belatedly, that america doesn't care about wright or ayers, he's recently taken to hitting obama where it might actually hurt by calling him out as a socialist (which, of course, he totally is).

and then, in the same speech, mccain goes on to address the problems faced by all the idiots who bought houses they couldn't afford via zero-down, adjustable-rate mortgages they lied to secure, by saying (and i hereby quote),

"We [as in you, the taxpayer] need to buy up these mortgages, give you a mortgage that you can afford, so you can pay your mortgage and realize the American Dream of owning your home."

which position, of course, isn't socialistic in the goddam motherfucking least, is it, johnny boy?

* * * * *

i cannot even begin to tell you how deeply i resent the dumbass american voting populace for putting me in the untenable position of having to choose between two assclowns who are, each in their own unique and individual way, so completely and totally unsuited to the task of leading my country outta the grave peril in which she presently finds herself.

couple things

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1. frequency

you may have noticed (those of of you who still come here, anyway) that my postings have recently become fewer and further between.

the reason for this is simple: in an attempt to pull back from the brink upon which i found myself poised a few weeks ago, i've cut way back on the drinking.

which is great and all, don't get me wrong--except for the simple fact that, unless i'm three-quarters shitfaced (i.e., like now), i generally don't care enough about anything or anybody to even call, much less write.


2. direction

they say everybody has a story to tell, but i never thought that tired cliche applied to me--until i took a left turn with this blog and started to tell what i've always thought were boring stories from my boring life.

as a consequence, i've lost about 60% of my readers in the last couple months--or maybe they've gone all techno and subscribed to me via rss (whatever--most never bothered to comment anyway, so fuck 'em).

what i'd rather concentrate on is what i've gained: a core of really smart, insightful readers whose feedback regarding said stories (both through comments and emails) means more to me than i can even begin to express here.

thanks to you all, and i hope you stick around through the ugliness that is sure to come.

long before it meant "fair and balanced" (enough, already)

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as is so often the case with life on the downswing, this post will consist of a series of goodbyes--so let's get on with it.

1. goodbye, nino & jonni

i bet in all the excitement you'd forgotten about them, hadn't you? well, don't feel bad, because so did we.

see, beau had harbored illusions of keeping his little subterranean millionaire's club--the original fox's lair--open after he launched the disco. but from day one of the "upstairs" (as nino always derisively called it), it was all about worlds colliding. and, sadly for nino, there was never any doubt as to which world would come out on top.

and it wasn't just that the relatively few wealthy, older patrons of the downstairs club were having to compete for what limited parking space was available with the young hordes who now flocked to the upstairs club; it wasn't even that rich old men with weak, dribbly prostates were suddenly having to jockey for position at the urinal with piss-happy, drunken fratboys--we probably coulda worked with shit like that, if that was all it was.

no, what killed the downstairs club was a much more serious problem--what the folks who write for the car magazines refer to as "noise, vibration and harshness." simply put, nino's soft, melodic stylings could not compete with the amplified, percussive stomping that rained down on him every night from above.

we tried to fix it--we packed the interstitial space between upstairs and downstairs [excuse me, lemme clarify: i packed the interstitial space between upstairs and downstairs--and i still itch when i think about it] with all kinds of sound-deadening insulation, all to no effect. bottom line: in the battle of the bands, joe walsh won out, and that was all there was to it.

and it was a shame--over the course of the year he'd spent here, nino had done a pretty good job of modifying his act to accommodate local tastes, and had developed quite a following, all of whom were there to celebrate his last night in residence.

my most enduring memory of that night: nino performing, for one last time, his version of ray price's signature song, for the good times, and dedicating it to his number one fan, the adoring margie garrett--an elderly, birdlike (and infinitely rich) widow who came in almost every night, always sat to nino's immediate left and genteelly slugged one golden cadillac after another until she closed the place down, all the while never taking her eyes off him.

and, as always, he playfully changed the crucial line of the song, for her, to "hold your warm and skinny body close to mine," as he looked into her eyes and smiled. and as always, her happiness was touchingly palpable--tinged with moist-eyed sadness this time, of course, because she knew this was it.

