Tip Your Server

"Bright Lights, Thick Smoke, Loud, Loud Music"

Summer. 1975.

Di and Jay were on the hunt for live country music.

Live… bands composed of local house painters and delivery drivers

who render covers of Tammy Wynette and George Jones for the door,

in the scattered shitkicker bistros up and down Parsons Avenue.

It’s Friday night for south end shift workers with cashed paychecks from

Buckeye Steel and Federal Glass. Workers on weekend vacation with

demands for Seven-sevens, longneck Stroh’s, and a good-hearted song

to dance out their resentment for their jobs.

Their evening begins at the Dutch Café, a barn of a bar in a four-story

brick on the corner across from White Castle at Second & High.

Still dusk, the sliders were not yet exiting the drive-thru window by the bag

full but the parking lot bazaar behind the stand-alone porcelain was buzzing.

A van pulls up aside a parked Olds 88 with a couple guys leaning on the trunk.

There are words, they raise the lid to reveal the bounty atop the spare tire and jack.

Could be tools, tires, guitars, stereo speakers, car parts. Maybe the shoppers

just want to re-purchase what had been stolen the night before. Commerce commences.

But Jay and Di have no interest in the black market. They’re checking to see what band

will be entertaining the patrons at the Dutch. And, to spend as little money as possible,

Jay stuffed a quart bottle of Colt .45 in the pocket of his cut-offs. The cavernous tavern

had a bar along one wall, a row of booths along the opposite, with tables in between

that could be removed for a dance floor. The step-up stage in front allowed space

for a band of no more than four.

The bartender leaned on the backbar, a woman and a man sat on barstools.

Alone as the paying public, Di took a seat at a booth as Jay headed to the bar to order.

He was directed back to the booth by the stooled woman. She would inquire of their order and serve them.

This policy presented a hiccup to the plan, but they sailed with it. Di ordered a rum and coke,

Jay selected a shot of bourbon, neat. Their server didn’t offer any air that she worked for tips.

With the quarters from his change Jay scanned the offerings on the Wurlitzer. Some classics-

Patsy Cline, Flatt & Scruggs, Loretta, plus an upstart named Ricky Skaggs who had once

lived near Columbus.

Jay did notice how attentive the barmaid was, occasionally patrolling the room, checking on

their needs. The plan was to fill glasses with the malt liquor he imported in order to

conserve their entertainment budget. Her sharp power of observation nixed that strategy.

She spied their drinking somehow without reducing the levels in our glasses.

She lifted Jay’s glass to her nose, scowled and accused, “That don’t smell like bourbon.”

BUSTED. They watched her return to the bar. They watched her talk with the bartender,

and the man on the stool, who then departed said stool and headed in their direction.

Jay grabbed Di by her wrist with an urgency unknown by her and without distraction

aimed for the exit.

Hitting the sidewalk, brightly lit by the White Castle across High, they raced a half-block south.

Jay turned to note the gentleman from the stool was now on the outside of the bar.

The race continued down a sidewalk between two buildings to an alley, another alley,

Then to Di’s parked Ford, a ’65 Galaxy with manual transmission, “three-on-the-tree.”

Sober, but exhilarated, they drove south to the evening’s destination, The Country Palace.

A single-story, cinder-block roadhouse on an industrial stretch of Williams Road between

Parsons and Alum Creek, past its neighboring watering hole, the Junkyard Lounge.

A wooden fence separated the two parking lots; one side for lovers of the Nashville sound,

the other patrolled by dogs, as mean as a bar bouncer, guarding caches of spare car parts.

Jay’s job at the time was serving lunch to legislators and lobbyists at the Neil House Hotel

across from the Ohio statehouse. One of his colleagues, Tina, wanted him to meet

her current beau, Donnie, lead singer and pedal steel pilot of the house band.

Jay had shared with Tina that he liked bluegrass; she assured he’d be right at home.

Country Palace, like nearby venues such as the Astro Inn and the Bluegrass Palace,

did host regional and national touring bands, as Columbus was a mere two hours

from the storied WWVA Wheeling Jamboree, allowing a payday weekend for musicians

playing one night on the radio then the other night on their return trip home.

With so many Appalachian ex-pats, central Ohio offered a fertile consumer base.

Di and Jay finished the Colt .45 in the car and entered the lounge to hunt for Tina,

pleased that her co-worker had made the trip. She searched for her man as Jay headed

toward the stage, multiple microphones for each vocalist, and fronted by Donnie’s

pedal steel guitar, the likes Jay had never seen in its native habitat.

The console appeared ready to take off flying from the nearby Lockbourne Air Base.

Tina walked to Jay, pulling Donnie by his wrist. Donnie wasn’t having it, unfit for a friendly introduction. Deep into inebriation, a mood worsened by the news that his guitarist was calling in sick in order to take his dogs out coon hunting. Donnie prepared to address the crowd that

the show would be cancelled, then mumbled to Jay, “no steel playin’ tonight.”

Di, a quiet witness since they arrived, realized the prudence of exiting the premises before

the entire room learned of the cancellation. As Tina had for Donnie, Di grabbed Jay by his

wrist and headed for her Galaxy, and together, sobering, they headed home.