2oz Tequila(of your choice)
Fill rocks glass with orange juice
splash grenadine or cherry juice
served on ice in a rocks glass
are going to celebrate ethnic stereotypes. Wheres the Fritos?!!
I was working at a hotel bar and we were all geared up for our first attempt at a drinking holiday. We had all the specials in place, plenty of Corona on ice and was getting the pool ready with a small satellite bar. Thats when the rain came. The hotel was at maximum capacity that week with a little league baseball team and parents. The entire bar staff had gotten pretty good at running off any 10 year olds who wandered into the bar. The rain had cancelled one of the little league's day of games and the youngsters weren't the only restless ones on this rainy May 5th. The house keepers and maintenance guys had came in to take a break and boasted that they had all removed the trash from almost every room twice that day, most of it being beer and liquor bottles. I recall us all having a few choice words to say about their parenting skills as a gang of adolescents went running through the background unsupervised. Needless to say without our already advertised pool party this was going to be a slow night.
Its starting to get dark outside and the rain was still coming down. A few of our loyal regulars had shown up and they really didn't care that it was Cinco De Mayo. They were just there for the usual buzz after work or in some cases before work. The bar was semi-separated by a wall and some double doors from another room that was once a dinning area. We had a couple of pool tables out there and a few televisions. If you were behind the bar you couldn't really see into the pool table room. A few server girls handled the mostly weak crowds that slumped around the pool tables and the few people who came in to have a dinner. I began noticing that more and more service well tickets were coming in and thats when one of the girls told me that she had a large group of baseball parents out there. She also said some of them were already pretty damned drunk.
It was relatively quite in the bar area and as on many of a slow night at this bar we the staff took it upon ourselves to show the patrons how to party. So we knocked down a few mid shift shots to take the edge of being in a quite bar off. Time passed by boringly. I was glaring at some sort of sports jargon on the t.v. when around the corner came a little server girl who, very calmly, said "You got any tabs for the guys out there? I think they are startin' to fight.". I'm almost certain she said that line verbatim. I went to check and see what was up. I turned the corner and there was one of the biggest fights I had seen this side of the Double Deuce( obviously before Dalton cleaned the place up. You don't get the reference?! Then you should watch Road House. It's required watching for anyone in the bar industry).
get the picture.
There before my eyes was a large mass of men crawling on top of other human bodies while swinging all of their limbs like some kind of drowning victim. It stunned me and took a second for it to really soak in. I then realized that O'Malley(the bar manager) and Big B(the kitchen guy) were the crowd control. O'Malley was grabbing and pulling people from the pile and tossing them back into the circle that surrounded the main fight. Big B was keeping others from jumping into the pile. The circle was also starting to erupt into a few smaller shoving matches and yelling contests. It was kind of like if you and a friend went to fight someone then got in a fight over who was going to fight him first. I jumped into the middle of this to help my comrades. Sometimes us fellows have more machismo( broke out that word just for Cinco De Mayo) then good sense. A big fat white guy who bared a resemblance to the tough man champion Butter Bean had his fist ready to knock me flat when Big B stopped him with "He works here!". We had a small group of locals helping break up the fight or beat up some dudes. Whatever you want to call it.
O'Malley had separated the pig pile and Big B had mostly pushed the crowd towards the exit. Thats when I saw possibly the worse victim of our Cinco De Mayo massacre, a young boy crying about his father. The staff began to tell everyone to clear out that the police were in route. Most everyone set sail for a hiding place. People began running out every exit like scalded dogs. Guys ran through the kitchen, bar, lobby and anywhere else that had an opening towards the outdoors. I was sure that this was all over.
Around four men began to start fighting towards the back of the pool room and ended up falling into a booth. I went over to pull them apart when an older man came out of the booth with blood on his face and a hollowness in his eyes. He stumbled cartoonish and then fell on the hard concrete floor. His skull dribbled like a basketball. I will boast that I've had some medical training in my day and that my diagnosis of this said gentleman wasn't for the good. I immediately came over to him to help. I told him loud and clear that I was part of the staff and to try not to move. Thats when I noticed his bloody knuckles. That old snake was part of the wrestling match. I began hearing a female voice with a strong New Jersey accent coming from behind me.
"Thats my daddy!"
"Wait Lady I work here"
"Get off my daddy you sonofabitch!"
Miss New Jersey crawled onto my back and began ramming her small fist into my kidneys. This woman was around 5'4 and 90 pounds but she sure could throw a piercing kidney jab. I bucked her off and away she went circling around with her cell phone.
"I'll sue you fuckers!"
"Lady, I'm just trying to help."
"Fuck you for hurting my daddy! Hello 911."
Then one of our bar regulars came up and moved me out of the way saying "I'll take it from here". It was Magic Don. Don was a middle aged man who came to the bar almost everyday with his mother. Now if that wasn't a sign of a virgin bed wetter maybe the fact that he was a master of cheap card tricks and all around silly magic parlor displays was. Magic Don took over from there asking how many fingers do I have up, who's the President and are you alright. I was so astonished by his medical assessment that I stormed off to get the old bastard some ice and a towel for the bleeding.
Abracadabra! You have a concussion!
As the cops began to arrive we all learned the reason for the May 5th rumble. It was Miss New Jersey and her battered and bruised husband. Like I said earlier she was around 5'4 and he on the other hand was about 6'4 and quite stout to boot. It all started as she drunkenly staggered around the pool tables and bumped into a guy shooting pool. She told her super sized hubby that she was grabbed in a sexual manner. He began body slamming every man in his path,without questioning his intoxicated bride, before the crowd eventually,sort of ,joined forces against the mammoth.
She was right they did try to sue the whole hotel for medical bills and damages. It never held up in court. I even got to write a shorter version of this story as a form of a witness of the case. I don't know exactly what it was but after that our little bar's following grew rapidly. I suppose everyone enjoys a good drunken brawl after a hard day at work
Until next time, Salud!
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