{"id":2893,"date":"2017-06-13T06:36:14","date_gmt":"2017-06-13T13:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=2893"},"modified":"2017-06-13T06:36:14","modified_gmt":"2017-06-13T13:36:14","slug":"oregon-tavern-age-hammond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/oregon-tavern-age-hammond\/","title":{"rendered":"Oregon Tavern Age: Hammond"},"content":{"rendered":"

(From my forthcoming publication Oregon Tavern Age: Sketches from Coastal Drinking Life<\/em>)<\/p>\n

A man sat on a stool at the bar of the South Jetty Bar. He nursed a house whiskey on the rocks and talked to the female bartender in a low familiar voice. They exuded a diminutive Sid and Nancy vibe had Sid and Nancy listened to rap, lived in Hammond, a hamlet whose biggest employers were a log yard, fish processor and assisted living homes and had the distinction of being the camp firewood-for-sale capital of the United States.<\/p>\n

It was a gray Saturday, almost noon. A college softball game played on one of the televisions. I walked up to the bar and waited my turn. I couldn’t see the man’s face to determine his OTA status. I could overhear him, though.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a fifth of Fireball,\u201d he said. \u201cIt went down the table and was gone in 20 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

It had happened the night before.<\/p>\n

He turned my way and nibbled on a red pickled grotesquerie. I caught his visage: pre-OTA. But he was well on his merry way.<\/p>\n

The bartender came over and I ordered an IPA from Lincoln City, or Lincoln Shitty or Tweakin’ City as the jaded locals call it. Lincoln City isn’t all that bad a town. Tom McCall used to have a second home there and drank scotch and sodas while watching the ocean. Moreover, some of the finest, most creative, most hard core Oregonians I’ve ever met hailed from Lincoln City.<\/p>\n

An OTA man came up to the other man and sat down next to him. He said, \u201cI thought you were dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

They laughed. Then they launched into their respective should-be-dead-from-drinking stories. One day, one of the stories wouldn’t be a story. It would stick. Naturally there would be Fireball and road kill elk served at the wake.<\/p>\n

An elderly woman came in and ordered a large coffee in a Spanish coffee mug. She sat at a table and watched a show called River Monsters, <\/i>about a mythological river snake in the Nicaraguan jungle that was killing fishermen in their boats. A white adventurer was sent by a cable network to to slay the beast and sample the cane rum and grilled monkey. One can only hope the snake killed him, too, swallowed him whole.<\/p>\n

I went to my table, a lacquered slab of wood that used to rest in the galley of a commercial fishing boat. I shuddered at the thought of hearing the drunk fishermen stories told across this noble table before the advent of fishermen binge watching Netflix on their phones.<\/p>\n

The softball action picked up. There was a suicide squeeze and a collision at home plate. Safe! I sipped my beer and took a few notes on a Keno card.<\/p>\n

I looked around and noticed the closed wishing well in the far corner where the gambling machines stood and tinkled their delights. I knew the well was closed because on a previous visit I asked and learned its sad story; too many men had pissed in it so the water got drained and the crippled children would just have to suffer.<\/p>\n

My beer disappeared. I went up to the bar and ordered another one. I noticed a fifth of Chocolate Whipped (vodka) on the shelf. I got a hangover just noticing it.<\/p>\n

I asked the bartender about the bottle. She told me no one had ordered a shot in the two years she’d worked the South Jetty.<\/p>\n

There is a God and he doesn’t truck with a bar serving Chocolate Whipped, even to sinners and House Republicans.<\/p>\n

The radio played bad dance pop music. A lefty ripped a liner over the right field fence. The river snake killed another fishermen. Nancy said goodbye to Sid in the doorway of the office. She kissed him while holding a fifth of J & B. They’d just run out and someone wanted a double.<\/p>\n

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.) <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(From my forthcoming publication Oregon Tavern Age: Sketches from Coastal Drinking Life) A man sat on a stool at the bar of the South Jetty Bar. He nursed a house whiskey on the rocks and talked to the female bartender in a low familiar voice. They exuded a diminutive Sid and Nancy vibe had Sid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2894,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,74,15],"tags":[24,101,26,222,220,13,21,27,221,23],"class_list":["post-2893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-coast_history","category-oregon-tavern-age","tag-bars","tag-dive-bars","tag-drinking","tag-fireball","tag-hammond","tag-oregon-coast","tag-oregon-tavern-age","tag-ota","tag-south-jetty-bar","tag-taverns","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2895,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893\/revisions\/2895"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}