Adelita

Beagles did indeed invent the term yellow beer.  It's not quite accurate in that just to look at it you couldn't tell my Daisy Cutter pale ale from a Budweiser.  In the bad old days if you wanted to get exotic with beer you usually went for a bock, or something you don't see anymore, dark beer, even Schlitz had a dark beer.  It didn't taste much better, but maybe in your mind it was more flavorfull, like eating rye instead of white bread.  But still once you hear the term yellow beer you know exactly what it means.  And I generally agree that there is no such thing as bad beer, though I think I would prefer a cold glass of water (the real thing) to a light beer.  And I couldn't agree more about free beer.

I was at the Ten Cat early today to show an old Champaign buddy my show before it comes down and Dick the owner happened to be there and I got  to ask him something I have been wondering about.  When I left Champaign draft beer was served in 12 oz Pilsner (hourglass shaped) glasses, and it was likewise in Texas, and the same for Chicago when I first got back here in 1987.  I started spending my Friday nights at the Ten Cat in 2005 and by then all beer was served in pint glasses.  What I was wondering about was the transition.  Was there a time when the Pilsner and pint glasses coexisted, when if you asked for a beer you might be asked, 12 oz or 16?  Dick said they opened the Ten Cat in 1991 (April 10th) and by that time Pilsner glasses were history.


I guess Dump's speech will be tonight.  I don't  know if I'll be able to bear it.  Yesterday afternoon I was listening to the guy running the house investigative committee, Chaffetz?  I'm not sure, and googling around I can't find it, but the gist was that he was saying there were no indications that Dump was playing footsie with Putin, and even if he was that was probably a good thing so no reason to investigate, nothing going on here, move along.  All the republican Senate and House investigators are saying the same thing.  How low will Dump's polls have to go before they have any guts?  Or maybe they have all been seduced by his short fingered charm.  Look at Li'l Reince, all puffed up to be vulgarly bad-mouthing the press just like the big boys.


That backspace thing, like Beagles's Windows 10 seems to have fixed itself, so maybe I will proceed with my Texas story.

Kind of weird all of a sudden becoming a Yankee.  There was some ill feeling among the populace about all these Yankees coming down to compete for their jobs and bringing their snow with them (it snowed twice that first winter I was there, unprecedented), and worse, prompting the Texas Chili Parlor, a civic institute just north of downtown, to include beans and tomatoes in their chili. If I listened closely behind my back I could hear some mocking of my accent.  But back in Illinois I had mocked Texas accents plenty, and by in large the people were nice.

But they weren't getting me any jobs, nothing happened on that front for awhile, but then I joined a temp agency and they sent me off to work for the attorney general.  It was a classic bureaucratic job, different colored forms, paperclips, things had to be just so or else we sent them back to be put in the proper form.  Which was a little unfortunate because they were forms from attorney general offices across the state and what they were trying to do was get child support for kids.  I think it was a deal where if the woman could prove that there was no way she could get a red cent from the bastard the state would kick in something, and the forms had to be just so to prove that, so if some bureaucrat at the local office filled out the paperwork in a way which we bigger bureaucrats in Austin didn't like then we kicked it right back and baby had to wait for that new pair of shoes.

Another job was where child support checks came in, but there was no indication of which child was being supported.  We had lists of all the guys who owed child support and we used that to try to figure out which check went with which child.  It was an inexact science and who knows where those checks ended up, and it seemed like it would be easy for somebody to well, slip a few of them into their pocket or purse.

This was my first experience in working in an office and I was shocked, shocked,  I was used to working in restaurants and there was a rough honesty going on there.  If you didn't like somebody you were pretty open about it and expected the same from them.  But nobody was honest to anybody else's face in the office.  I remember one time after closing one of the women went off on a blue streak about  her boss and on and on and on.  One phrase I remember because I was to hear it often during my office odyssey, "The reason they don't like me is because I tell it like it is.  I don't kiss ass like everybody else."  This phrase was often spoken by the biggest ass kisser in every office.

Anyway I didn't expect to see this woman again after that, but Monday morning she was right back with the crew, and going off on that blue streak again as soon as the boss was out of the door.  Just another day in the office.  And it was a grim office.  The work was dull and the women (they were all women for some teason) were drab and conversation was bitter and petty.  But in the midst of all this there was Adelita, pretty, and always dressed up nice, and always cheerful. and bursting into snatches of song, and always nice to everybody, she was a tropical songbirdt among the sparrows.

Maybe a year after I left that job I was reading the Austin American Statesmen and there was a little article about goings on in the attorney general's office.  Larceny.  Check stealing.  Adelita.  My my. my.

Next installment:  Uncle Ken's big break.