Oregon Tavern Age: Toots and Goats

A great friend, Toots, called me. She had a sweet new gig—bartending in OTA county at one of the last joints that didn’t serve liquor. I could barely contain my joy. Now I had a Deep Throat source inside OTA country for all the OTA stories only a bartender can elicit or solicit.

Over the years, Toots and I had spent hundreds of hours in OTA country together, more than a dozen joints. We’d hit the sauce, sung karaoke, danced on tables, gigged, wrote poetry, and often shook our heads at all the crazy shit that went down around us, some of it the result of our unintentional instigation.

Well, goddammit, it wasn’t her fault when a drunken man told her he had a passport and was ready to leave his wife and run away with her. It certainly wasn’t her fault when she had to flatten a surly bridesmaid with a right cross because the bitch wouldn’t shut up.

Everything we did together was mystery achievement.

First she broke the terrible news about the joint: They now served liquor.

OTA Jesus wept.

Next she launched into a story about saving two goats from the slaughter, and rigging up a pen for them in the tavern’s spacious outdoor compound. It was a goddamn OTA drinking/petting zoo! What in the name of God! And there was a horseshoe pit out there, too!

I had to visit. I’d never petted a goat in a bar while drinking a double vodka and tossing a horseshoe.

Toots had named the beasts Sal and Shack and you know some idiot will try and feed them Jello shots and document it on social media. If Toots sees that, she’ll clock the shit out of the degenerate. One punch, lights out, and he’s eating straw. Sal and Shack might even cuddle with him

No one fucks with Toots’ goats.