Hometown Birthday

I got exactly what I needed yesterday after the scary Friday – a day in my hometown with Keene Friend solving the world’s problems while sampling beer as autumn started to descend.  Keene Friend’s birthday was Friday so we had some celebrating to accomplish.  My wife and I arrived at his house mid-afternoon but there was no answer when we knocked at the door.  Buddy was especially upset that his dedicated walker was not responding to his mental summons.

Birthday Boy at Elm City - Yet Another Bar Shot

We eventually woke him up to discover he’d gotten off his third shift on Saturday morning a couple hours late so he was operating on three hours sleep.  In a veteran move he didn’t let that dissuade him or us from moving directly to the Elm City Brewery where my wife dropped us off before making a bee line for her good friend – TJ Maxx.  We were fortunate that our favorite bar tendress was holding court at the Brewery and greeted us like long lost friends.  Keene Friend and I settled in for the long haul while meaningless college football games swirled around. 

It turned out to be a great afternoon as the steady rain picked up and we abandoned a planned move to the nearby sports bar and remained under the care of our favorite bar tendress.  It turned out she’s the daughter of a guy that graduated high school the same year we did so our egos took a bit of a hit but she was great sport.  We entertained phone calls and texts all afternoon from friends who couldn’t make the birthday celebration.  The Cantankerous Friend was the only spot not heard from.  He was apparently too busy trading barbs with conservatives to answer our messages.

The Two of US With Our Bar Tendress

The College Roommate was heard from and he offered his gynecological observations on 1970’s basketball movies.  We’re still trying to figure that out but we assumed beer was involved in Pittsburgh.  My wife eventually showed up to squire us to dinner at Margarita’s.  She checked with the bar tendress and we received passing grades – apparently we are now considered harmless.

The Robin Williams Memorial In Front of a Prop from the Movie

On our way to Margarita’s we passed by the center of Keene where a heartbreaking monument to Robin Williams has arisen around the last remaining vestige of the movie Jumanji which was shot there. 

Margarita’s was a lot of fun but the main event was awaiting for our ride home.  Shortly after pulling out from our parking space a state police car pulled us over to ask why we didn’t have our headlights on.  We’d had the car serviced earlier in the day and the mechanic had apparently turned off the automatic headlights. Since we were in the middle of downtown we hadn’t noticed it but the police had.  For some reason they came to my window on the passenger side.  They said they smelled alcohol and I proudly proclaimed that would be me and that my wife was our designated driver.  They said they still had to test her which she passed with flying colors although she did direct some fairly dirty looks in our direction.

Birthday Cake!

We returned to Keene Friend’s home where we were joined by Keene Friend 2 and his girlfriend for some birthday cake.  The days events started to catch up with Keene Friend who started to fade with only his three hours of sleep and facing the day’s onslaught of beer.  He was banished upstairs for some well-earned rest while we caught up on the day’s college football carnage and relived my wife’s sobriety test repeatedly.  Another in a long line of great Saturday’s spent in my hometown.

After posting yesterday I found a couple news photo of the accident that caused so much fun for me yesterday.  You can see where the guard rail was taken out that I had to dodge below.