Bar Fight

Earlier tonight a good friend, Russell, and I went to a bar, The Old Pad, to watch the fourth game of the World Series. A guy spilled beer on another guy's girl friend. About an hour and a half later, the protective boyfriend confronted the guy who spilled the beer on his girlfriend. Fighting words flew. Chests puffed. A third party intervened. His chest puffed. The bartender took over. Peace prevailed. I remembered some bar fights.

I was a pre-teenager when my dad came home early one night from tending bar at the Sunshine Inn in Kellogg. His white shirt was torn down the front, buttonless, ripped open, his chest red with scratches. My mother was aghast.
"What happened?"
"I threw Jack out of the joint."
"For what?"
"I said something. Pissed him off. He reached across the bar. Grabbed me." He pointed to his torn shirt. "Pulled me toward him. Ripped my shirt. I came around the bar. Picked him up and threw his ass out the door."
"Did you call the police?"
"No. Shit. Jack's my friend."
Jack was my dad's friend since childhood. Dad was the best man in Jack's wedding. Only being away in Korea kept Jack from being my dad's best man. Jack had a short fuse. Dad lit it that night. The two didn't speak for a while. One night later Jack got thrown drunk in jail. Dad bailed him out. They were speaking again.
.
The Kopper Keg was where many of my friends and I drank beer and wine flips when we turned nineteen. Nineteen was the legal drinking age back in Idaho in 1972. I should italicize legal. Plenty of Silver Valley bars served and sold beer if a guy could see over the bar. The Kopper Keg was loud with young men laughing, shouting stories, picking up girls, playing air hockey and foosball and pool, and feeding the jukebox with quarters to play Charlie Rich, Charlie Daniels, Ray Charles, and sometimes some Crocodile Rock. Most of the guys in the bar were going to different colleges...North Idaho College, Spokane Falls, University of Idaho... many were home on weekends to work at the Smelter or the Zinc Plant and some were in the armed forces, home on leave occasionally. The Kopper Keg often had the air of reunion.

On night, in July, Lennie Curry was in the Kopper Keg. He was born the day before I was. We rode bikes and went to each other's house when we were grade schoolers, but went our separate ways in junior high and high school and he went into the army and became an MP. He and Jim Bachmeir and some other guys and I were talking. We could see that Bob Wintermute was in the bar. Normally, he tended bar. Not tonight. He was just getting loaded, all two hundred fifty pounds or more of him, sporting his new toupee, talking cocky.

Bob was one of those Kellogg guys that no one quite knew where he came from or where he'd been. He showed up. He drove a huge car. He got in with Lloyd Finley, one of the Kopper Keg owners, meaning he liked to gamble and deal illegal blackjack in the back room at the Kopper Keg. He was a good guy to have deal cards and pour beer. He was menacing.

Bob came over to us, standing near the end of the bar, and suddenly said something like, "You little son of a bitch" and clubbed Lennie across the chin, lifting him off his feet, knocking him flat on the floor. But, it was like the floor had springs. Lennie was right on his feet and punched Bob back. Cooler heads intervened, separated the combatants, and prevailed. We all went back to drinking. Bob went back to the bar. Lennie cursed him. We all went back to drinking.

It was March, 1980. I was new to Eugene. I'd been looking for a bar that I could feel at home in and found one in North Eugene, up River Road. I don't remember its name. Now it's a strip joint: the Alaska Bush Company.

Final exams were over. I went to a Kentucky/Oregon women's tournament basketball game. Oregon won. I decided to go up River Road and have a few beers. I settled in at the bar. Two mill workers to my left were playing a dice game for beers. It was pay day. They'd been in there since day shift ended, about five or six hours earlier. Soon two couples came in, two guys in their late forties or early fifties. All four were dressed in the Oregon Ducks' colors, green and yellow.

The mill workers were getting agitated with each other. They disputed who won their last dice game. They started getting very profane. One of the newly arrived Duck fans told the mill workers to cool it. The mill workers ignored him. The Duck fan got louder, saying there were ladies in the house and he wanted them to clean up their mouths. They ignored him. Behind the bar, one of the employees was on the telephone talking to her boyfriend. The young guy tending the bar sense trouble. Especially when the two beefy husband Duck fans got up from their table and got in the mill workers' faces, telling them to cool it. In a second, the millworkers were off their stools, started punching the beefy Duck fans and a wrestling match ensued, two tables tipping over, glasses of beer flying, and the bartender yelling, "Stop! Stop you guys! I've called the police!"

I watched. I figured the bartender was bluffing about the cops. The gal behind the bar had been on the phone the whole time, even giving her boyfriend a blow by blow account. Things cooled down. The millworkers got up and left. The beefy Duck fans set the tables and chairs back up and things were quiet.

Until, the doors blasted open and a swat team of Eugene police with clubs and weapons blasted into the bar, ready for action. They were armed and ready for nothing. The swat team chief approached the bartender.
"We got a call."
"It's over" the bartender replied.
"Over? You pushed the silent alarm. That alarm alerts us to an armed robbery in place. We have the road out there blocked both ways."
"Oh, shit. No, we just had a bar fight here."
"It's over?"
"It's over. Didn't last long."
"Son." The swat team's chief's voice was very low. "Don't ever push that silent alarm again unless you are in dire trouble here."
By now the swat teams' adrenaline had slowed down considerably.
"You don't even want to know how much this operation cost the city."
The police left.
I went to pee. A guy came in and occupied the urinal next to mine.
"You come here often?"
"No," I said. "This is just my second time."
"It's not usually this exciting."
"Oh. Well, good."
We both went back and drank our beers.