[i don't remember which of us helped margie out and up the stairs to her own golden cadillac and drove her home that last night, but i don't think it was me.]

whatever; this one's for nino and jonni--and margie (not to mention everything and everybody else in this whole goddam post)--wherever you all are:




2. goodbye, ma

my mother couldn't stand beau--she disliked him on sight and distrusted him more, and subsequent events did nothing to change her initial impression.

and i couldn't understand her reaction; i mean, how could she not see him as i did--this smart, worldly, accomplished, endlessly-charming man who had, for whatever unknown reason, taken such a strong interest in her son?

dumb kid that i was, what i didn't realize then was that, even though they came from two completely different worlds, beau and my mother understood each other perfectly.

he, for his part, saw a widow with three kids, the oldest of whom had never enjoyed the undivided attention of a father--or any other grown male--in his entire young life.

and my mother? she saw a guy who played at life like a game, and to whom her first-born son was just another prize to be won--and easy pickings, at that. and it scared her to death.

but what could she do? she realized that if she fought him, her son would just rebel, because at the time, beau's pull was far stronger than hers.

so she acquiesced; she allowed her son to work in a bar for a guy whose motives she distrusted, and she watched uneasily as his influence grew, and as her son spent more and more time in his new home-away-from-home, often when he wasn't even working.

see, after nino's departure, the fancy downstairs club had been turned into a pinball and video-game arcade, and many was the night that young mike would head up there after-hours and hang out until 3 or 4 a.m. with the staff, playing games and shit and forgetting all about high school.

until things reached a crisis point, and young mike nearly got thrown outta school halfway through his junior year for non-attendance [this was the first time this happened, btw, not to be confused with the more-important second time which is well outlined in this post].

it was at this point that beau came up with the solution to the problem: if young mike's poor, beleaguered mother, with all her responsibilities, couldn't roust him outta bed in order to get him off to school, then by god, he, beau, would help her out, step up to the plate, straighten the boy out and make him fly right--i.e., young mike should move out of her house and in with him.

[and of course, young mike was all for the idea, and badgered his mother mercilessly as only a restless, dissatisfied, fatherless adolescent boy can.]

to this day, old mike's not sure to whom this master-stroke of genius on beau's part came as the greater shock: his mother or beau's wife, marlene. doesn't matter, really--both women acquiesced to the plan (like either had a choice), and before young mike knew it, at the tender age of seventeen, he was outta his mother's house and ensconced in beau's third bedroom.

round one to beau--but was it really?

depends on how you score it--i mean, yeah, at first, he cracked the whip, and young mike got up because it was somebody new cracking the whip; but soon enough, having achieved his objective of moving the pawn to the square of his choice, beau lost interest in the game and left young mike to his own devices.

and for young mike's part, he was perfectly happy to sleep til noon in his new place--just like he had done in the old--and then come downstairs and hang out with marlene and mocha until it was time for him to go to work at the club.

within a couple months, and for a number of reasons, the whole arrangement fell apart and by mutual agreement of all parties young mike moved back home--no harm, no foul.

[it was only years later that my mother told me how she had grieved when she lost me before she should have; but since the experience hardened her for the inevitable day when all her children would move on into their own lives, she was, in a perverse way, grateful to beau for preparing her for what was to come.  this conversation still haunts me sometimes.]

3. goodbye, marlene & mocha

christmas eve, and it's cold. we're westbound on I-20 toward dallas; beau and marlene are up front, and i'm keeping mocha diverted in the backseat. everybody's full of false cheer, but i can tell mocha's not fooled.

and the phoniness continues at DFW right up to the gate, where beau and marlene embrace, kiss and--big smiles--promise each other that it's only until things get better. hugs for mocha from both of us, and then beau and i watch and wave as they make their way down the tunnel and onto their florida-bound jet.

i never saw marlene again.

4. goodbye, fox's lair

[let's get this one over with quick]

remember all the silicon-valley idiots, and then after them the mortgage-banker idiots, and now the investment-banker idiots, each of whom were convinced that their little scams were just gonna go on forever and ever?

i understand all of them in a way that you might not, because back in the day, i was one of those idiots--and, unfortunately, so was beau.

as that year had begun, he was king of the world, and the only direction any of us could see was up.

the lair was beau's personal playground, and he milked it for all it was worth. god only knows how much cash the place took in during those tumultuous days--beau probably doesn't even know himself--but suffice it to say it was a fuckin shitload.

and since things were going so well, why not double our pleasure and open another location?

well, there were several good, sane, rational reasons not to do so, most of 'em having to do with the fact that the original club was such a piece of shit--cramped, no a/c, no parking, horrible sound, lousy dance floor--and in desperate need of either a move or a serious upgrade.

but beau figured that, since none of that was hurting us right now, why not open a second club and then use the cash flow it would inevitably generate to improve the original?

so that's what we did.

