Everyone should know someone like Bob. When you think about all he did in his life, and the vastly varied types of people he knew you begin to really see how special he was. He was loyal, he was funny, he showed disapproval on his face that was kind of comical but you got the point, he helped kids with their homework, he was fatherly, caring, incredibly sensitive, — I once made him cry because I was being a bitch and had become infuriated with hm for being late to something insignificant and now forgotten, but mostly I will say he was steadfast and loyal.
I had just turned twenty-one and was living in Portland, Oregon and decided that I was now of legal age and therefore eligible for a ‘grown-up’ job. I applied to work at his establishment, Bogart’s Joint. Bogart’s was in the middle of nowhere at that time in the sense that it was surrounded by factories. The lunchtime crowd were all blue collar workers who were in and out. Once the lunch time crowd was over we then got the evening crowd who came for the beer. We served over 140 types of beer from all over the world with something like 20 of them on tap. Bob owned and operated the place with his partner, whose name, per Bob’s request, is never to be mentioned again.
It was at a Bogart’s Joint that I learned about beer, I participated and for the first time performed some poetry I had written at a gala he had hosted, I learned to play Asteroids back when the game was a TV screen inside a table you sat around. After work Bob would take rolls of quarters from the till and we would sit for hours playing until we got really good. When I broke up with my boyfriend John, it was Bob who gave me comfort and told me John was a good man and blah, blah, blah. I’m still broken up romantically with John but we are still good friends after these 40 plus years. It was through Bob that I got the nickname Moya. When he was here visiting he reminded me how that name came to be. A delivery person had come who had a crush on me but he couldn’t pronounce my name. He wanted to ask me out but he kept saying Moya. Bob couldn’t stop laughing because the guy couldn’t say my name and because I never knew he was talking to me trying to flirt because I never responded to someone calling me Moya. So Moya became my nickname and how he greeted me in letters and in person.
I taught Bob how to make clam chowder that would sell. He made clam chowder every Friday at Bogart’s and it never sold out. One day as he stared into the practically full urn of soup he wondered aloud why it wasn’t selling and I told him it was because he put bacon in it. Having lived in the Canadian Maritimes I informed him that bacon in clam chowder was like ice-cream on a hamburger: simply disgusting. He stopped using bacon and the clam chowder thereafter sold out.
I was a waitress and bartender at Bogart’s and daytime clients sometimes complained about me, and me them with one in particular. Bogart’s featured a hamburger called a Bogart Burger which from my recollection had everything on it but the kitchen sink. A British woman came in for lunch about three times a week, sitting always in my section each time ordering that burger minus 6 items, claiming sudden death if they were to be found on the burger. To be honest she either made me nervous or I was royally annoyed that she didn’t just ask for a burger on a bun with onions, either way, for some unknown reason I would always bring her order to the table and it would either slide onto the table, the floor or like the last time, onto her lap. That’s when she complained to management— Bob. Anther time I heard a regular customer, there daily for lunch, talk about how much he hated gay people. I confided in Bob, and he told me not to worry. He told me that there were all types of people in the world some of whom will not like you for who you are and that you just have to figure out how to be yourself and keep going. That piece of advice I’ve held in my heart ever since. Lord knows I’ve met tons of people who’ve disliked me on sight and I take a small bit of pride to have learned to just keep on going. I finally asked Before to put me in the kitchen during the daytime and I learned all by myself how to be a short order cook during busy lunchtime work hours.
At the time there was a waitress who worked there who had the Friday and Saturday night shifts which were the best for tips. Her name was Janice and I didn’t know anything about her whatsoever. Being young I just looked upon her special status as a pain in my rear. My memory sees her as buxom and ‘the favourite’. I begged Bob to give me those weekend shifts but he never budged and they remained solely for Janice. He told me things like, the customers come in to see her, she’s had that shift since the beginning, she’s this, she’s that. I just secretly loathed her in my inexperienced self-
absorbed youth.
But it was Janice who was with Bob at the end. Once Bob retired he visited me here in Merida, Mexico for 6 months and it was then that I learned why he still knew Janice. They were childhood friends and she was as loyal as he having been together for 70 plus years. They travelled together for over a decade in their retirement traveling to Dubai, Thailand, Mexico, Bali, Indonesia and a host of other places finally finding a home in Bali. It was in Dubai that Bob began to really falter and where he learned his heart was failing. And it was Janice who was steadfastly at his side. By the time Bob and Janice thought they’d finally got all the necessary red tape bullshit required to get medical attention in the United States it was too late. He literally showed up for triple bypass surgery, flying in from Bali to Kentucky and was informed: It’s too late and they sent him home. Within days he died with hospice care coming to their AIRBNB, with Janice by his side and Bob’s last words being plans to go here and there.
There is a collection of people from all over the world mourning Bob’s passing. He will be missed. He one of those people you meet in life that are so special you don’t think you’ll see the likes of again.
Thank you Bob.
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