Coffee Chronicles …plus Brown Liquor and Rubber Shoes

Good morning, Chroniclers! Coffee’s on in the kitchen, how about yours?

One of my Road Dogs is in town this week and a few of the fellas got together and burned up a few sticks, drank some brown liquor and told a few lies. We were gonna be hosted by Marvelous Marvin, but Two-Rays stepped up when Marvelous was unavailable. Present was the Monsignor, Cmdr. McCroc, the guest of honor, the Counselor and myself.

Now I’ll be honest, I didn’t really think about writing a Chronicles about last night, but a few things occurred which pretty much forced my hand.

First off, I arrived way after the get together had started. Cmdr. McCroc told me to come on in through the back gate. As I rounded the corner and looked into the yard to see my friends, it was at this point that I remembered that Two Rays got himself a dog. Now, if you know Two Rays, you know that he is not a Maltipoo kind of guy. Two Rays has a Cane Corso mix. Diamond can stand on her hind legs, put her front paws on my shoulders and look at me directly in the eye. Ask me how I know this.

There were four handguns, all holstered on various hips and concealed, in this back yard, well five including mine and none of those worried me. You know what held my attention at that very moment? The yellow-eyed beast, with a neck chain to match her name, who challenged my right to be in her backyard presently.

“Off,” Two Rays said nonchalantly to Diamond, without even looking in my direction.

Diamond eyed me warily as she escorted me over to where her master was sitting. She sat dutifully next to me when I stopped in front of Two Rays, still eyeballing me just in case I decided to do something where she would need to take some sort of positive action.

I felt as though I‘d just walked into the filming of a Coppola movie or something. Was I supposed to genuflect or kiss the ring?

“Wassup, Marc? Sit down,” said Two Rays. Diamond walked away and lay down on the rug, her spot before I'd interrupted her, to recommence watching the Lakers game. I guess I was okay.

The Counselor tried to bully me into leaving him out of my next Chronicles, threatening court action. Let me drop a little something in here. My boy thinks of himself as some fancy street lawyer. He’s got some skills, and he loves to puff out his chest and throw around big words, like tort and slander and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. He wanted to debate me on whether or not that was a legal term. It is not. I have a legal term for you, big shot: First amendment.

Look, between you and I, the closest your boy got to being an actual attorney was working in 25 and 27 at CJ. He was so impressed by the pro pers that he began to carry one of those brown expandable file folders secured with a big brown rubber band back and forth to work. He wasn’t fooling anyone. We all knew that all he had in it was his Lunchables and a banana, there is no way that there were any actual legal briefs in it.

Secondly, the Counselor sent me into the kitchen to get some chicken. Unfortunately for me, it was Louisiana fried chicken. Yes, I knew better, but I was hungry. At four this morning, I was cursing the Counselor, because I know that I cannot eat spicy food. None. Nada. Zilch. Mexican food? Gotta be gringo style. Creole? Only if I’m careful. Cajun? Absolutely not!

More on the Counselor, in a minute. I’m not quite done with him.

The Monsignor was his usual quiet self. He can be found at every event sitting close to the action quietly, just taking it all in, until he hears something funny. You can always tell when that occurs, he will drop his head and shake it back & forth and his shoulders will buck up and down in rhythm with his silent chortle. I was gonna leave him alone, up until he made a “Larry Tate” crack. Look, you didn’t hear this from me, but there’s a member of our crew who thinks the Monsignor was the model for a famous baby Japanese monster whose mom went through 60’s Tokyo creating chaos by smashing tall buildings and battling King Kong. Keep that under your hat, he’s modest about that.

Two Rays and I caught up on the good ol’ days; training back at the ‘nox.

So it’s evident that Cmdr. McCroc has attached his tentacles into the Counselor (head’s up, this is where he tried to bully me). Apparently the Counselor, his wife and daughter were on vacay and there was a Croc store nearby. The ladies went inside while the Counselor waited dutifully on a bench outside.

A few minutes later Mrs. Counselor stuck her head out of the store and said “Hey, Babe, you wanna pair?”

“No, I’m good, Hun, thanks.”

“You gotta try these on,” she insisted.

Reluctantly, the Counselor stepped into the store and slipped his foot into what would become his first pair of rubber shoes.

“Wow! These are nice.”

The first thing he did was call Cmdr. McCroc. 

The Counselor: “Bruh, why didn’t you tell me?”

Cmdr: “I know, right?”

Hold the phone. How did he even know what the call was about?

…and the rest is history. McCroc has already sent the Counselor the winter catalog. They were both gushing over it like two school girls ogling the most recent American Girl inventory.

Drink ‘em if you got ‘em!

#coffeehousechronicles