There’s an art to trading tall tales, whether about the Dalai Lama, the Pope or anyone
The weather outside was not frightful. I mean, it is Northern California after all, which means T-shirts and shorts for men, and tank tops and yoga pants for women. None of which is offered as a judgment, merely as an observation.
Drinks had been ordered, drinks had been made and delivered, and the only thing left was their quiet enjoyment.
Much is made about drinks these days, and sure, drinks are important in the fluidic environs of a local bar. But more important than the potables, and the sometimes portentous production of such, is the atmosphere that surrounds them. Much like the difference between a cafeteria and a restaurant, where one is designed simply to eat while the other offers dining, most bars — at least the really good ones — are designed for socializing, not just drinking. They’re not called social clubs for nothing.
The best way to socialize is to converse. And it was during this conversing that someone had brought up Buddhism. Don’t ask me how or why, but that is how freeform conversations go, they ebb and flow just like the crowd in a bar.
“I knew a waiter who was at Cronkite Beach once,” I said, adding an ingredient to the conversational mix.
I then relayed the story as I knew it. That waiter had been sunbathing when his foot was struck by an errant frisbee. He sat up and looked around noticing a bald man standing in the low surf gesturing at him. His gesture was clear — “Throw it to me.”
The waiter rolled over and threw it to him. Pretty soon he and the bald man were having a good old time throwing the frisbee back and forth, chasing down errant throws and demonstrating different catching techniques. The two men never spoke but communicated purely through the joy of flinging a spinning disk at each other.
After about a half an hour, two more bald men appeared. And then a fourth, and a fifth. Then came a woman with a close-shaved head. Eventually the waiter and the original man broke off their game as a crowd began to form. It swelled and swelled until there were several hundred people on the beach.
I took a break from my story, made a drink for the hipster couple at the end of the bar and changed the channel on the TV for another couple before finally returning to the original couple.
“Well?” asked the woman in the yoga pants.
“Well, what?” I asked coyly.
“Who was the bald man?
“The Dalai Lama,” I said.
“That’s a great story,” replied her companion. “I have a beach/religious figure story, too.”
His story involved Pope John Paul II’s visit to San Francisco in 1987.
“I was out at Muir Beach and had heard that SFO was stopping all flights to get the Pope’s plane safely off,” he began. “I was laying there soaking up the sun when I noticed a TWA 727 flying low in a slow arching turn.”
Both his companion and I were now listening more intently, watching him make a slow curving motion with his hand, arching his body sideways while doing so.
“The plane was much lower than most planes and I could clearly see the windows,” he said.
I had stopped shaking what I was shaking, and she had stopped sipping what she was sipping. Even the man sitting next to them was listening.
“I looked up through the wispy fog and saw a man sitting in the window. We made eye contact.”
The shorts-clad storyteller stopped, cleared his throat and then took a long sip of his meticulously crafted cocktail before clearing his throat once again, following that by a much shorter sip.
“Well?” asked his companion.
“Well, what?” asked the storyteller.
“Who was it?” I asked surprised by my own impatience.
“It was the Pope, and he made a sign of blessing,” he said.
“Really?” asked his companion.
“Really?” I asked.
“Really?” asked the man sitting next to him.
“No, not really,” replied the storyteller. “I mean, I saw the plane, but there’s no way you can see in a plane window at 2,000 feet.”
He took a long sip of that same drink and smiled wickedly.
Leaving me with these thoughts:
• “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story” someone somewhere once said. And I’m sure they did it with a wicked smile.
• Atmosphere creates the best stories, just ask Hemingway, Fleming or even Bourdain.
• Without hyperbole, Mark Twain’s “whitewashing the fence” is just a story about a kid painting a fence.
• Unfortunately, I now have my doubts about that waiter’s Dalai Lama frisbee story, too.
Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com