i won't go into the dumbass way the second location was chosen; suffice it to say that i hated it upon sight, not only because it was in an unfamiliar city 45 miles away, but because it was just all wrong--wrong location, wrong space, wrong everything.

nevertheless, i spent much of the summer between my junior and senior year of high school commuting between tyler and longview, toiling away on the construction of the new club.

and, finally it was done. it opened to much fanfare, and closed almost as quickly. who knew folks in longview didn't wanna party and get drunk in a place that was (as we found out too late) right around the corner from the police station?

this wasn't the only reason it failed, of course--it was a different market, and one that, in the grip of his hubris, beau hadn't bothered to explore before plunging in.

whatever; it didn't matter--the new club may be gone and all the cash may be gone, but we've still got our original iittle goldmine, right?

[sigh]

turns out that while we were away tilting at windmills in longview, this big, mob-connected dallas outfit had moved into our backyard and was busy putting together the instrument of our destruction across town in north tyler. it would be called "smith county electric company," it would be slick, spacious, well air-conditioned and well-appointed, it would boast a state-of-the-art sound system and computerized, plexiglass dance floor, and it would put us outta business.

could we have fought 'em if we hadn't shot our wad in longview? yeah, maybe--we had brand loyalty and were much closer to the college, but it's an academic question at best.

in september of that year, i turned 18 and was finally promoted to bartender--a hollow victory, because i was presiding over a half-empty club on even the best of nights.

it didn't matter; i did my best, as we all did--until the bitter end.

* * * * *

by the end of the year that had started with such promise, it was all over--first nino & jonni; then marlene & mocha; and then, finally, the fox's lair itself--all gone.

but for what it's worth, the end of the fox's-lair era merely marked the beginning of the adventures of beau & mike. maybe we'll talk more about that one of these days--or maybe not.

long before it meant "fair and balanced" (and holy shit, we're up to part 4)

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[part four of a series that began with this one]


there are two ways to approach this post: you can either (1) click on the musical links i've provided as you read, or (2) not.

in truth, i don't give a fuck either way--looking back, even i agree that most of the songs i've featured (with the exception of the last two, each of which will forever be sublime) sound cheesy today--but, for what it's worth, they're the ones i most associate with that time and place.

so either roll around in here like a pig in shit, or tiptoe through without getting dirty--your choice.





so yeah, i spent most of my junior and senior years of high school working in a bar--seemed very glamorous to my friends, and while i didn't discourage their illusion, that's all it was, trust me. the actuality? for most of that time (until i turned 18 and was actually useful), i was low man on the totem pole at the enterprise that was the fox's lair, and all the shit flowed downhill to me.

i'll get into some of that later--point is, i feel i've unintentionally misled whatever readers i have left. by that i mean, i've gone back to the beginning of this thread and read what i've written up to to now, and i can see why you're expecting some big payoff to all the build-up.

problem is, that's not where i'm going here--while the whole fox's lair experience is an important part of my past, its rise and fall were but the first chapter of a much bigger story in my life.

but enough with that shit (at least, for now)--back to the topic at hand.

* * * * *

1. the music.

an unexpected side-effect of beau's stint in vietnam was that he came to associate the popular music of the mid-60s with death (i remember he once told me he was always afraid he'd be driving along and some radio dj would cue up the animals' we gotta get outta this place--apparently the vietnam theme song--and he'd run the car into a tree); he solved the problem by coming home and never tuning into a rock 'n roll station again.

great strategy for dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome, maybe, but not so good if you wanna become the next disco king--bottom line: at 29, beau had not the slightest clue as to what the kids were listening to these days.

luckily, the young, lovely and talented crede (pronounced "cruh-day" for you philistines) came along to help him out with that. she not only picked out all the music for the club--hundreds of eight-track tapes--but also served as its first dj. so, for better or worse, her musical tastes ruled the day (beau swore he wasn't fucking her, but nobody believed him).

[but to give sweet crede her due: as one among many who tried to duplicate her magic after she left, i can't even begin to tell you how much i came to belatedly appreciate her ability to achieve crowd-pleasing flow and continuity with nothing but a couple eight-track tape players and no mixer--and if you think that's no big deal, try it sometime and then get back to me.]

but whatever--crede loved the doobie brothers, so we got a lot of them. and she loved steely dan and edgar winter and joe walsh and sly and the family stone, so we got a lot of them, too.

and somehow, it all worked.





