Wendell’s Bar should have been in the Smithsonian, not still standing-leaning rather-on a Schaefer Avenue corner next to the shell of a manufacturing plant that once made solid state televisions, the big console version that weighed half a ton and took up half the living room.
Wendell’s still had the trough urinals, as though the male patrons were incontinent horses, but it didn’t have Wendell anymore. Wendell had gone to the great tavern in the sky, where presumably the coolers didn’t break down every three weeks like they did in the earthbound tavern where Buddy Redenda was now sitting.
It was Christmas and back in the days when alcohol sales were banned on Christmas Wendell had always made a big Christmas buffet for the bachelors and the less fortunate.
Once that ban was lifted, Wendell’s son Lester opened to sell booze, in his own words: “trading the bums for bums with money.”
Nick Rosiski and Pock Johnson started bringing in about 400 bucks worth of dim sum every Christmas and inviting the local street people to join them, and when Lester grumbled, Pock told him they did it because Lester was a dim sumbitch for canceling his late father’s charity buffet.
Buddy wasn’t feeling especially social, or charitable, but he wasn’t in the mood to sit at home alone on Christmas, especially since Mary Ellen had gone on a girl’s vacation to Lake Tahoe and left him for a 29 year old guy who she rented water skis from at Finnegan’s Wakeboarding.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Jimmy Doom's Roulette Weal to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.