The Advice of My Bartender

“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit,” Ernest Hemingway confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. “I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

Good advice for anyone – even those not given to writing.

This is part two of three submissions I wrote for a Hemingway contest, sponsored by Harry’s Bar and American Grill in Century City, California. I didn’t send them in as I felt they were less than what was called for using Hemingway’s standard.

It was slow at Harry’s Bar and American Grill as usual on a Tuesday night. The bar was especially slow as the two bartenders watched television and re-wiped the clean glasses.

The older of the two saw me as I entered the bar and immediately asked, “What’ll it be?”

 “Jus’ a draft, thanks,” I answered.

As he went about getting my beer, I sat down on the stool nearest the T.V. He returned with a mug and exchanged it for the money in my hand.

I had been sitting there for a while when he spoke to me.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked in a gruff voice.

“Nothing,” I replied.

He shrugged and walked away.  As he did I looked at him for the first time.

His ruddy complected face sported a crooked nose and jutting jaw. For his years, he was large with huge hands and broad shoulders.

 When he walked away I asked him, “Why’d you become a bartender?”

 He looked at me startled, “I could still be a cop – I was sergeant once, but I wasn’t happy.”

 He poured himself a shot something from behind the bar and quickly downed it.

“Why weren’t you happy?” I asked.

“I wasn’t living,” he answered.

I stared at him with a puzzled look.

“In anything you do, son,” he started, “You gotta live life.”

“And being a bartender is life?” I asked.

“No,” he returned, as he poured himself another drink, “this is life.”

 He gazed thoughtfully at the glass for a moment, and then looked back at me, smiling as he said, “Being a bartender is a living.”

I smiled back and said, “Thanks, Dad.”