Continuing the (vague) Remembrance of Bars Past.
The Embassy, Pembroke. The radio station I worked for was next to a 100 seat downtown Ottawa Valley watering hole that catered to locals and the military from the huge base up the road in Petawawa. Naturally, The Embassy was the CHOV Radio watering hole too.
The walls were painted black, the floor was a combination of linoleum from the days of Mackenzie King and a ‘dance floor’ of uneven wood, arranged between four steel Lally poles that held up the second storey and the occasional drunk patron who insisted on dancing. To cheer up the place, they strung Christmas tree lights around the perimeter of the room, but the pool tables were always well lighted.
As the radio station staff were regulars, we had some benefits: Tuesday’s were $2 Jug days over the lunch and afternoon. We’d go in, buy 10 jugs of draft, have them draw one and ask them to keep the other nine in the keg for us. A jug contains 64 ounces, or about 6-7 glasses of draft beer. I did the morning show (0530 to 1000) and was off work at 1300 (1 PM for the rest of the world), which meant I could start pounding the suds at 1300 hours and 30 seconds, if I walked at a leisurely pace.
By 4 PM, we were usually dazed. The afternoon crew and the office crew would show up and the drinking would begin with more determination. The seven or eight jugs left in the keg would be drawn off. Around 6 PM someone would decided that solid food was called for and this usually consisted of potato chips or pickled eggs.
With a mixed clientele of locals and military, there were interesting clashes of cultures, Pembroke being a lumber town of hard-working, independent-minded blue-collar, working folks. The military was also not without their cultural quirks, especially their inter-service discussions, which would become heated on occasion.
On one particular Friday evening, the place was full of a near-equal mix of locals and military. You could tell the locals, as they wore baseball caps year-round. The mullet haircut was a popular adornment, including florid moustaches of the Lanny McDonald type.
The military were also visually obvious, from the high and tight hair and the preponderance of wristwatches as big as some Central American countries, forced around wrists the size of my thigh. Sunburns were common, as many of the military had come back from a UN rotation to Cyprus or Fort Huachuca, Arizona for joint training with American troops, jumping out of perfectly good aircraft.
Neither group had discernable necks and that includes the women in either group.
At one point a member of one particular regiment that shall remain unstated, (but was the 8th Canadian Hussars) remarked that a member of another regiment (2 Commando, Airborne) was of uncertain ancestry and antecedents, as well as being impolite to a local girl. As the two gentlemen involved attempted to stare each other down, those of us from the radio station who still had some of our wits about us, recognized what was about to happen.
The first punch was thrown, a roundhouse right that came from the floor and landed squarely in the face of one of the debaters. The sound was very much the same sound one would hear if you punched a side of beef as hard as you could. There was no reaction from the recipient. He didn’t fall over, wince, cry out, or even blink. All he did was, very slowly and deliberately take off his watch and stuff it into his pants pocket with a practiced, graceful set of gentle motions.
Behind us, several members of his regiment were repeating his actions with a calm deliberation: Watches were going into pockets. Fellow members of the punch-thrower’s regiment merely adjusted their positions in the room, languorously turning their chairs away from the tables, or butting out a cigarette, with the placid, almost weary, resignation of someone who knows that the time is at hand.
We had the sense to take our jugs of draft, glasses and ashtrays and put them under the table. We also endeavoured to make ourselves as small as possible, Being effete broadcasters, news readers, sportscasters and copywriters, we understood the energy potential of lumbermen who routinely hauled 200 pound logs with their bare hands, or military members who rappelled out of helicopters in full battle rattle, Australian-style, meaning, head first.
The locals, up until then, uninvolved in the dialogue, decided that the honour of civilian life and the glory of Pembroke’s long hockey history were also being impugned and they joined in the discussions. There were quotes along the lines of "You military members require a lesson in polite public behaviour." (Translation: "Fuckin’ zipperheads. Give’er Lads!")
In the blur of bodies that suddenly appeared, I do recall seeing a head being forcefully directed at one of the dance floor steel poles by a civilian woman who had a close-cropped cranium in a traditional hockey headlock, with the his shirt pulled up over his head. This was mere moments before the broadcasting contingent decided that one more body landing on the table would cause structural failure, endangering the beer and possibly causing excess spillage. Apparently one of the steel poles was found later that evening, in the parking lot, bent in half.
We adjourned to the Legion, Branch 72, across the street, bringing our beer with us. There was informal free-trade between the two enterprises, as we also graced the Legion with our custom on a regular basis.
After the local police and the military police were summoned, we watched from the entrance of the Legion, enjoying the illuminated display of red and blue flashing lights from a safe distance. Discussions continued inside, as members of the Canadian Armed Forces and the locals continued their etiquette lessons in a new and vibrant method of teaching, heretofore unknown in the annals of pedagogy.
The pole was replaced the next morning.
RoadDave 