Journeys of Jack Tripper

Yeah, every airport has a Budweiser Brewhouse, including Newark where roughly 50% of the floorspace is taken up with a useless, non-functioning ancient pickup truck display. (Aside: the steakhouse in the International Departures wing of Newark is the best place in the world to meet exotic, rich, and talkative foreigners. Also, my favourite bartender on earth, a Polish girl named Jonne, works there.) Yet the Memphis airport's Budweiser Brewhouse is the one place in the entire airport where you're permitted to smoke.

And that fact alone makes it way more popular than it deserves considering its Anheuser allegiance and bland food.

Sitting at the bar of the Memphis Brewhouse, you will find yourself assaulted from the rear by desperate smokers -- freshly on layover from some West Coast origination and headed to Miami or Washington, and lacking the Bic lighter confiscated by TSA -- who beg for matches.

In busy times, the bartenders serve more matchbooks than beers, and pretty much assume that someone approaching the bar needs a light.

I have two hours before my flight back to Tampa, and I'm absorbing the time I spent with Lori, the blonde I sat next to on the flight from Cincinnati/NKY. (I'll write about that later). I sip a Bud Select and look around the room.

In the corner, she sucks a Heineken and nurses a brown, presumably clove, cigarette. Sunglasses hold messy, hipster curls in place as the sides fall down to shoulders bracing a white tanktop. Hair pins knot the back and form an "X" that are semiotic as we make eye contact and she frowns, returning to her newspaper as I do mine. She finishes the Heineken, places it on its side on the table, and stands, picking up a massive (and out-of-carryon-spec, I am guessing) backpack. She wheels on her urban sneakers, flashes me another frown, and leaves.

My beer cheese soup arrives, and I immediately miss Sundays at the Pub in Athens -- that was Beer Cheese soup. This is... soggy bread. A few more Bud Selects disappear.

A blonde with long, straight hair and a black business suit sits down two seats to my left. She asks me for a light, which of couse I don't have, and Lakeisha the bartender helps out instead. (Aside: they confiscate lighters at security before you can enter the concourses of the airports. Do airport employees not go through the same security? Couldn't the all-evil terrorists just get jobs working at Starbucks or Jose Cuervo's Tequileria and not have to give up their Lighters of Mass Destruction?)

She wants no part of talking to me, especially after discovering the BUDWEISER Brewhouse doesn't serve Miller Lite, which I consider to be a public service more than a marketing decision. For some reason, blondes are way better at dirty looks than brunettes. With brunettes, you always feel like she's about to break into a laugh because, you know, she's just fucking with you. With blondes, you know they're business. Her face is classically beautiful, but wrenched into a scrunched-up mess of bitchiness.

A thin, jittery kid in too-big desert BDUs pops up between us.

"m...m...ma'am do you have some m...matches?"

"Sure, darlin'," Lakeisha replies, and tosses him a book. I glance at his shoulder: the insignia identifies him as a Staff Sergeant. The name tag reads "Stack." He crosses the room to sit along a railing, toting a massive (and out-of-carryon-spec, I am guessing) duffel.

I wish I could say I am about to do what I'm about to do entirely out of national pride. Certainly, that had a lot to do with it. I hate the war in Iraq, but I know the vast majority of our servicemen and women are hardworking and never signed up for this shit. I have a special affinity for Air Force personnel, coming from a family of Ohio Air National Guard members/having dated a USAF Captain/having a lot of USAF and ANG friends.

But I am doing this, in part, to impress the blonde.

"Lakeisha? I'd like to buy that young man a beer."
"Sure thing."

She walks over to Sgt. Stack (God was not helpful in providing him a body frame suitable for his truly awesome name), takes his order (Budweiser draft), and quickly draws the beer and delivers it. He turns to me and shouts, "Thank you." I nod, and respond, "No, thank you" in a voice I don't recognize.

The blonde is unimpressed.