A new walk through an old bar

Some time, I think it was around 1944, a young naval aviator, after having a few drinks, hopped up on the wooden bar in the Del Coronado Hotel on San Diego's North Island-and danced.

It was war time. The bar was a welcome rest for crews coming back from the war in the Pacific. It wasn't uncommon to have officers and enlisted, their uniforms sometimes covered with the soot of fires faught from battle, days worth of facial hair, and dirt under their nails due to lack of clean water on their ships, finding some leave time and heading for heaven on earth.

Why this young aviator (dare never to call a naval aviator a 'pilot') was in the bar was uncertain. He was a squadron commander of Black Cats. But they were out of Alameda. No one remembers why he was here. It could of been for a thousand different reasons.

Some how, he ended up at this bar.

Sixty-nine years later, I find myself sitting here too, sipping a very good scotch. It seems appropriate to drink a fine scotch at a place like this. I was by myself, also appropriate. I tried to imagine the time, the smells, the feelings, of the young men, maybe dashed with a few pretty girls. The aviator was more than likely drinking beer, good cold beer. When he was on station in the Pacific, the beer was as cool as the air temp. Good cold beer, laughter, no one trying to kill you, all seem to lead to a condition allowing this young man to decide to, well, dance.

I looked down on the edge of the bar, carved to allow you to fold your arm across your leaning chest comfortably on the edge. There were marks and dents in the wood. I smiled at the thought that maybe one of them was from this young man's  heels scuffing the edge as his friends cheered him on to hop up and do whatever a drunk aviator does on a bar after a few beers-before life falls in on him again. I figured the bar would have been refinished a dozen times since then. But still, the mark was there, somewhere, it was just hiding.

No matter. I was close enough.

So,  three chairs from the end, with a good drink, I sat and watched, imagining the dance; the bar tender probably drying a glass and shaking his head; his friends, laughing and clapping, and with some hope the aviator keeps his clothes on.

Good form Dad. I raise my glass to you, almost seventy years late.