Two and Two by Rafe Bartholomew

Author:Rafe Bartholomew
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography / Cultural Heritage, Biography & Autobiography / Culinary
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2017-05-08T16:00:00+00:00

Many of the bar’s employees had amateur athletic backgrounds. The Irishmen played soccer and rugby and hurling; my father and I each had strong high school basketball careers followed by piddling college ones. And while I’d stop a few hundred miles short of comparing the physical side of our work to what professional athletes do—there’s a reason they make millions and we’re worth minimum wage plus tips—I loved the teamlike mentality that set in during the busiest times at McSorley’s. It felt like we were all working in sync, limbs of the same organism that existed to wash mugs and pump ale and haul beer to the tables. On Paddy’s Day, when the bar was packed and we were all hustling as fast as we could, when there was no time for wasted movement or a trip to the pisser or even a bite of hamburger, I felt the kind of euphoria that comes when you’re part of a team and everything you do on the field or the court is turning out right.

Never was that feeling more perfect than when I worked with my dad on Paddy’s Day. If team chemistry is a product of familiarity and trust, it’s hard to imagine any situation more familiar than toiling beside the man who raised me, in the bar where he brought me as a child, and doing the job I’d always watched him perform. The way each of us sensed where the other was, what the other needed, and when we needed it—that was innate. He didn’t need to yell down the bar and say he needed empties for a big order that Timmy had just put in. He could start pumping, and before he poured eight mugs I’d have sixteen new ones, washed and gleaming, right in front of him. Thirty seconds later, I’d have sixteen more right behind them, and so on and so on until the order was filled. When he would turn around to make change in the cashbox, I’d lean over the rack to move two sets of four mugs over to his right-hand side and create space on his left for my next delivery of clean empties. When he hovered over the pumps to pour, that’s when I’d slip behind him to make change for the customers on the bar. The give-and-take, the balance between manager and runner, felt perfect.

That feeling of connectedness, of real interdependence, is something I’ve never felt while working in an office, but it’s a part of just about any pursuit that involves teamwork. Working at McSorley’s with my father reminded me—strangely enough—of a description of early-twentieth-century lumberjacking that I read as a teenager. My father went through a heavy-duty fly-fishing phase around the time I was thirteen years old and the movie A River Runs Through It was released on video. It only led to one real-life fly-fishing trip for him and his brother, but he bought dozens of instructional books and literature about the sport. He even got

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