I recently committed to paper a tale that happened to me a long time ago. . .I was just talking to Gene, the owner of Barclay’s Pub in Oakland about this incident yesterday, so I decided to post it for all to view. If you have the time, read on for one of my more embarrassing beer moments.
Years ago, when we were first getting into beer, and I was a bit younger, it was not expected that women knew anything about craft beer. In fact, in my experience, it was assumed that females knew little or nothing about beer. Being young, female, and a budding craft beer drinker, I have to say that I was a little bit full of myself. I wanted to show that I was a real craft brew drinker and not a silly girl who didn’t know anything about beer. I admit that I felt I had something to prove. With that as a set up into my psyche at the time, I’ll tell you one of my most humbling experiences in those early days.
I was working at a pub in Oakland called Barclay’s. It was ground zero for our love of beer and for many years was the center of our world. I was really very new to waitressing and had a bit of the above mentioned attitude to go with it. I thought I could pretty much handle anything or at least bullshit my way through. Anyway, there was a patio, not really a beer garden per se, and it was a great place to drink beer in the warm sunny days of Fall in the East Bay. It was early in my shift and a table of 5 German men sat themselves outside. Being good German patriots, they ordered 5 hefeweizens. I came bounding up to the bar to place my order with Gene, the owner. I had no care in the world, as this was my first table of the day, and I had no idea of the life altering disaster to come.
Gene carefully placed the tall, top heavy hefeweizen glasses of beer on my tray. “You might want to take these out in two trips”, cautioned Gene. “Nah, I can do it”, replied an overly confident, clueless me. For a nanosecond I did consider Gene’s warning and decided that I should open the door to the patio. I realized that I probably could not open the door holding the tray of 5 frothing 23 oz beers. I returned to the bar and carefully slid the tray away from the bar, being ever so vigilant of my hand placement in order to balance the tray. I walked slowly, carefully toward the door, one deliberate step at a time. “So far so good” I thought to myself. “See, what does Gene know?” I continued forward, watching the beers with great intensity for any sign of danger. I monitored the beers so closely that I knew every peak and valley in the heads of each beer. With each step I was closer to showing Gene that he underestimated my waitressing capabilities. With each step, I also took a quiet sigh of relief, never letting on about the nervousness and adrenaline rushing through my veins. “Phew, I made it out the door. And gee, here I am at the table.” I slowly bent my knees to place the tray on the table. “Careful. . . .careful . . . Atta girl, the tray is in contact with the table. Breathe now.”
However, it took mere seconds before my relief turned to horror. The tall beers began to teeter. Being the skilled waitress and beer drinker I was, I took immediate action to prevent major beer spillage. I went for the one beer that I thought would topple all the others. But then another one started to go down and in one quick second all the glasses were horizontal and beer was gushing out. It was like a dam breaking with swirling golden liquid doing it’s best to get out of the glass and onto the lap of my customer. At the same time, the gentleman to my left jumped up and with a swoosh, he had a waterfall of beer running down his legs. I think he muttered something in German, but I don’t quite remember. The initial torrent eventually slowed to a trickle and finally to the rhythmic drip of a leaky faucet.
I was both horrified and mesmerized by what I had just seen. But with a quick shake of the head, I brought myself to my senses. I grabbed the emptied beer glasses and up righted them on the table. Then with the swiftness and clear-mindedness of an emergency response worker, I quickly ran into the bar to get towels. As I got closer to the bar, I looked up and there was Gene with a bit of a smirk and a hint of an “I told you so”. “Just give me the damn towels. I’ll deal with you later”, I thought as I dashed back outside.
I don’t remember too much more about the customers except for the cold stares of intense anger and the muttered German profanity. I think I apologized profusely, tried to help them dry off, and got them new beers that were, of course, on the house. With the flow of beer halted and the anger of a wet customer subsiding (never underestimate the calming effect of a free beer), I went slinking back into the bar with tail between my legs. As it turns out, from the safety of the bar, Gene watched the whole thing go down. Gene was never one to argue too stubbornly when a person thought they were right. So when I said that I could take all the beers out with no help and no trouble, he just sat back and said “Oh kaaaay”. You know the type of “Okay”, the one with the silent “You’ll be sorry” at the end.
One thing about Gene is that he loves to tell stories from behind the bar. And who was he to prevent such a good story from unfolding? He loved every minute of what ended up being the most devastating tragedy of my waitressing career! From that point on, my story became part of Gene’s repertoire. He told it to anyone and everyone for weeks, until just about all the regulars had heard it. It took months, but eventually the story was relegated to urban legend status and was only sporadically dusted off for new comers. Ya know, to this day, I am still a bit weary of hefeweizens. Not because of the huge head that you stick your whole nose into before you actually get to the beer, not because of the strong clove and spice flavors, but because of the bulbous top heavy shape of the glass. I shudder every time one is placed in front of me, traumatized by that horrible scene flashing before my eyes. The world begins to spin and I sway on my bar stool until I grasp the beer tightly and don’t let go. Only after the beer has been safely drained from the glass and into my butterfly-filled belly do I relax. “Ah, another step toward recovering from the little mishap I simply call “the incident”.
It is really strange how the world works sometimes…At our recent talk to the Rotary Club of Monterey Pacific, we tried to encourage people to be outgoing in their travel because you never know who you will meet. Our point about that was (and is) that you may never see the people you meet again, but at least in that moment, they were part of an experience you will always remember. And, if you are lucky, they may actually become your friends.
Well, we received an e-mail from the Rambling Gnome this morning! Here is a picture of him in front of the Vatican. He is now living in Tuscany and is the “watchdog – of – the -plants – that – never – seem – to – get – enough – water.” For me, it came as a great surprise and also a great relief to hear from him. You see, that night I thought in our drunken revelry, we were part of the Rambling Gnome getting lost forever. He had already been around Europe with his two traveling companions and I have always felt bad that he was swiped on our watch. I have yet to hear back about his adventures immediately following our meeting, but I am very happy to hear he is safe in Italy! I look forward to finding out where he went that night and how he came to be in Italy, especially since it has been 2 years since we saw him last!
So, the moral of the story is that when Chris and I are rambling on about this or that, before you zone out thinking we are just talking out our ass again, keep in mind that the Rambling Gnome managed to ramble his way back into our life. See, we do actually have some good points to make and making new friends is one of them!
If you have watched the latest episode of beergeekTV, you saw us march in the kazoo parade from the brewer’s breakfast to the opening of Oregon Brewer’s Festival. 
Well, last night officially marked the end of our Oktoberfest season. And, the end of wearing my dirndle until next year. Last weekend we had a great time at the Tyrolean Inn’s Oktoberfest celebration, drinking litres of beer and having fun conversation with our friends. I also got an opportunity to talk with Chuck and Whitney, the owners of the Tyrolean. They are a fun and interesting couple that represent the best of Santa Cruz mountain folk. The only bummer of the evening was that it was a bit chilly out and try as I might, I eventually had to change out of my dress and into something warmer. I kept thinking that I just needed to drink more beer and then it wouldn’t matter, but two and a half litres later, I was still cold!
Yesterday, however, I managed to wear my dress all day long. First, we participated in the Carmel birthday/Halloween parade with the Carmel Dachshund Club. It’s always a fun group and seeing all the wieners scurrying around is a real hoot! Luckily, only one poor wiener was dressed as a hot dog.