2. the booze.

what can i say about the booze?

aside from draft beer, the staple drink at the fox's lair was, from day one, the tequila sunrise--an easy effect to achieve with orange juice and grenadine (and as for the tequila, lemme just say the way our bartenders poured, the sunrise tended to float well above the horizon).

but our signature drinks (and the ones for which we rightly became infamous) were the hurricane and her equally lovely-but-deadly sister, the singapore sling. their minor differences counted for less than what they had in common: (a) both were served in tall, pat o'brien-style hurricane goblets, (b) both had ungodly amounts of various liquors dumped into 'em before being candy-coated with sweet mixers so they'd go down easy; and, finally, (c) both were topped off with a hollowed-out half-lemon filled with everclear, which was set ablaze just before serving (you could always spot the budding alkies by how quickly they blew out the flame so they could either chug the everclear or pour it into their drink before imbibing).

it was good marketing--the flaming drinks were spectacular, especially in the low lighting of the club, and as soon as joe bob saw one being delivered to the next table, chances were excellent that he'd decide he had to have him one o' them "drinks on fire" for his own self.

those kids didn't stand a chance, and god only knows how many of 'em we started down their own little road to alcoholic hell. but i try not to dwell on that too much.





3. the dancing.

news flash: sheltered east-texas white kids can't dance for shit. didn't matter, though--they'd thrash their way through anything crede threw at 'em, until, finally, when she sensed the moment was right, she'd cue up the following song:




and when that first riff blasted outta the speakers on one side of the dance floor and was stereophonically answered on the other,  a collective roar would arise and everyone who wasn't out there already would pack their way into the middle of the room. and even though to this day it remains one of the most undanceable songs ever recorded, joe walsh's rocky mountain way always had this effect on our crowd--hell, if they couldn't dance to it they could totally stagger drunkenly around to it, and by 1:00 in the morning that was usually all that mattered.

[or sometimes it would be the steve miller band's equally-undanceable the joker, which, since i hate it as much now as i did then, i am not featuring here.]

and then--just so that everybody could snuggle up and cop one last feel before the lights came up--she'd always finish with something slow, sloppy and sentimental like this:





or, once i turned her onto it, this:







and then next day i'd come in after school and clean up all the puke--good times.


4. because somebody had to do it.

speaking of my job, i wore many hats during that first year or so, most of 'em pretty unremarkable and boring, so i won't even bother. one of my duties, however, was anything but.

see, on many saturdays it'd devolve onto me to drive over to kilgore and pick up enough booze to carry us over til at least the following wednesday.

why should this be of interest, you ask? well, for a couple reasons:

first, because the fact that i was underage never seemed to cause anyone on either end of the transaction even a moment's pause;

second, because, even on one of the most heavily-patrolled stretches of highway in east texas--and even though (as you will see) i was practically a rolling billboard that flashed "arrest me" in big, bright neon letters--i was never pulled over even once;

and, finally, because the mode of transport involved--namely, a decrepit, clapped-out beater which was wildly unsuited to the task at hand--could usually be relied upon to to provide me with at least one good, solid brush with death every time i undertook a booze run.


she was beau's car, a holdover from back in the day when the restaurant was going under and it was all he could afford--a weathered, faded-blue '66 chevy impala just like the one in the picture--and, lemme tell ya, by the time we got her, she was one ugly, used-up motherfucker.

but, boy, could she hold her liquor.

most saturdays, i'd climb into ol' blue, pockets full of cash, drive to kilgore, back up to the liquor store's loading dock, hand 'em my order and my money and stand back as they filled me up.

it went like this: three kegs in the cavernous trunk, two more in the backseat, one riding shotgun--and then every other available square inch of space in the car filled to the brim with bottles of liquor, then cases (and when space grew scarce, individual six-packs) of beer, leaving barely enough room for me to squeeze behind the wheel for the trip home.

and, oh, that trip home--the longest 35 miles of my goddam life. i could see a little of what was in front of me and only what the side mirror told me was behind me, and that was pretty much it.

but visibility was only one of my problems--by the time we were fully loaded up the suspension was gone, the tailpipe was dragging the ground and holding the blue bitch to a straight line was like navigating a pt boat across a choppy sea (not to mention that bringing the fully-loaded beast to a halt once it was in motion was like trying to stop a goddam freight train--if i'd ever once had to slam on the brakes, it woulda been all over).

and the astonished looks i got from passing cars as i puttered along at 45 mph in my boozemobile? priceless.

whatever; i was young, dumb and thought i was bulletproof--just like beau (who should've known better).

next: the decline and fall.

long before it meant "fair and balanced" (part 3)

