Tucson Weekly: Back Talk (December 4

He's An Equal-Opportunity Offender.
By Tom Danehy
I HAVE A friend; I'll call him Dave. Being friends, Dave poured his heart out to me about an unpleasant experience he'd had, not realizing that I can turn anybody's troubles into a column in around an hour and 45 minutes.
I like Dave a lot, but his politics are wrong. He's a self-employed small business owner, so years of being overtaxed, overworked and underappreciated have left him one step away from joining the militia. Heck, he would've joined already if not for the fact that he can't bring himself to call Gus from the bait shop "Colonel." Plus, he says he hears the secret handshake kinda tickles.
Danehy Besides, if Dave were going to join a militia, he'd be more selective. The only one they have around here has just two goals: for Tucson to secede from the United States, and 50-cent beer nights at Hooters.
Dave came by the gym a couple weeks ago in a serious funk, and not the good, George Clinton-kind of funk. (I told Dave that if I wrote a column about him, I'd find a way to sneak the name "Clinton" in just to piss him off.)
He'd just come from watching his beloved Green Bay Packers dismantle the butt-ugly Dallas Cowboys. However, it had not turned out to be the experience it should have been and Dave was bummed. To begin with, what was the most highly anticipated game of the year wasn't being shown on television in Arizona because the God-awful Phoenix Cardinals exercised some arbitrary territorial deal and claimed the entire Grand Canyon State was part of their domain.
So while everybody else in the United States would see the Packers-Cowboys game, people in Arizona would see the Cardinals face the Baltimore Ravens. This is like going to the TCC to see Linda Ronstadt and then being told the arena is full, so you'll have to go in the Music Hall and listen to Fiona Apple for two hours instead.
(For those of you unfamiliar with Fiona, thank whichever God you worship. Craig Kilborn recently referred to her as "a self-important, unwashed bag of sticks." And that's probably being generous, but hey, it's the holiday season.)
Anyway, Bill (no wait, I'm calling him Dave) wanted to watch his Packers, so he went over to the Old Father Inn on Ina Road to watch the game off the satellite feed. Such is the age in which we live. Fans of every team in the league can watch their favorite squads play every Sunday at one eating establishment or another.
Packer fans have been gathering at the Old Father Inn for years. Me and the two other Rams fans in town meet at Popeye's Chicken on Broadway. The manager told us that if we get three more people, he'll let us move our meeting out of the broom closet and into the walk-in freezer, where we former Angelenos can say stuff like, "Now this is football weather."
Even Dallas Cowboy fans want a place to gather, which is why Pima County needs to build a bigger jail.
Old Father Inn has always been the official Packers hangout in Tucson. For years that meant that Dave and a few other people would gather at the northwestside eatery, have a beer, eat some grub, and talk about the long-past glory days of the Packers.
"It was great," Dave recalls. "There weren't a lot of us, but we were die-hard Packer fans. We suffered through some lean years."
But now the Pack is Back, and for Dave, these are the best of times, these are the worst of times. Nowadays you need a shoehorn to squeeze into the Old Father Inn what for all the fair-weather, latecomer Packer fans who fill the place every Sunday. And they're not normal Packer fans, whose enthusiasm is tempered by having supported the team during the 30 years between Super Bowl victories, and whose language is tempered by having seen the inside of a church in the past 20 years.
"Unfortunately," Dave laments, "a lot of these new fans are jerks. They don't care about tradition or anything. Next year they'll be Steeler fans or 49er fans. That's the nature of sports to a certain extent, but I thought Packer fans were different.
"They were even taking reservations! I couldn't believe it. The place was packed an hour before game time, and people were loud and obnoxious all afternoon. Worst of all, there was a table with Cowboys fans and everybody at the table just cussed all day. They even had some little kids at that table cussing like sailors. I mean, it used to be a family place."
I told Dave I knew how to handle kids who cuss. See, I was at the neighborhood park one day conducting Little League practice when this group of kids walked by. There was one kid about 11 years old, and three others in their early teens. The young one was cussing up a storm. I approached the potty-mouthed kid and asked him politely to watch his language. He looked at me and said simply, "F**k!"
"What did you say?" I asked.
"F**k!"
"Is that the only word you know?"
"F**k!"
I paused, realizing that my reputation was on the line, then asked, "What does your mama do for a living?"
"F**k!" he responded.
"Well then, what does your daddy do with barnyard animals?"
"F**k!"
By the time he realized that his audience had turned on him, it was too late. He half-heartedly flipped me the bird; but having anticipated the move, I was already well into the line, "Which finger does your mama use to...." Well, this being something of a family paper (more the Manson family than the Partridge Family, to be sure), I won't finish that line. You get the idea. Suffice it to say that kid won't be messing with me any time soon.
When I finished telling Dave that story, he walked away, then picked up speed until he was in full gallop. He called later and made me promise never to go into the Old Father Inn. And if I did, I'd have to wear Cowboys stuff. Yeah, like I really want to embarrass myself. At least I helped him forget about what was bothering him. And I gave him something brand new to worry about.
Creepy friends.

Home | Currents | City Week | Music | Review | Books | Cinema | Back Page | Archives