Tales of Phenomenology

The rhythmic tapping seemed to be coming from around the corner. We were heading east on Houston, approaching Elizabeth, when I first heard the sound. A steady, regular tap-tap-tap from some unseen source.

My first thought, for some reason, was that we'd find a homeless guy leaning back against the building, drumming with his fingers on a coffee can. Apart from that, I didn't think too much about it. Then, quite abruptly, Morgan stopped and bent down. Then I heard what sounded like the rustle of feathers. Then a white pigeon hopped away toward the curb before stopping and turning around to stare at us.

That's when I saw what was going on?and realized what it was that I'd been hearing.

What I'd mistaken for a drumming bum with a coffee can was actually the sound of a pigeon trying to peck its way into a bag of peanuts. Pecking insistently, and with great deliberation. Pecking not only with a sort of wisdom, but with the frustration familiar to so many airline passengers of yore as well.

The bird kept its distance, pacing over there by the curb, keeping an eye on us, as Morgan tipped the open bag and spilled some of the contents out into the sidewalk. When she stood again, took a step away from the bag and said to the pigeon, "You can come back now," it waddled slowly and a touch warily back across the sidewalk and began gobbling the peanuts.

Not too shabby for, you know, a pigeon.

The place was called the Black Bear Lounge. It was located on a sidestreet just off University in Madison, WI. I don't know how long it had been there, or if it's still there now, but it had clearly been there for a while when I was living in town.

There wasn't really anything special about it. It had a bar up front, a bunch of booths, thin once-green carpeting on the floor. There were no windows?most of the lighting came from the strings of Christmas lights stapled to the paneled walls. You could get cheap pitchers at the Black Bear, and they made a fat burrito. The jukebox played old scratchy 45s for a dime a pop.

I liked it because even though it was a dirt-cheap bar in the middle of a college campus, nobody ever went in there except for a few old-timers in flannel shirts. They would sit at the bar all day, drinking rye, smoking Marlboros and not saying much of anything.

Grinch and I strolled in there one summer afternoon. It was too bright out, and too hot to bother spending any time outside. It was dark in there, and the air conditioning worked. Three old men sat at the bar, not bothering to look up when we came in.

We took a booth in the back, and Grinch returned to the bar to get our first pitcher and order a couple burritos. There was nothing all that special about the burritos, either, but they were cheap and they were big, and that's pretty much all that mattered during those lean years.

We talked a while, sketched out some mayhem for later that afternoon, split another couple of pitchers and played a few songs on the jukebox. Elvis, mostly?they stocked the "If I Can Dream" single, whose b-side was the insane and remarkable "Edge of Reality."

A couple hours later, as we were figuring it was about time to head on out, Grinch asked, "You got two bucks?"

I checked my wallet. I didn't have much more than that, but yeah, I had two singles. "Here," I said, as I handed them over. "Why?"

"I wanna play the jukebox." He went over to the machine and I waited in the booth, sucking at the dregs of the beer, thinking that two bucks was an awful lot to hand over when it only cost 10 cents per play.

Oh well.

He was at the machine for a while, still standing there when the bizarre but recognizable strains of his first selection began to echo through the Black Bear.

Criminey, I thought.

It was a short song, no more than a minute and a half, which was a relief. But after a few seconds of blessed silence, it began playing again, the same fucking song.

Grinch got back to the booth, and suggested that it might be a good idea if we got out of there as soon as possible.

"What, you break it?" I asked.

"Not exactly. Not yet anyway."

I immediately figured out why he wanted to get out of there fast.

See, there were two neat things about that old Black Bear jukebox. First, being an older model, you could play your favorite song as many times as you liked in succession. As long as you had the dime, it'd play whatever you asked for. And second, in and amongst the Elvis, Peggy Lee, Sinatra and Dire Straits, they also stocked that old "Happy Birthday" single. You know the one. You used to hear it in pizza parlors when you were a kid. A commercial jingle chorus sings it, dropping in a "hmm-hmmm" where the birthday child's name is supposed to go. It's one of the most grating records ever recorded.

That's what Grinch had spent my two dollars on.

As the song began its third rotation (only 17 left to go!) we were making for the door, knowing damn well we wouldn't be able to return to the Black Bear for a good long time.

The last thing I heard as I was pushing through the front door was the voice of one of the old men at the bar asking, quite innocently, "Hey?is it somebody's birthday?"