Farmer Bob

The concept of Karma is kind of like the second law of thermodynamics, only with a judgmentally moralistic slant, because from a Karmic perspective, when the entropy of a closed system increases over time, it’s because of something you did and you deserve it. So that’s the conceptual handle I use to haul that around.

But I couldn’t help thinking about Karma as I watched the Kansas City Liquor Control van pull up and park in the Handicapped spot outside the Cup and Saucer one Friday afternoon in the Spring of 2001. Specifically, I wondered what past-due Karmic invoice necessitated a visit from Liquor Control on the exact day that our liquor license expired.

Diana and I had been playing our favorite drinking game that day. It’s called “Everyone Look Busy.” There’s only one rule — you take a shot whenever Jill’s not looking. Unfortunately, she was having one of the micromanagement days that happen whenever she’s forced into auditing the payroll account and is therefore confronted with what she pays employees, so we had to wait for her bathroom breaks. As one of hundreds of counterpoints to Jill’s delicate, lovely appearance, she has a bladder of steel. One of her favorite things to do is hold lengthy staff meetings with constantly-replenished pitchers of water, and not let anyone take breaks. Anyway, what with all the barging in and barking orders and judgmental comments about our appearances, and also all the not going to the bathroom, Diana and I were still sober.

Anyway, Jill walked into the bar, saw the Liquor Control van, shrieked, and ran back into the office. She’s not a woman of many phobias, but Liquor Control officers are on the list. Jill’s departure gave Diana and I the opportunity to do a shot. Then, while we waited for the morbidly obese Liquor Control officer to lower himself and his Rascal scooter to street level via the van’s rear lift-gate, we had time to do several more shots.

For some reason, the Kansas City Department of Regulated Industries is a vector for obesity. In other city departments, the Body Mass Index distribution seems to fall along the same bell curve as the population at large. I mean, I didn’t take a survey or anything. It’s just pretty easy to notice that when you walk into the Regulated Industries office, everyone uses Rascal scooters for office chairs, and they’re all busy giving themselves extra shots of insulin so they can eat whole boxes of Chicken-in-a-Biscuit crackers and cans of vanilla frosting.

So, the reason our license was expired was that one of the fatasses behind the glass window at Regulated Industries got distracted by the beep indicating that the office microwave was done heating up a family-sized tray of Encore brand Salisbury Steaks, and in the ensuing peristalsis, and subsequent catharsis of beefy farting, forgot to put our liquor license renewal application in the mail. That kind of thing happens all the time.

Back in the office, Jill was preparing herself to go down to Liquor Control by having a few martinis with some anti-anxiety meds. “I heard about one Liquor Control officer who started to smell really bad — worse than normal, not just the usual spoiled Vienna Sausage / ranch dressing smell they have. So they made him go to the doctor,” she said. “And the doctor found a decomposing cat that got trapped under a roll of stomach fat and died.” She said that last part in the same voice people generally use to say, HANGING FROM THE HANDLE WAS A HOOK! Jill shivered and took a drink of her Cosmopolitan.

Then, she aimed her finger at me, and said, “You know that’s my only goddamn phobia.”

“You mean, besides dying?” I said. Jill is extremely morbiphobic. She wears a Med-Alert bracelet that says, “RESUSCITATE,” and her living will expressly authorizes any and all drastic measures to artificially prolong the metabolic function of her body in the event of brain death. “Then I’d be just like YOU,” she said to me, “only with a respirator.”

“Man, I don’t want to be resuscitated,” I said. “That whole prospect is nasty.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” she said. “I took a whole training course at the Red Cross just so I’d know how to unplug you. We practiced on a ‘Do-Not-Resusci-Annie’ doll.”

“Yeah, that’s very f-”

“You check her for signs of artificial respiration! And then yank the plug out of the wall! They let us have cocktails while we did it. Speaking of which, I’ve got a good buzz on.” She took a deep breath. “I’m going down to Liquor Control.”

I walked back to the bar. By this time, the Liquor Control guy had maneuvered his Rascal scooter up over the curb, and with a lot of labored breathing, managed to get the front door of the Cup and Saucer opened without standing up.

Between loud, panting exhalations, he said, “I need to see your liquor card.” Diana pulled her liquor card out of her brassiere, which is where she keeps all of her official documentation, and handed it over. The Liquor Control fatty pretended to look at it, and handed it back covered in barbecue-colored finger smudges. “Where’s the establishment liquor license posted?” he asked.

“Right over there,” said Diana, pointing to the photo collage frame where we post the business licenses and various pictures of Jill trying on different outfits. “But it’s expired,” she said. Diana never lies.

“Then this bar is closed,” he said. “Where’s the owner?”

“As a matter of fact, she’s gone to the Regulated Industries office to get the license renewed.”

“Well, that’s convenient,” he said with a sneer that sent ripples across the undifferentiated fleshy territory where his face turned into his neck. “Why is it that she’s never around when we come to inspect?”

“Honestly? She has a phobia,” said Diana. “Once, she was watching a Discovery Channel documentary about Chinese honeybees. When Asian wasps get too close to their hives, the honeybees swarm the wasp en masse and cook it to death with their body heat. And Jill fell asleep during the documentary, and had a crazy dream about city licensing codes. It all got mixed up in her head, and now she’s afraid that a bunch of liquor control officers will swarm her and cook her to death with their body heat.”

Apparently, having never met Jill, the Liquor Control guy thought Diana was being a smart-ass. He whipped out his citation book from his belt, which was hiked up under his boobs, so he could reach it. “I’ll just put that down as ‘interference with a liquor code compliance officer,’” he said. “That’s a two-hundred dollar fine.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said. “That’s totally the truth!”

I guess he thought I was threatening him, because he whipped out his cell phone and called for “backup.” A few minutes later, another liquor control van rolled up outside, and a second morbidly obese liquor control officer came huffing through the front door on a rascal scooter. All of which turned out to be way too much for the floorboards in the bar. There was a terrifying groaning sound, and from behind the bar, all we could see was two liquor control officers vanish into the floor, followed by an enormous crashing sound and a plume of dust as a thousand pounds of lipids and two electric scooters smashed into the floor in the basement. Which is how we came to have two morbidly obese city employees living in the basement, about which more later.

Jill did manage to get our liquor license back, but it cost her a $250 health plan deductible. Bribing the clerk at the Regulated Industries office with a large-sized Buffalo Chicken Pizza from Pizza Hut was the obvious way to go. In a process that normally takes six weeks, the application was processed, stamped, covered with Buffalo sauce finger-smudges, and filed with the city in under ten minutes. Jill’s resourceful like that.

Unfortunately, on her way out of the building, six Liquor Control officers on their way to the qualifying trials for a competetive eating event followed her into the elevator, and crowded around her. The doors closed before she could exit, and the Andy Dick-grade panic attack that resulted from her horrible Asian wasp nightmare-come-true resulted in an overnight hospitalization. “It was horrible,” she said to me via a cell phone she was explicitly prohibited from using in the patient wing. “It was all eggy-smelling, and I could hear loud digestive gurgling sounds, and I couldn’t move! It was like being trapped in a horrible, stinky oven!”

Jill was in the hospital for a few days. Diana had to take over the administrative duties that Jill tended to ignore while she wasn’t in the hospital, so we had to find another bartender to cover some shifts, and that’s how Chico got hired.