You're so Nashville if you can't hear Merle Haggard on the radio, but you can go downtown and drink with him.

-From the Nashville alternative paper ca. 1999.

Have I ever told you about the time I was eating at Noshville, a sort of classy Jewish deli in my hometown? I looked up over my chopped liver sandwich, and saw Merle Haggard sitting at the counter. He was talking to another old country-looking dude, and kept pinching his forehead, making what seemed to be an important point.

They finished, paid, and left, and I watched them get in a beautiful convertible Chevelle parked outside on the street and drive away.

It's my second day of work, which is the following: I arrive before opening, set up the bar, carry ice, make mixes, and cut fruit. When the restaurant opens, a dozen people come in for 400 dollar take-out orders. These people are pharmaceutical reps, bribing a different doctor's office every day--they are well-dressed and, without fail, extremely rude people. I run all their credit cards and tell them thank you, and they look at me with utter contempt. (One time later, I help a red headed one with a mustache carry an unusually large order to his car. He doesn't tip me, and I never again help anyone with anything that isn't in my job description.)

After the pharma reps, I clean the bar while also dealing with the lunch crowd, who eventually trickle in. After time I learn that it's impossible to know if you'll be busy or not. Some days there are too many people to deal with, and others there is nobody. If there's nobody you won't make any money that day.

On my first day of work, the crowd had gotten away from me, too many people in line to pay, and one middle-aged professional man had walked out without paying because I was dumb enough to let him have his take-out bag before he paid. I had assumed he would wait patiently while I dealt with the woman in front of him, who was asking for a lot of extra things, which took a lot of time. After the rush, the manager, Walt, used his card to cancel out the order on my register. "I know it was a lot of people," he told me. He also explained that usually employees have to pay when customers walk out. That day I had begun learning that my job was to be polite but treat everyone like a criminal. A couple years later, when I left the service industry forever, I still wasn't good at this. Even after all that time, I was assuming customers would act like decent people, although, intellectually I knew this was not something you could expect.

There's a hotel and a hospital being built down the street, and on this, my second day of work, a group of six construction workers come in for lunch. They sit at the bar and order lunch, with margaritas and gin and tonics. I'm happy about this, because it's the first chance I've had to make drinks.

At 1:30 the construction guys are still there, and they've had a few drinks each. When they had come in, they'd been quiet and put-out, but now they're talking and having fun. Soon they aren't so much talking as just doing lines from the movie Sling Blade over and over.

"I like mustard," one rumbles low, and they all laugh. "Mmm-hmm." "I aim to keel you wid it." "French fried puh-taters!"

"Hey lemme have another one."

"Was that one how you like it?"

"Well, boy, it could always have some more alcohol in it."

I make them more drinks, and they get louder. It's past two o'clock and they're falling out of their chairs, laughing.

"MMMMMMM-HMM!" "FRENCH FRIED PUH-TATERS!!"

I suddenly realize they're using their yelling voices, and you can hear them all through the restaurant. "FRENCH FRIED PUHTATERS!!" I had been happy someone actually wanted me to make drinks, like it was a real bar, but now these guys seem dangerous and I wish they were gone. Wild animals are siting on the chairs in front of me, and the smartest thing seems to leave. Unfortunately I'm at work.

"PUHTATERS!" They're all howling with laughter. It's my second day of work.

The manager, Walt, comes up and motions to me covertly, to come talk to him out of earshot. Walt is a slight, soft-spoken guy who talks in short, clipped sentences. (Later I realize that his favorite topic is computers, and that he wants to get his Microsoft certification so he can quit his job as a manager.) Despite his tie and manager's job, Walt is massively uncomfortable and socially awkward.

He's nervous. "Josh, uuh, you got to get them out of here. We can't, we can't, they're making noise and people are trying to eat, they got to go."

I have no idea what the right way is to tell them to leave, but Walt has made it my responsibility, so I figure I will just tell them. "Hi, guys," I say, waving my hand at them. Two or three of them actually take notice of me, the others punching each other and laughing, muttering lines from a movie at each other. "It's time to go. You guys need to pay and go, okay?"

The ones actually paying attention look away from me as if it embarrasses them I'm making a fool of myself. "PUHTATERS!! MMMMMMMMM-HMMMMMMMMMM!!" They continue on as before, just as loud.

"I'm sorry. Guys. GUYS! You guys have to go." They ignore me.

Walt walks up to me sideways. "We gotta get them outta here. It's time for them to go. They gotta go, uhhh, they can't be here anymore."

I have no idea what to do. If I make them angry, I am positive they will walk out without paying--a large bill--and how can I stop them?

From out of the tables, where the booths are, walks Audra, a waitress. Audra is a large woman, with big fake gold loop earrings on her ears. Her hair is pulled back in a mass of braids behind her head. Audra never hurries--no matter what she is doing, it is with the same speed and dignity she always has. Audra levels a finger at them, which is tipped in a painted, synthetic nail.

They take notice of her. It is hard not to. "You all are making a lot of noise up in here. People are having their lunch over there." She gestures at the booths, off in darkness.

"Come on now. Get on up. Get up. You got to pay, and you fellas are gonna leave out of here. Come on. [To me:] Gimme they bill, sweetie." They've all quieted up, and she's telling them what to do. They're all fishing in their pockets, getting out wadded up bills, putting together the check. She's telling them what they all owe. I stand there useless, watching, waiting to collect the money.

"That's right, you take the five after you put in the twenty, and then you're taken care of. Okay, you gots to go back to work, you all have been here long enough, okay good, that's right, all right, thank you. Thank you come again, we like y'all, but you got to be quiet next time. Okay, bye bye."

They wander out the sun-filled front door. "That's okay, sweetie," Audra says to me. "I don't know where they get off."

Walt is standing there watching with us. "Some day they'll pour the wrong concrete and uhhm and we'll all die," he says to no one.

Over the course of the year I work there, I never forget how Audra saved me, and she saves me more times in the future. People will always listen to Audra, even when they won't listen to anybody else. Over time, when we talk during the day, I find out that Audra was addicted to heroin for an uncertain amount of time in her past. She smokes long, skinny cigarettes and shakes her head a lot.

Close to a year later, I successfully ask for a two-dollar an hour raise, and when I'm happy and tell Audra, she looks at me unbelieving, and says, "I been behind this bar six years. Six years!" and walks away. It hadn't occurred to me that maybe she had never gotten a raise, or never asked for one. That's the only time she was ever mad at me, or seemed mad at me. All the rest of the time, she treated me like an adopted child.

I quit soon after that--the raise I mean. I wonder where Audra is.