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[if you're lost, it's because you haven't read part 1 and part 2 yet]

as cute and clever as it ended up being, beau's finished discotheque was all wrong--way too small, tiny dance floor, laughable sound system, no air conditioning or ventilation to speak of, virtually-inaccessible bathrooms (for drunks, anyway) and an inadequate, unpaved parking lot that turned to mud at the slightest sign of rain.

and the place wasn't even a discotheque in the proper sense--there were no turntables or mixing board--the sound, such as it was, came from eight-track tapes played through cheesy radio shack equipment (because by the time it came to select the sound system, beau was out of money and that was the only place that'd extend him credit).

place was a joke, right?

yeah, like any of that mattered--from the night it opened its doors, the fox's lair (a name that now encompassed both the disco and the downstairs club) was an instant, unqualified and runaway success beyond the wildest dreams of not only its creator, but anybody else who happened to be keeping score.

weeks prior to opening, beau had put the word out to all the tjc (tyler junior college, to the uninitiated) fraternities about the new club that was preparing to open in their midst, and word had quickly filtered out to the campus at large--but nobody expected what happened to actually happen.

opening night: would anybody show up, we wondered?

we needn't have worried--picture, if you will, total fuckin' pandemonium as hundreds of kids waving their id's shoved their way past a door staff totally unprepared for such an onslaught, into the first liquor-serving establishment most of 'em had ever entered in their short, sheltered lives.

i wish i could give you, my readers, a full sense of what those early, heady animal-house days were like; problem is, as the operation's only minor (in more than one sense of the word) employee, i was limited by law in terms of where i could be and when, so i missed out on a lot. lemme just say this: the raw magic that was the fox's lair of 35 years ago couldn't even come close to happening in the scared-rabbit america of today.

consider:

we're talking a couple hundred 18-21 year-old kids piling into the parking lot 3-4 nights a week--and, when it was full (which didn't take much, trust me), leaving their cars in jagged lines up and down fifth street, packing into an airless, overheated club, drinking and dancing until the place closed, and then, pretty much en masse, weaving their collectively drunken way home mostly unmolested by the police.

fire-code compliance? occupancy limits? wheelchair ramps? handicapped-accessible bathrooms? emergency exits? fuck all that pansy-ass shit: in the eighteen months of the club's operation--and despite the conspicuous lack of all of the above--nobody on the premises ever got hurt, arrested, killed or sued, a small miracle in and of itself.

and where were the hordes of religious protesters we expected? surprisingly, they never materialized--i dunno, maybe they figured that if their kids were old enough to fight and die in vietnam, they were old enough to make their own decisions about alcohol.

[i have to tell you the truth: this post (hell, this thread) has kind of gotten the better of me. were i a better writer, i would weave together a narrative that would encompass my myriad memories of this time and place in a seamless tapestry of words--but i'm not (at least, not yet), so instead, in my subsequent posts i'm gonna throw out some of my disjointed recollections of a wild period in my life and let you try to make some sense of it all.

and if you manage to pull that off, you'll be light-years ahead of me.]

part 4 follows here.

long before it meant "fair and balanced" (continued)

.
[part 2 (of probably 3 but maybe 4 or, hell, 5--fuck, i dunno), in which not a lot happens, but important elements of the story are fleshed out. feel free to skim, but make sure you've at least looked at part 1 first]


"a...discotheque, you say?"

yeah, a discotheque--turns out the failed blue fox inn was gonna reopen as a discotheque, whatever the fuck that was.

"you mean," i asked, "like, with girls in miniskirts and white patent-leather boots doing the hully-gully and the watusi in little cages like on tv back in the '60s?"

skilsaw in one hand, dripping in sweat and covered in sawdust--and impossibly removed from the smooth, polished restaurateur i'd always known--beau patiently explained that, no, it was gonna be something quite different--a new-style disco for the '70s.

we were having this conversation in the middle of the inn's formerly elegant dining room, a space that had been transformed beyond all recognition since i had last seen it. gone were the tables and chairs and waitstations of old; in their place were an elevated dj stand against the left wall overlooking a parquet dance floor which dominated the center of the room; and on the right wall, a massive bar (this is what beau and his crew were in the process of building when i walked in the door).

wow, what a difference a few weeks had made.

see, like almost everybody else, i had taken my last paycheck when the inn closed its doors and the downstairs fox's lair was reduced to a skeleton crew, and had gone out and found other employment. but my heart really wasn't in it, and i had swung by that day after school to see if, as he had vowed to do, beau had somehow found a way to rise from the ashes--and damned if he hadn't.

