FLICK BAITS THE HOOK FLICK BAITS THE HOOK“You remember the time I stripped the second gear in my Old Man’s Pontiac? He kicked me three times around Harding School without stopping.”
“Yep, we’ve all been through it, Flick.”
He reached behind him and flipped a switch. An orange-red neon sign hanging in the window flickered and sputtered into life:
BEER
Flick was baiting his trap for the Swing-Shift crowd who probably already were nursing a fierce thirst. A pair of the vanguard had just clumped in, their safety shoes thumping the floor loudly. They had settled into one of the booths. Life in Flick’s Tavern was picking up.
Flick took a couple of schooners over to them. They laughed together for a few moments, and he returned, wiping his hands on his clean apron. The phone behind the bar rang. He picked up the receiver.
“Hello, Jake? You’ll handle the bar yourself tonight. Yeah. I’m going to the game tonight. Okay, Jake. I’ll see you later.”
He hung up. He explained to me:
“That was Jake.”
“So I heard.”
The Game, of course, meant Basketball, which in Indiana is far more a mystique than an athletic contest. Basketball has been responsible for suicides, divorces, and even a few near-lynchings. I well remember one coach who left the county heavily disguised in dark glasses, beard, and the trappings of a Talmudic scholar after a disaster in a Sectional tournament. In recent years I had not kept up with the Basketball fortunes of our mutual high school.
“Who are they playing?”
“La Porte Slicers. It’s a breather.”
“La Porte? Do you remember the time we went to the Marching-Band contest at La Porte? And we took First Place in the Class A Division?”
“Your spit valve stuck halfway through the “National Emblem” and you damn near drowned when your sousaphone backed up on you.”
I chuckled:
“And Duckworth told you what you could do with your trombone after you screwed up on a countermarch and knocked over three clarinet players. He damn near did it for you!”
“It wasn’t my fault. Schwartz swung left. He faked me out.”
“You know, Flick, some nights even in New York, when I wake up at three in the morning, I can still hear Duckworth’s whistle. It scares me.”
“You’re not the only one!”
“Flick, there’s no doubt about it. Duckworth was a genuine, absolute, gold-plated Gasser!”
“In spades!” Flick capped me.