A little kindness goes a long way

I had already put my two weeks notice in, in fact, I had given them a month’s notice. But by the time they hired him, I only had two weeks left. But, two weeks can be an eternity in some businesses.

He didn’t come highly recommended. In fact, he didn’t come recommended at all. He was from another city in another state. But necessity is the mother of invention, and nothing necessitates an invention like the lack of employees. It was true way back then, and it is even truer now.

Looking the part is half the battle. It was the early 1990s, so his gelled hair, bracelets and single earring fit the bill. Yesterday’s hipsters are today’s, well, I don’t know what they are, but I will certainly tell you when someone tells me.

But looking the part and act

ing the part are two entirely different things.

Let’s examine the common cinematic trope where an investigator shows a bartender a picture. “Have you seen this person?” I’ve spent 32 years behind bars and that has never happened to me once. Not only that, but I have never heard of it happening to anyone else. And trust me, in those 32 years it should have, because there are quite a few pictures I would, and still could, recognize. Just saying.

I had shown him around the restaurant and he hadn’t asked many questions. But, I have found that the best bartenders don’t ask questions before they get started. Afterwards, there are always a lot.

“Can I get an amen?” I asked the cocktail server.

She rolled her eyes and walked away. I suspected then, and have confirmed since, that cocktails servers might be the same everywhere, too.

“It’s time to make your first drink,” I told him.

He seemed a little reluctant.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s just like doing it where you came from.”

The drink printer tapped out its message, back when printers still clacked and clucked, long before lasers and ink jets silenced them.

It was a Manhattan, which seems perfectly ordinary now, but back then it was wildly new. Or new again? The Manhattan is almost 150 years old. Invented at the Manhattan Club in New York in 1874, it was created for a banquet honoring Samuel J. Tilden, then the governor of New York. Prohibition did its best to kill it off — it didn’t succeed — by putting the hurt on its main ingredient: rye whiskey. In fact, Prohibition wiped out all but one rye whiskey distillery: good ole Old Overholt. It would be another 80 years before rye mounted its comeback, but that would still be 15 years in the future from that moment then.

He looked like a deer in the headlights.

“Use the well bourbon,” I said, giving him a gentle prod.

“The one in the speed rack,” I added when he didn’t move.

“That one there,” I said and pointed.

He picked the bottle up awkwardly and poured out a full shot. He then stared at the bottles.

“The vermouth’s over there,” I said, noticing the woman who was now less than patiently waiting for her drink.

“The sweet vermouth,” I said.

“That, there.”

“Just a splash,” I said when he hesitated.

He shook it because that is what you did with Manhattans then. And then strained it into a chilled cocktail glass before confidently garnishing it with a cherry.

“This one wants a twist,” I said, pointing out the modification.

“You’ve never bartended before,” I added.

It wasn’t a question but rather a statement of obvious fact.

“Well, uh, I, uh …” he stammered.

“Look, I don’t care, I am leaving. But if you are honest with me, I will do everything I can to teach you everything you need to know in the next two weeks.”

He looked at me for a long while.

“I haven’t,” he said.

Over the next two weeks, we became friends of a sort. So much so that I looked up some people he knew where I was going, and I introduced him to some people I knew where he was staying.

Years later, we crossed paths at another bar. Ironically, he was the senior bartender.

“I never forgot that,” he said.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world,” once commented Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

• Rest assured, kiddos, what you think is super cool now won’t be in 20 years, but will be again in 35. Pray you are around for both.

• Regarding last week’s column, Joe Walsh actually sang, “Everybody’s so different, I haven’t changed,” which has a whole different meaning.

• Anyone can be a mixologist, but not everyone can tend a bar. Just saying.

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 awardwinning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart. net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com