An afternoon of street-level fun and games at the Rat

Doc’s report:

Sing along with me, gentle reader, to the tune of “Ode to Billy Joe”:

"It was the third of June, in our historic city by the bay.
Well, I met Harry at the Rat, and the G-Man was on his way."

OK, you’re right. This is a bar blog, not karaoke night. Let’s get on with it.

Since last we three met, Harry’s daughter has married; as a result, a young man has asked to call Harry “Grandpa.” It was the G-man’s 62nd birthday; he’s 31 pounds lighter and his Social Security has kicked in. So I treated the G-man to a shot of Hot Damn, a red cinnamon schnapps; our bartender toasted him with another.

Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather: Our bartender was Breanna, whom the loyal and attentive reader will remember from our April 2015 review of Hooligan’s.

Four years ago, I didn’t think we’d ever meet a more charming and competent bartender than Breanna, but I was wrong: The Breanna of June 2019 has become even more charming and competent with the passing of time.

Breanna’s natural sociability is a perfect fit for the Rathskeller’s warm, friendly, neighborly atmosphere. Old and young play Schmier in the middle of the afternoon. All sorts of

Breanna at the Rat

computerized games challenge players of every interest and tolerance for risk. Fifteen TV screens -- and two more outside -- cover the array of sports, talk, news and entertainment.

The unifying narrow wooden bar runs the length of the establishment, from just inside the front door all the way back to the open grill. Strangers will sit next to you and become instant friends. Someone showed me, apropos of nothing, where his girlfriend’s rottweiler pup nipped his forearm.

Harry and I have spent more than one entire afternoon alone in the bars of Bay City. The Rathskeller is just the opposite: busy and alive with chatter, good food and drink, and bonhomie.

I made a new friend there from Indiana who graduated from Purdue and came here to work in secondary education. I complimented him on Purdue’s 28-ingredient Boilermaker chili, winner of the Big Ten tailgate chili competition.

Sharing my interest in bar trivia, he challenged me to name the three Purdue quarterbacks who went on to lead their pro teams to Super Bowl victories (Answer at the end). I joined James Holzhauer (of Jeopardy fame) in defeat.

But it was such an unseasonably clement day, after a rough winter, that I didn’t mind. Though something of a cynic by nature and hardened by experience, I entertained the theme of my brother’s eulogy at my father’s funeral last month: “Count your blessings.”

It occurred to me, as my mind tends to wander with the late afternoon tavern crowd, that the wellsprings of joy are often complementary or contradictory: solitude and sociability, music and silence, innocence and experience, work and play, spontaneity and structure, winter and spring. As the poet offers:

    “Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas,
    Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.”

Suddenly, one of the TVs broadcast the twitters insulting both the Duchess of Sussex (a new mother) and the mayor of London (a Muslim) as Air Force One landed at Heathrow Airport; it was enough to make every patriotic American ashamed to have elected this vain, avaricious, incompetent, dangerous bore.

But just three days later, as I write this, we remember Omaha Beach 75 years ago, and our patriotism is rekindled. On D-Day, some 4,414 Allied troops died to save the world from racist nationalism on foreign shores; ironically, we seem unable to eradicate that plague from our own.

So every day’s a workin’ day; every day’s a school day. As we were wrapping up our happy visit to the Rathskeller, I noticed a largish semi-colon tattooed on the inside of Breanna’s right wrist and, as a former English teacher, I had to ask her about it.

She explained that it’s the symbol of Project Semicolon, which aims at suicide prevention. The symbolism means that, whereas a period signals the end (of a sentence/life), a semicolon is just a pause in the middle. The sentence continues; life continues.

And in support of that effort, I won’t end this post with a period, but simply the answer to the trivia question about Purdue’s quarterbacks:

1. Len Dawson: Kansas City Chiefs, Super Bowl IV
2. Bob Griese: Miami Dolphins, Super Bowls VII and VIII
3. Drew Brees: New Orleans Saints, Super Bowl XLIV

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See the hairy guy’s report on the Rathskeller: Plenty of beer, burgers and TVs (even outdoors)