Velociworld

BOB'S CAFE

When I was in high school you could drive out to the end of White Bluff Road to Coffee Bluff, where the road ended at the river. The Forest River, I guess. Salt water, I know. It was raw nature back then. Now it is million dollar houses, and such, but back then it was a fish camp or two, some trailers, a forbidding gated Carmelite monastery populated by cloistered nuns, and, of course, Bob's.

Bob's was a black joint, as much of that area was at the time, and I seem to recall it was originally Bob's Confectionary. There's a word, like emporium, that you don't see used too much anymore.

Bob's was anything but a confectionary, though. It was a fucking funk dive, carved out of the woods. But you could buy alcohol there at 15, 16 years of age, so Bob's was the place. Miller ponies, Boone's Farm, Bob never sold us liquor or anything, but one imagines he assumed we couldn't handle the fermented stuff, and I guess he probably hoped we'd crash and die on White Bluff later, privileged little honkies that we were.

I'm fairly certain Bob didn't have a bookkeeper, much less an accountant. Nor did he pay taxes, or possess insurance. No way that booze was getting tracked back to him anyway. Here it are, white boys. I takes cash. Bob got me through many a drive-in feature of soft core bad bad bad R-rated flicks at the Weiss Auto Cinema. I owe Bob my first feel ups.

Later, when my younger brother was of the age, Bob went a bit more acceptable in private school circles. In fact, it was something of a dare for the girls in his class to table dance at Bob's, little rich white girls slumming and teasing the Negroes. Bob had mainstreamed.

In my day you locked the girls in the car when you entered Bob's for a bottle of 6 day old, or an 8 pack of ponies. It was rough. But Bob was a nascent marketer, and he followed the money like any good entrepeneur. I only regret never asking him how many times one of those Carmelite nuns jumped the fence for a bottle of the vino, and a nice evocative table dance. I'm thinking Bob also ran an abortion clinic in back. Never let it be said jungle fever bypassed the cloistered set.