You Can't Drink Like this in Russia

Back when our family lived on 14 E. Portland in Kellogg, Dad worked Saturday nights at Joe and Henry's as a bartender and Mom, my sister Christy, and I stayed home and watched Leave It to Beaver and ate popcorn. Popcorn meant staying up until nine o'clock. I remember so well how the popcorn making regiment went. First, Mom poured the oil up to a line in the popcorn maker. She let the oil heat for a little while and then she dropped a few kernels in. They were starters. When the starters were popped, then the quarter cup or whatever the measure was of popcorn could go in. We then listened closely to the popper. We had to determine the exact moment when the popping stopped. Get too eager and we'd have a bunch of unpopped kernels: old maids. Pop too long and we'd have burnt kernels, blackening the bottom of the popper.

We buttered and salted our popcorn. The Gunderson's poured maple syrup or sprinkled sugar on theirs. I once said I thought this was weird.

Mom handed me a popcorn ball.

As I grew older, it seemed like each time I got in a serious relationship or marriage, I learned new popcorn toppings. One liked parmesan cheese. Another bakers yeast. Another liked pepper. Still another liked Scrabble with popcorn. Another always wanted popcorn with Barney Miller or Soap. She'd pop popcorn for poker parties, too. The Deke's dad popped popcorn in bacon grease. Popcorn varieties made failed love worth it.

I used to think, "You know. Popcorn makes America great. It's America at its most inventive, generous, and various. " But I hadn't quite seen the whole truth.

You see, in Spokane, there was the Viking Tavern. Before there were microbrews and 87 varieties on tap, and before it moved, the Viking Tavern sat near 6th and Washington, downhill from the Sacred Heart Hospital and on the way home for a lot of nurses getting off work. In late 1983 and early 1984, I lived a block west of the Viking at 6th and Stevens. Too often, I stumbled into the Viking for freezing schooners or pitchers of Bud and all the popcorn a person could eat. The Viking was my idea of tavern heaven: more than the nurses, more than the food, more than the happy hour, and more than the Viking's passable food menu, I loved the popcorn.

And I wasn't alone. I'll never forget one Friday night Dave and I went into the Viking and it was SRO and men and women were standing around, cold beer in one hand, plastic basket of popcorn in the other, raising the popcorn to their mouths, eating no hands, as if it were a popcorn trough. Man, I thought, not even in Kellogg is a bar this good, and then my life-long affection for the old Viking was secured forever when I heard the best, the most heartfelt, the most impassioned, most inspired proclamation of patriotism ever: he had a pitcher of Bud in each hand, surrounded by friends, conversation had to be yelled, when suddenly he arched his back, raised the pitchers shoulder high, and crowed: "You can't drink like this in Russia!"

Fuckin' A. I nearly cried. I mean, I'm as multi-cultural, anti-xenophobic, pro-UN as the next guy. I love America, and to have a $2.50 pitcher of Bud in each hand, stand on a worn down carpet crunchy with popcorn husks, raise your voice above the din of Gonzaga drop-outs, bed pan weary CNA's, foot weary RN's, and victory-starved Lewis and Clark High School booster clubbers and declare such a brazen love for such a star-spangled truth immediately elevated this guy to the status of folk hero.

For years, if Dave and I were in each other's company and if our conversation got steered toward complaints about our country, one of us, at just the right moment, would take our beer, hold it up, look the other in the eye and say, "Yeah, maybe we should leave Granata alone/finance national health insurance/cut down on our consumption of Arabian oil/etc.etc.....but you know what?"

"What?"

"You can't drink like this in Russia."

Faith restored.