Traveling Light by Bill Barich

Author:Bill Barich
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781632201553
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2015-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

…

So The Fountain became my local pub. What was it that made me so fond of the place? I think in part its very ordinariness. It was local in the deepest and truest sense, a fixed point on the neighborhood compass. Beer was served, but so were news, gossip, attitudes, and opinions. If you were a regular, you stopped in at least twice a day just to keep up with things. These stops were not open-ended for most regulars. They knew in advance how long they’d stay, give or take the odd pint, just as they knew when the fresh scones would come out of the oven at the bakery or when the betting shop would have the results of the late greyhound races from White City. Pubs, with their tightly controlled hours, encourage a rigorous approach to drinking. The midafternoon closure has its roots in the Defence of the Realm Act, passed by the government during the First World War to prevent workers at munitions plants from getting too soused at lunch. Let fumbling fingers aid the Kaiser? Not likely, mate. That DORA is still law seventy years later can be counted as yet another tribute to the British love of the habitual.

The hours at The Fountain could be carved into a granite tablet, so strictly do Page and his staff adhere to them. During the week, the doors open at eleven in the morning and close at three, then open again at five-thirty and close at ten-thirty. On Saturday, the evening opening is pushed back to six o’clock, with a similar half-hour adjustment on the other end. On Sunday, even the grimiest public-side customers dash their cheeks with cologne and put on church suits in anticipation of an alcoholic blitzkrieg that only lasts from noon until two-thirty. Because time is short, drinking is fast, with pints being downed so quickly that Page himself has to pitch in. Luckily, an enforced period of recuperation follows. The Fountain doesn’t open again until seven, and its windows go dark for good at half-past ten.

Although I thought of myself as a Fountain regular, I seldom dropped in on weekday afternoons unless I was planning to have lunch—a sandwich from the bakery, or a slab of steak-and-kidney pie that Mrs. Page cooked in her upstairs kitchen. If I had a pint on an empty stomach, as many regulars did, I always wound up staring out the window at the blowing flakes of snow, and I’d remember how cold it was out there—the coldest winter in thirty-one years!—and my hand would begin an involuntary ascent into the air, poking around for John’s attention. The refill he brought always ruined me. It undermined the possibility of any reading or writing when I got home and suggested instead that I take a nice cozy nap under a down comforter. Even if I went into the pub with steely resolve, swearing a silent oath to have one pint and no more, I got trapped sometimes by other customers who’d treat me to the second pint before I could refuse.

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