The fun of coming from a family of restauranteurs is remembering the legion of characters that came through the doors over the years. One my favorites would be Charlie Brickley.
He was the middle-aged AT&T, soon to retire, guy. A member of the Greatest Generation that went home late one night. He tries to be quiet opening and shutting the front door. The house answers with a resounding echo. Wifey had secretly moved out with the four kids, lion’s share of the furniture and household items. Charlie would say jokingly, “She still loves me. She left me a coffee maker and coffee.”
It was then that Charlie Brickley became a regular at Riordan’s. Every night he was becoming more comfortable as the bar clown and bartender Woody was growing more annoyed with each passing night.
His pranking came to a head on night. He had been blackballed from becoming a member of the local Elk’s Lodge. He was riffing about the unexpected vote against him. And he soon picked up a Captain’s chair and began charging around, holding the chair, legs up over his head, pretending to be an elk. I walked in the front door just as he was about to crash into the jukebox. Woody called to me, from behind the bar, to intercept our man-elk. I was ready to bolt as it appeared I was the in the path of this upside down, airborne chair. Then I realized it was Charlie underneath of it all.
No blood, no foul.
This was the mid-seventies. We had a lot of great music on our jukebox that I had collected from personal requests from customers and employees. We had “Cabdriver” by The Mills Brothers, String of Pearls, Stardust, Sinatra’s “Summerwind,” Satin Doll, Tony Bennett’s “I Wanna Be Around” and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” But it was a Perry Como record that finally helped Charlie find love at Riordan’s jukebox.
Charlie had been a single man for almost two years. Different people tried to set Charlie up with a variety of ladies but one evening a lady who worked on Capitol Hill, and frequently came in for a late dinner, was at the jukebox, making her selections, when Charlie struck up a conversation with her. She played Perry Como’s “It’s Impossible.” Charlie and Winnie had been married 30 years when he died at the Washington Hospital Center.
###
Perry Como “It’s Impossible” image courtesy of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16653247
