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October 7, 2002  Dateline - Dryville, USA Okay, this is just tooooo fuckin rich to pass up. Here I am at Stomach-churners Oyster/Seafood "joint" in a town I have long looked back on with glowing adoration as the town where I grew up, the town where I spent the happiest years of my life: Melrose, MA. For starters, I only lived here between the ages of 5 and 10, so I had then and until today still had no idea that Melrose was a DRY TOWN. The very concept of a town that doesn't serve alcohol between such and such hours and on such and such days or damn near not at all is so friggin ironic here just miles from the rock they call Plymouth where WE first landed and WE came to claim our rights to free.. ah, um.. oh yeah, religion. That's it!! It's all about religion. Samuel Dingdong the Reverend with the long schlong came here to practice HIS religion freely. Collectively, they called it Puritanism. Well, hoo-fucking-ray. They succeeded. And now 275 years later, their legacy lives on. Here then is the schedule of F'ed up events since my arrival at this restaurant in downtown Melrose just one hour ago. Arrival. Dan and I are driving through downtown on our way to Malden, an apparantly NON-dry town and to some bar recommended by my Uncle Vito. But I'm impatient and thirsty as hell for a drink.. and not just any drink, a drink AT A BAR! Or at the very least a drink served to me by someone else, to whom I'm paying 400% of the package store price.. who the fuck cares!? Point is, I've had a long day of inventorying Dan's antiques and I'm ready. So we whip the car over in downtown Melrose and hit this fuckin .. what was the name of that place? Yeah, you guessed it.. (we're not there anymore). So the waitress comes. Dan orders a Heineken and I order a Muscat, a late season sweet German white wine. All day I've been revving up for this glass of wine. Got one of them heavy emails this mornin' that had "Must be drunk while reading this" written all over the first few lines. So my wine comes and I'm happy. But ooops! What's that? "You mean you're not going to order food? I'm sorry but municipal law requires that you order food with your drinks." Huh? Okay. Dan says they got good chowder here, so chowder it is, two cups. We clink our glasses in toast to our mutual business venture and 29 year friendship, I pull out my palm pilot, click the Cricket and begin to read. I'll spare you the melodrama (of which I am oh so very well equipped to dish) and just say that the news that came to me at that fucking table in that fucking yuppie seafood joint on this fucking Sunday-God-rested-whilst-his-flock-went-all-to-Hell and the world imploded in burning sorrowful jet-fueled insanity.. well, I cried. And cried and cried. And somewhere in there, when asked if I wanted another, I said, "Just bring a bottle, please." Her reply: "I'm sorry, Sir, but in order to order a bottle you'll have to order a full meal." That's far too many orders for one sentence, wouldn't you say? I'm suddenly starting to understand the true origins of Adam Sandler's biting, East Coast-born sarcasm. "No shit? Well, another glass then, please." My second wine came and I drank it, knocking it back with a buttered brotchen. Then began the real comedy. Waitress comes with the check. WriterRick lifts his glass and says I'll take another (ignoring her invitation to dessert and the frightening implication lurking behind both the check and the dessert). The bomb drops. "I'm sorry but the kitchen is closed now." "What!!? Well then," I retort in Monty Python fashion, "if the kitchen is closed then surely the wine will be good! All the better, in fact, since that was an Auschlase I ordered, a dessert wine, and oh how very much easier it will be to pour now that your scullery kitchen maid duties are done." Okay, so those weren't my exact words. But Jesus Christ with Marty Feldman eyes! What the fuck is going on here? She lays it out in plain (and I do mean plane) English. "Now that the kitchen is closed, you can no longer order food. And since you can no longer order food, you can no longer order drinks." "Come on. You're joking, right? What is it? Nine O'clock?" She concurs that yes, it is 9 p.m. Poor girl has ZERO sense of humor. Desperate and feeling my oats, (despite my email-love-burdened heavy heart), I pull the trump card. "You're not joking, are you?" (dead air) "You mean to tell me that if I were George W. (waspnest, watercloset, wanker) Bush that you still wouldn't serve me another glass of wine? My THIRD glass?! The last balm on a chasm of horrid all-day sobriety?" No dice. Dan apologizes. To me? To her? I wasn't sure. We paid. We scrammed. And it was in the alley on route to the minivan to drive on toward more booze that I learned that Dan truly was sorry, not to the waitress, but to ME for this, the town of my youth, my Melrose. Melrose. I loved this town once. This was where the dream-slice lived, that memorable, lovable, lime and sepia-colored flash of my youth when all was well with the world. It was when I was good and loved. When my parents were renewing their wedding vows in the living room of our 200 year old house. When Jimmy Carter was stepping in and Vietnam stepping out and Jackie Charrette forced my hand for a sadly-missed first kiss in my backyard fort beneath the winter-ice-bending birch tree. It was the "when" of puppet shows and backyard fairs and haunted "houses" in our basement with a bulkhead door charge. It was Melrose, that timeplace before Beverly and the D-word, the bad D-word, the end of the end of it all. It was all of this, this sweet and innocent youth that DRY Melrose gifted me. Thank you, Melrose. Fuck the town council anyway. Like all politicians, they are liars and thieves. Worse. The smaller the politician the more localized the disease. Thank you, Melrose the once-Indian land. Thank you, soil of Melrose, roots of her trees, and yes, even that dirty water of Ell Pond. Despite this fishy dry night I love you still. Oh, and by the way, thinking back on that puritan reverend thang, I DO know one reverend with a good heart and a clear conscience.  His name is Reverend Bill. -RSM
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