Look around… who can you trust with your ills? It ain’t your Doctor… that’s purely medical… and that’s not what I’m talking about. No.
And sometimes you can’t talk to your “significant other” either. Maybe that part pinches a bit… you know, you would think we could talk to someone who we are intimately connected to… but no, not always. We conceal our ills from those who we are closest to… maybe it hurts more to reveal a vulnerability? (it’s not their fault… it’s just the way it is).
So where is it safe? Where is it comfortable? Where can you go to be whole? Man, there are oodles of corner joints… places where there is a chair for us, faces familiar & lights low enough to obscure our presence and preserve our anonymity.
It is there, on this night, that Mr. Billy reigns supreme. On other nights it could have been Sean or Kelly patrolling the business side of the bar at Ash Creek Saloon.
One time I got to thinking, “Does Billy own a pair of pants?” I don’t think I have ever seen him working the bar, regardless of the season, in anything other than shorts. No matter. Billy is always there with a word, a smile, a thrust of a welcoming hand, a “howya doin’?”… and he is lightening quick to refill your glass with some of Kentucky’s finest.
To be there seems to be enough… a scritch and rub to your soul.
Trade places? I have been on Billy’s side. Many years. I like it better on this side. But I confess that sometimes I itch to go behind the bar again. To draw a beer, mix a Madras, chill the glasses for a perfectly built Martini… Oh yes, a brilliant Martini. Moving from one citizen to another, administering an elixir, providing a word or two, helping the wait staff, settling checks… not dropping a beat.
I do appreciate Billy’s work. I recognize his skill and “charm”. And more than anything else, I thank Billy for the respect and kindness he favours each of us, some in more need than others, and in particular I thank him for his smile and a wink to those who are suffering the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”… for it is the knowing smile and a wink that is infinitely more valuable than anything found in a glass.