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Sunday, February 13, 2005
It's late here, almost one a.m. as I start this. I have lived my whole life at one a.m. As I sit here, I am working on one more beer. I remember 1977, when I started my working life as a chef. I remember how hard we had to work on Saturday nights. When you're in the restaurant business, Saturday will make or break you. It's what you live for. We would finish for the night and head out to a bar. I worked at a country-club-type place, but it was out in the country, in a small Southern city. The town had gotten big enough for more than a few bars, at least more than the sheriff's office could reasonably handle on Saturday nights. We would find a couple of bars that hadn't had a fight in them already that night, and drink liquor, Southern Comfort, straight out of the bottle in the parking lot before we went inside and had some beers. I was young and strong and mainly fearless. We got started drinking as most people were finishing their evenings, so bar-hopping wasn't that long a period of time. The bars closed at one. We would go to the Waffle House, or Denny's, or the Pancake House, or something like that. Anything to stay up longer, feel that buzz for a little longer, get one more crack at the waitress, one more crack at the chick in the bar. Ah, the bar chick. She was mostly drunk and it was one a.m. They loved it when we told them we were headed back to the country club to swim and sure, we'd cook something, it's what we do, and get them to go skinny-dipping in the pool on hot summer nights, when the sweat was dripping off of your nose at one a.m. just because it was still so hot. I have spent hundreds of Saturday nights since, up at one a.m. Over the years, I've been there at church, and while I cheated on my ex-wife. I've been there to see comets. I've been there to see friends die. I've been there while I thought about my own life. I've been there while I pondered my own death. I have drank beers, and I have drank coffee. I have listened as the house creaked around me at night, making sounds that would cause me to tense and be scared to move. I have been there while I walked around at night, just a few lights on, through a 75-year-old house with a 200-seat restaurant and three stories tall, complete with a basement, and wandered around just to see what was there to eat in the kitchen. And I am up now at the one a.m. hour. I have a beer. I have always felt most welcome and alive and inside myself at one a.m., and I have always felt like I was outside watching myself at one a.m., judging, evaluating, wondering. One a.m.
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