It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XXVII

It was March 1, 1986, a Saturday night.

The good news: It was payday. And after everything was taken care of, I had a couple of bucks to spare. And I figured I had a few things to celebrate.

After the offer to move into the house in South Minneapolis with the group of women, I'd checked the place out. It was a four-bedroom just off 46th Street, not far from Lake Harriett. The plan was that I'd live in the basement - a half-finished (panel walls, tile floor) room. It had an upside; lots of elbow room, and I had a bathroom more or less to myself (no mean feat, in a house with a bunch of women).

Better yet: my roommate, far from being upset that I wanted to bail out after four months, was actually happy about it; he wanted to leave Minneapolis to go back to grad school for another Masters. Journalism, this time, to go with Social Work. The timing was perfect.

I figured I could budget for a night on the town to celebrate.

My party budget; $2.50.

I walked to the Cardinal Bar, on 38th Street, where $2.50 could buy you a party.

I walked into the dingy, suffocatingly-smoky room, sat at an empty bar stool, and ordered a beer; it was 75 cents. I savored it, the first beer I'd had in a bar in quite some time.

To this day I'm not quite sure what happened next. I ended up in a conversation with the guy next to me, a DFLer who worked as a union maintenance worker. I ordered another beer, and the argument - a good-natured debate between a fortysomething union snuffy and a newly minted conservative grew, twisted and turned. We went around and around about the incentivization of sloth, the evil of the USSR, and infantilization of Minnesotans...

...until my $2.50 ran out. "Gotta go!", I said. "Thanks!"

"Siddown!", said the DFLer. "This is a fun argument." He slapped down a fiver.

I wound up arguing with him - and a few other guys - until closing time. They kept 'em coming - six beers. Or seven. Or nine. Not really sure today. I wasn't sure that night, for that matter.

I staggered home, across Hiawatha, across the tracks. It was a very cold evening, and buzz aside, I felt every shiver of it. I sloshed up Dight Avenue, thinking there might be something to that whole "arguing politics from a conservative perspective on the radio" thing. I was also thinking I was going to hit on that one chick in the sales department. I think I may have also gotten into an argument with a boxcar sitting on a siding.

Naturally, I chundered mightily when I got home; I'd become quite a lightweight in the roughly six months since I'd had more than one drink at a sitting. And the hangover the next morning? Worst. Ever.

Worse than that? I had to make it to the studio at noon to run the board and screen the calls for "Religion On The Line", "Ask The Doctor" and "Money Talk".