"so how the hell'd you pull this off?" i demanded.

long story short, he had convinced his backers that, rather than liquidate the operation for pennies on the dollars they had invested, they should give him a little more rope--and a little more cash--let him try something new and maybe get all their money back, and maybe even a little more.

"it was something i pulled outta my ass and made up as i went along," he said, flashing his big, toothy grin. he reminded that roomful of grim old men of two facts: first, that the drinking age in texas had just been lowered from 21 to 18 (which was true); and, second, that the restaurant was right down the street from tyler junior college and all of its associated dorms and student housing.

what could be better, he argued--or more lucrative--than providing all those rich, newly-emancipated kids with a place to drink, dance and party til they puked?

what, indeed--his backers recognized the brilliance of the idea immediately, and beau walked outta that meeting of doom with not only a reprieve, but a check.

understand, it was only a sixty-day reprieve and a tiny check--not nearly enough time or money to do what he'd promised 'em he could do--but he wasn't worried, because (a) he had done far more with far less in his life; and (b) what did he have to lose?

but even for beau the bullshitter extraordinaire, this one was gonna require all his ingenuity to pull off.

see, here's the problem with this dream scenario (because you know there had to be one): tyler was smack-dab in the middle of one of the driest, most holy-rolling counties in texas, and, while beau had found a way around this obstacle once, i wasn't sure the baptists would let him get away with it twice.

to understand what i'm talking about requires a little background into an america that most of you probably don't know even exists--bear with me a minute.

if you've never lived in a dry county, allow me to explain how things were in tyler then: there were no liquor stores anywhere, nor was there even beer or wine available in grocery or convenience stores. basically, if you wanted a drink, a beer or a glass of wine, you had two choices: (a) drive to the nearest wet county (in our case, a 70-mile round trip); or (b) go to a private club.

except if you wanted a drink at a private club, you had damn well better have planned ahead. here's how it worked: you'd buy a membership and be given a numbered locker. you would then place your order--so many bottles and/or cans of whatever you liked to drink--pay for it, and the club would, on its next liquor run, purchase your requested items, number each bottle and can with your membership number, and place same in your locker. then, next time you came in (but only then) they would serve you and your guests from the stock--and only from the stock--in your numbered locker. and if you forgot to order or ran out, you were just shit outta luck.

as you can imagine, there were only a tiny handful of such private clubs in town because the baptists had succeeded in making it just too big a motherfucking pain in the ass to try and drink in tyler--easier to just drive to the county line, get smashed in one of the dives there, and then try not to get killed driving home, either by some drunk coming from kilgore trying to pass you on a curve, or in a head-on with some drunk coming the other way trying to make it to kilgore before the liquor stores closed (trust me, that stretch of highway wasn't called 'bloody 31' for nothin)

well, beau was the one who changed all that forever, with a solution ingenious in its simplicity, bulletproof in its legality and totally infuriating to the baptists and the local liquor control board.

see, when he hit town, planned his little millionaire's club, lined up his backers and was then informed of all the hoops he'd have to jump through just to serve folks liquor, he looked at the letter of the law, thought about it a minute, and said, "how about this: i'm member no. 1, the whole bar is my locker, any patron who walks in the door is my guest, i'm giving the alcohol away for free and charging only for the setups and service. anybody punch holes in that?"

well, try as they might, turns out nobody could. and with that, the gordian knot of archaic regulation was cut--every can, bottle and keg of liquor that came in the door of the fox's lair was marked with a big, black "1" in order to comply with the law, and business went on just as if our bar was any other bar in any sane, rational part of the country.

nice, huh? yeah, but here's what concerned me: i knew old-guard tyler a lot better than beau did. and it was one thing to skirt the intent of the law when it came to serving liquor to a bunch of rich, old, mostly-jewish people in a tiny little hole-in-the-wall, but this was something entirely different--now we're talking about the corruption of the town's youth on an unprecedentedly epic scale.

would the baptists let him skate under cover of this loophole when they found out about this little operation to pervert the souls of their kids, or would they launch a holy war?

and at that point, nobody knew. it was a gamble, but it was a gamble beau and his investors were willing to take--and it was one i was willing to take, too.

"is there a place here for me?" i asked.

turns out there was. and with no more thought than that, i walked away from my new burger-flipping job without a backward glance (like that was a wrenching, soul-searching dilemma), and straight into--well, it's hard to describe, really, but i'll give it my best shot next time.