Bubba's

Mr. Hendricks and I took a little Labor Day weekend trip to Wisconsin to visit the American Players Theater again. This year we stayed in Mineral Point at Brewery Creek Inn, about thirty minutes south of Spring Green. On our way home from the show on Saturday night, we stopped into a charming little dive called Bubba's on High Street. It was one of three little joints open at the seemingly very late hour of midnight. It was like walking back in time to the eighties when bars were filled with cigarette smoke, loud and drunk patrons and even louder jukebox music. Bare bones, just a bar, an electronic dart board and stools. We took open seats at the end of the bar and a young man with shaggy blond hair and glasses, clearly feeling no pain, told us he wasn't the bartender but that he could get us a drink.

"I mean, it's okay," he shouted, leaning into the bar. "What can I get you guys?"

Foolishly I asked for a gin martini. I have had problems before with gin martinis, in more upscale establishments than this. Apparently there is some debate about what exactly constitutes a martini. According to me, an authority on martinis solely based on sheer number of them consumed, a martini is gin with a bit of vermouth, shaken violently with ice, then strained into a cold martini glass. I prefer a cucumber garnish because of the gin I favor, but an olive will also do. What will not do is gin shaken with ice alone and strained into a glass: that is simply cold gin. Additionally, martinis are not served "on the rocks." Anyway, these were the least of our worries.

The "bartender" looked a little taken aback, but valiantly continued on. "Okay, and for you?" he turned to Mr. Hendricks.

"I'll have a vodka martini with Grey Goose," he said. It was too late to stop Mr. Hendricks from mentioning Grey Goose, but again, this was to be the least of our worries. Our friend put on his best professional demeanor and soldiered on, consulting with the woman two seats down from me to see if the bar had any vermouth.

A moment or two later, the real bartender came before us. He looked much like the impostor bartender in that he was also a bit loaded and friendly. "I'm so sorry," he began, "but we don't even have martini glasses here. We're just a beer and shot joint. I'm really sorry, the first round is on me. What can I get you guys?"

We reassured him that he did not have to buy our drinks. "How about a gin and tonic, then?" I asked.

"Sure," he said with relief. He looked at Mr. Hendricks.

"I'll have a vodka tonic," Mr. Hendricks said.

"Okay, then. I'm real sorry," he continued to apologize. Both Mr. Hendricks and I reassured him that it was fine, don't worry, we just want a drink, it's no big deal, again, don't worry. He seemed mildly reassured and went to pour our drinks.

Mr. Hendricks could not resist the opportunity to smoke in a bar, something he hasn't been able to do in Minnesota for a year or two. So he lit up and we tried to catch the American League scores on the tiny television hanging in the corner above the bar. Our teams were doing battle this weekend, and because we were on vacation we did not see any of the four games. Later we were to discover that they split the series: the A's won two games, each by a run, and the Twins won two games, each by about ten runs. The Twins are going to have to do a lot better than that if they want to get to the playoffs, but I digress.

Our small, strong drinks arrived and we gave our bartender a very large tip. We sat and drank. When we came into the bar, it was loud, but the jukebox (I use the term loosely: an electronic contraption with a screen, etc.) was off. Within a few moments of sitting down, someone had spent a good deal of money solely on Tupac Shakur. The loud, thumping pound of the music vibrated the seats. It was hard not to giggle. I mean, Mr. Hendricks was the only person of color within a hundred mile radius, but the townies in Mineral Point couldn't get enough of Tupac.

As we drank, I noticed a handwritten sign near the old cash register, taped to the mirror of the bar. It was entitled, "Bubba's Shit List" and underneath said, "talk to Bubba or the bartender in order to remove yourself from this list." There were about eighteen names, with number one being Billy Bob. I am not making this up. Two of the names had been crossed off, so it was indeed possible to make restitution. But how? And for what? I was deeply curious, enough to ask the woman next to me.

"Hey," I ventured, "what's up with that list?"

She turned to me and smiled. "I know, I was just looking at that! I know those people," she said.

"Do they owe money?" I asked.

"Nah, that wouldn't get them on a list. I know Billy Bob. I wonder what he did to piss them off," she replied.

I introduced myself and Mr. Hendricks to Dawn. She was in her mid-thirties, a regular nursing her lite beer and smoking her cigarette.

"Are you from around here?" she politely inquired.

You had to give her credit. There was no way in hell Mr. Hendricks and I were from around here.

I laughed and said, "No, we're from out of town. But I'll bet you knew that."

She smiled and said, "Well, I thought so, but you know, I don't know."

Our chitchat died down and she turned to talk to the bartender. Mr. Hendricks and I pondered the possible meanings of being on the shit list, and what you had to do to remove yourself from it. I was dying to get a picture of the list, but thought better of it. Perhaps the other patrons would not find it so amusing to have outsiders documenting their little piece of heaven. The smoke now had become almost unnoticeable, Tupac was still hollering, and a bar stool either fell or was tossed over by one of the young women in the bar. There was a very slight ruckus, warning us like distant thunder, and suddenly it was time to go.

We stepped outside into the not warm but not cool late August night and only then could I smell the smoke in a cloud around me and in my clothes and hair. It was just like the eighties when I went to bars and drank all night (beer, not gin: thank god, I'd have been in rehab about four times by now) and shot pool and played the same songs on the jukebox over and over. But I rarely got drunk: that wasn't fun. I spent a good deal of my twenties with friends in bars almost every night of the week, but we would sit and talk and drink and I still made it to work the next day. I'll bet our friends at Bubba's do, too. Our twenties are very forgiving, aren't they?

The next day I told Mr. Hendricks yet another winning-the-lottery fantasy: I would buy Bubba's and whip it into shape. The bartender would be a huge African-American man and the waitress a beautiful lipstick lesbian. There would be booths and a small grill, so you could eat fries and chicken wings. There would be martini glasses, and a "J.D." (an appletini) would be all the rage. There would be a state of the art ventilation system, so the person next to you could smoke like a chimney and you'd never even know it. The jukebox would have only music from the eighties: Prince, Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, Lionel Richie, all that sort of thing. I'd still call it Bubba's, mostly because when we were teenagers, my brother and I would call our mother 'Bubba,' and she hated it. There would be a portrait of her, framed, with her name underneath, implying the bar was her namesake. She would hate that, too.

Then after about a year, I would sell the bar back to Bubba, and he could run it right into the ground. Everyone would come back, smash all the martini glasses, destroy the leather booths and never repair the ventilation system. All would be well again.