The three mornings of Atlantis Beach

In those days, when we were younger,  there were often two or even three mornings a day.

The 'first morning' would come about as soon after two in the morning as the employees of Daddy Rat's could get rid of us. Those that were liked, and willing, would pickup chairs or a broom and could often stay till well after three AM, ceasing all effort and sitting back down carefully as soon as the rank and file had been ushered out.
When the manager would yell "WE'RE CLOSED" from the front door and slap the lock closed the serious drinking would begin.

Throw a goodly sum of money on the bar to cover the depletion of stock and make yourself whatever you wanted or could stomach.
If you were friends with, cordial with, or sleeping with any of the fifteen to twenty staff working on the weekends and didn't distract them from doing their jobs closing hour would linger... Often there would be an additional eight or ten folks in the bar long after.

The 'second morning', would be when we'd all actually leave the huge old bar. It is no exaggeration to say that I have seen a football tossed under the lights on the beach till near daylight many a time in front of that place, chaise lounges 'borrowed' from the mom and pop place next door, and carefully returned before leaving.

The 'third morning', the "citizens morning" we called it, was whatever time we'd get false dawn on the horizon.  Avoiding the milk trucks, the newspaper delivery folks, and sleepy cops we'd slide across the peninsula to the mainland to congregate behind the city hall.

There across a surprisingly wide street we'd park and wait for Roger to open up.

He'd been in there for a couple hours, making weak, bad coffee, precooking hashbrowns, filling the back coolers with "NASTY" beer, which was whatever he could get cheap that week, Grocecery style placards behind the counter advertised "cold NASTY, 35 Cents".  Getting ready for a day that often stretched till eight or nine at night.

Roger was the son of a local man who had at one time owned a quarter of the downtown area, running to six or eight blocks. In the families heyday they had had the second theatre in town the 'BEACH' Theatre, seven miles from said beach, a series of barbershops, lawyers offices, doctors offices, and of course the Soda Shop.

The Dixie Soda Shop had once been the center of this resort towns mainland side community.

Oh,...  there was another shop a few blocks closer to the High School, but the DIXIE, being across from the City Hall was where the adults had lunch, made deals, and sometimes took lovers up stairs to the apartments maintained for that purpose.

And ten or twenty years slipped away... enough time had passed by the time I came on the scene that the apartments upstairs were rented to the working poor, the Soda Shop had fallen on low times, full mornings and evenings of the working poor, (and non working... disabled, blind, crippled, or increasingly as the years passed, crazy), who would often take their meals in this communal beer kitchen.

Roger, now grey, "somewhere" in his sixties, and capable of a spring and midwinter birthday party for himself, where he fed the whole neighborhood, was still there.

Roger looked like an older version of the diner guy in the old BLONDIE comic strip, we often thought deliberately.  Six foot two or three, he'd sport a white, (sort of),  in cool weather sailor hat, white, (sort of), t-shirt,  either dingy black or approximately white pants, with not white in a long time, sneakers and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth Bogart style.

Rogers' doctor had told him, in the process of removing half a lung, that he had to quit smoking. He'd asked the doc if he could just chew a cigar to keep the craving away and getting a yes began a life with a small unlit cigar in his mouth.

If you hung around awhile you soon noticed that these cheap little cigars still had most of the plastic wrapping on them. I asked him one day, and he told me, "Well Lloyd, I started out stripping them but they lasted no time at all, so now I only open the end."

If you were an observant type you'd notice that he was actually eating the cigar, sometimes plastic and all.

We'd gotten to know each other because my family had come in there while downtown working for the local paper when he was a boy, he knew my uncle, and we had the same sense of humor.

One morning one of the City Hall types, taking his life in his hand, came in for a quick breakfast. He'd just gotten his eighty-five cents worth of two eggs, grits and toast, and had the first or second forkful to his mouth when the soda shop cat jumped up on the counter, walked over and sniffed at his plate, and haughtily walked away.

The 'suit' from City Hall took offense at this, yelling at Roger, "damnit can't you keep the animals off the counter?"

To which Roger replied, "that cat and her ancestors have been here a hell of a lot longer than YOU, besides she's clean, she just had a bath!"

I heard all this, sitting a few stools away reading the paper, and got up, walked over and laid eighty-five cents in front of the man in the tie. "Here, we don't want you to feel bad about it, I'll buy your breakfast, now take your head out of your ass and either eat or get out...."

Roger had to go out back suddenly where I could hear him howling laughing.

I went back to my paper.