TRICKY DICK'S COFFEE HOUSE: 11) THE BATTLE FOR TRICKY DICK'S

A Throwback Thursday Serial About Living in London in the 1970s

Returning home to London early from American University, a woman I'd never seen before answered the door to my parents' house.  Had they moved and not told me? This woman spoke no English and, not knowing who the hell I was, wouldn't let me in:  My welcome home after three months away.

She turned out to be the new maid, and it took a lot of cajoling on my part to gain entry and call the bakehouse so my mother could verify my very existence.

Then I went upstairs and found the Top Floor in turmoil.  It had been redone (stripped and re-papered) and all the furniture grouped together in the center of the room.  

They hadn't been expecting me; this, the price of surprise.

Mike was happy to see me and gleefully took me on his pub rounds.  First, the Old Bull and Bush, his favorite bar that season, and second to the Swiss Cottage, a sprawling complex of pubs, nooks and crannies, a bar for every taste.  We hit the Portland Arms, for old times sake, if no longer the hub for whatever American friends were still around.  

Mike said, "Let's go see Tim."  

Tim Hardin had played more than a dozen sets at Tricky Dick's in my absence; had become revered as the restaurant's favorite son/musician.

Mike drove us to Peter Frampton's house in St. John's Wood, where Tim was now living with Peter's ex-wife Mary.  We arrived at a bad moment or something, Tim was icy cool toward us; Mary seemed annoyed that Tim's friends would drop by without calling, most un-English. 

But Tim seized the moment and put us to work moving a mound of pavers from one spot to another on the patio.  

Mike had spotted Tim five quid, advance payment for a gig, and Tim hadn't stopped by in weeks, so Mike pressed him on it.  Tim picked up a guitar, asked for a request.  

Mike said, "Play Don't Make Promises You Can't Keep," a Tim Hardin original.  

"Awww, man," Tim put down the guitar. 

Time to leave.  

I marched into Tricky Dick's, rolled up my sleeves and took control as if I'd never been away. 

Over Christmas, months earlier, I’d hinted to Clive that I might return, implying that Tricky Dick's was my domain, and he'd said something snide, like, "We'll see about that." 

And now we were seeing.  

The first evening I moved a couple of tables and reorganized their settings.  An aggressive waitress I'd never seen before, ugly as sin with a disposition to match, sneered at me, and snarled, "What the hell you think you're doing to my fucking tables?" 

One of Clive's girls.  You could tell by the choice language.

"I'm the owner," I said with measured nonchalance.  "And I'm cleaning up your mess."

She had little else to say, and didn't, and I think that was her last night on the job.

Clive walked in sometime that week, saw me instructing staff, took a long look, and walked out.  There was also Clive's sniffling cousin John, to deal with.  He was abrupt and he'd sneer a lot, muttering about "yanks," but whenever he tried an attitude with me I'd shoot him down, and soon he just came in as an extra hand on weekends when the place got busy; then finally, not at all.

Mike stayed out of it completely.  He left it to us to sort it out.  He knew Clive to be strong-willed, and he had to know I am stronger-willed.  Two Librans finding a balance.

Clive

As if to stake my territory, I framed a photo of Ted Kennedy inscribed to me and hung it behind the counter.  Clive took it down.  I put it up again.

I insisted that Dean tie his long hair behind his head in a manner in which it stayed tied.  It made Dean unhappy, but he complied.  And then I told Dean to put on a shirt and cover his armpits.  

He went nuts, hollering, "I'm not listening to you!  Clive's my boss!"

And that was the end of Dean. 

His replacement: an oddball named Patrick, another of Michael’s English school chums. 

Patrick had his own way of doing everything, even baking pizza.  He decided it took too much time to prepare pizza by first layering the crust with tomato sauce then layering the sauce with mozzarella cheese.  So he mixed the cheese and tomato sauce together to create one layer.  The result may have tasted all right, but it looked like surgery. 

Patrick was extremely sensitive, and if you told him he was making a mistake, he'd sneer, "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." 

He was right, of course.

During the summer of ‘76 Tricky Dick’s buzzed with fun and Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, which I brought back from AU (most of the students had been from New Jersey and were deep into The Boss), at a time when Springsteen was little known in the UK.  

There were Jolie and Jude, and a young, hip crowd that revolved around the pubs, early evening; Tricky Dick's, late evening, and back to the Top Floor in the wee hours. 

Bruce S had come home from Paul Smith College and Dickie W had returned from Colorado School of Mines in Golden. Our friends and the staff of Tricky Dick's were entwined and life was a party.  Of course, we didn't see it that way then, but what the hell did we know? 

Back then, you just called out "Party in the park!" and it happened.  After you're married, kids, other baggage, a party means printed invitations and catering.  

Through early summer, I dabbled with Bilderberg, continuing to believe it was the key to something in my life, not knowing quite what.  I enjoyed the search, playing it like a jigsaw puzzle.   

I wrote a draft, planning to submit it to a magazine, maybe Penthouse.  And I set it neatly on my desk, the way I imagined Jack Kerouac had set the first half of The Town and the City on his desk before venturing out on the road.  And I joined Michael and Dickie W on a summer trip to Amsterdam.  It was at times like these, getting away from the nightly madness, when it was useful to have Clive on board, even though he still belched while serving burgers.   

Dickie W was the ideal person to have on a trip to Amsterdam because he knew his dope.  And that's what Amsterdam was about in the summer of '76 (probably still is).

Our two favorite spots were a sandwich shop called "Hootchie McGoochies" or "Boogie van Koogies" or something equally ridiculous, and the Paradiso Club.  

The Paradiso's basement, dark and musty, played home to a half-dozen hashish dealers who sat at a long, solid rectangular table, each with his own scales and an awesome assortment of hashish from around the world.  

For a connoisseur like Dickie, it was heaven.  We were like little kids in a candy store.  "Gee, I'll take three grams of Nepalese, two grams of Afghan... or maybe I should try the Columbian?  Ah, hell, just give me a gram of everything on the table!"

Then you'd retire to one of the nooks and crannies filled with overstuffed chairs and sofas that had seen better days, or shoot pool at one of the tables.  Everyone in the place was stoned, except the dealers, who stayed sharp and in control.

The hippies were still hanging out at Dam Square and the Red Light District buzzed with shopfront prostitutes.  Dickie started smoking first thing in the morning and blew a pipe all day long.  He'd take a deep lungful and say, "Jeez, this stuff is strong!"

But I’ve never been much of a smoker. I took a train on my own to The Hague, to visit Bilderberg headquarters at Smidswater 1, a tidy office inside a row house. Mrs. Hoogendoorn, the glue that held Bilderberg together, was not accustomed to anyone rapping at her door. Though guarded, she was very pleasant to me.

Back in London, I retyped my Bilderberg manuscript on my old manual Adler and, with Bruce S riding shotgun, drove to Penthouse magazine on Bramber Road in West Kensington and hand-delivered it to a receptionist who promised to pass it to an editor.