Barroom Wisdom
Need somebody to talk to? Talk to the gringo behind the bar... he really has no choice but to listen. Oh, and tips are greatly appreciated...
So working the bar is an excellent way to enter into *whatever* kind of random discussion. It would make an amazing documentary to just film random bar discussions… I’ll add that to my list of projects to work on. So anyways, I am going to attempt to put the most interesting things up here on the blog…
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“Ya, and once you get the fish up on the boat, that’s when it gets real bad, that’s when the birds come in… and that shit is straight out of a Disney movie… those things are so fuckin’ dopey”
- Electrician from Burmuda
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If you are stranded somewhere and come down with a stomach bug you can drink a tablespoon of kerosene every day until it goes away. If you don’t have kerosene, eat two cigarettes. Both will wreck your stomach, but it’ll at least kill whatever it is that you have.
- Jim, Army Ranger survival instructor
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Absinthe was made illegal mostly due to one incident that happened in Switzerland. An alcoholic went out one day and began his usual drinking. He spent all day and night in the bars and drank well over his usual amount. One of the last things he drank was absinthe. He then went home to his house, killed his wife and daughter, and then made his way back to one of the pastures next to his house with his rifle. He attempted to shoot himself in the head, but since the rifle was so long, he had to use his toe to pull the trigger. He managed to shoot himself, but unfortunately (or fortunately) it was a glancing blow and wasn’t fatal. Due to the already shaky legal acceptance of the drink, the whole incident was blamed on the absinthe that he drank. It was then determined that the drink was too dangerous and it was outlawed.
- John, owner of Cafe No Se
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I met a chiropractor who was driving a motorcycle around the world over a five year period of time. He just started in March. You can check out his blog at http://web.me.com/mlewis30/MyGlobalAdventure/Blog.html
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So at Bistro 5, I had a long discussion with a middle-aged woman from Boston. She was revisiting Antigua to learn Spanish and above all, to try to keep herself occupied and her mind off of her “real life”. She explained that she had met the man of her dreams… or so it had seemed. She had given up everything to be with him. She had recently divorced her husband, sold her business, and moved to California to be with her new man. After going through the whole process of leaving her old life behind, the guy informed her that he no longer wanted to be with her. They had visited Antigua together in the past, so she was returning to try to figure out the next step of her now totally confused life. She had decided to only come for a week. After hearing the whole story, I gave her my two cents. If she had no ties and nothing to go back to, why stay for only a week? Travel… and that’s where we ended our discussion… My boss’s wife walked in the door and struck up a conversation with her. After hearing the whole story, she ended up buying her dinner and staying WAY past closing until about 2:30 - 3:00am drinking wine… I have no idea what the final outcome was… Shortly after closing time, the rest of the waiters and I made our way to the office and just watched Guatemalan music videos on You-Tube. I ended up falling asleep…
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Playa del Carmen
The clientele here in Holden MA is a bit different from La Antigua, Guatemala. Fortunately, there are still some good conversations to be had on a fairly regular basis.
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Deep sea fishing off the coast of MA has become a much different game over the past 25 years. “When I was a kid, I used to go 5 miles off of the coast to fish, now I need to go 40 miles out”.
- Otto and Ruth Anne