Through a Glass, Darkly

Thanksgiving Eve, 1987
Axel's Tavern
Corner of Oakland & North Aves., Milwaukee, WI. USA

* * *

Axel's was (and still is) a drinking man's bar. You keep your head down and you don't bother your neighbor. It's dim, it's smoky, and everyone in the place likes it that way.

Turning up my collar against a damp chill, I walked the six blocks from my dingy student apartment past Riverside Park, abandoned by the city due to budget cuts some years earlier. In the yellowed, misty glow of late evening, it possessed a distinctly ominous look, a place where you knew unsavory characters lurked and bad things regularly happened in the inky blackness just beyond the flat fluorsecent glare and rusted out playground equipment.

Entering the bar, it took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the hazy interior, the patrons all taking on the same shapeless, hunched look. I picked out the square jawed countenance of my roommate Ed about four stools inside the door. He was nursing an Old Style and a cigarette, a shot glass full of caramel-colored liquid giving off a feint yet powerful antispetic smell in front of him.

"What are you drinking?" I asked by way of a greeting, unravelling myself from my scarf and overcoat and taking the empty stool next to him.

"Turkey," he announced with a snort, as if the question was an insult to his very intelligence. And Ed thought very highly of his own intelligence....

"Sounds good to me," I answered, nodding to the bartender who had wordlessly appeared, bottle in hand. What Axel's lacked in aesthetics, it made up for in customer service. You never waited long to get your glass filled.

Wild Turkey is a high octane bourbon, packing the kick of a mule with the full bodied flavor of barrell-aged turpentine. It is to be drunk in one continuous gulp. Pause for breath, and you will suddenly know what it tastes like to drink fire.

For reasons lost to history, it had become our drink of choice. We were, by this point, veteran Turkey connisseurs, having spent many an evening in animated barroom debate over the respective merits of 86 proof versus 101. I estimate that at least one third of my student loan money for the first semester of the 1986-87 school year was spent on products made by the Austin Nicholls Distilling Company of Lawerenceburg, Kentucky.

With minimal fanfare, we tapped our glasses in ritual salute. "Happy Thanksgiving," Ed pronounced, adding "bet the turkey tommorrow won't taste anything like this." With a slow, sinuous burn, the liquid worked its way down my throat, settling in a tingling pool in my stomach. I tried to suppress the involuntary shiver that always seemed to come a second later, "the mark of the lightweight" from the electric surge the liquor directed up and back down the nerves of my spinal column.

Well schooled in the protocol of the inebriate arts, we almost simultaneously exhaled deeply and reached for our beer chasers before sinking meditatively into soul-deep narco-psychedelic post Turkey afterglow.

Tennessee Ernie Ford spun on the ancient jukebox. Outside, the drizzle had turned into a steady, pelting November rain. We lingered in our respective silent reverie for awhile, before the bartender reappeared in front of us. Gesturing at the murky decanter in his right hand, he arched an eyebrow in wordless inquiry.

I was 24 years old. It was the night before Thanksgiving. I had nothing to lose, and no particular place to go.

I pushed forward a crumpled five dollar bill. "Yeah, give us another round."