TRICKY DICK'S COFFEE HOUSE: 7) REDUX
A Throwback Thursday Serial About Living in London in the 1970s
My return to London from college in Cape Cod was pure magic.
Bruce S, back from an oil rig, joined me hitting the pub circuit, pulling together a new crowd of ASL babes.
My first doubts about returning to Massachusetts set in right after New Year's. I was at a party at Stephanie B's lavish, expansive flat in Mayfair, one of her all night soirees, her parents away. Barney was there romancing Michelle J, one of my first friends at ASL, while a gaggle of ASL juniors swarmed us.
The parties, the pubs, the girls—London, again!
I suddenly had a mad impulse to open Tricky Dick's for one night, "For old time's sake."
I went to take a look around. The place was exactly how my brother Michael had left it in early October: A half pot of three-month-old coffee sat upon the Bunn coffeemaker, dried up grounds still in the filter. A huge mess.
Jonathan was still around, fudging cakes, giggling manically to himself, mumbling that he knew the meaning of life but it would take a week to tell me and when I said "Let's start today" he'd say he couldn't tell me the meaning of life without telling me how he discovered it and when I said that was okay the story began many years earlier when he was coerced to join a witches' coven in Cornwall then escaped its pull and had to fight its evil spell.
I tried to follow his discourse as best I could over several days while he fudged cakes, until one day he stopped speaking. My mother had asked him to stop teasing Lalit, the Indian baker's apprentice, and Jonathan thereafter refused to talk, communicating only with gestures and by writing notes, a condition known as elective mutism.
I spent a couple of days cleaning up, then turned on the lights, swung the open sign on the door and took position behind the counter.
A few regulars wandered in, disbelieving their eyes, and quickly got into the spirit of One Last Night for Old Time's Sake.
I felt needed.
Then I made the decision not to return to Cape Cod.
The rationale to my parents went something like this: I'd reopen Tricky Dick's, take a course or two at the University of Maryland's UK branch, go to the theatre for culture's sake—and apply for fall '75 entry to American University in Washington D.C.
The landlord was causing trouble again, on the warpath after discovering that the restaurant was closed and, consequently, threatening costly, time-consuming litigation if my parents wouldn't cough up more rent. So it all made sense.
I reopened Tricky Dick's on January 30th for four nights a week, Thursday through Sunday, since those were the only nights we did any decent business. To simplify the operation, I ran counter service only: you'd come up, get your coffee and cake, pay for it and and find a table.
Bob Miller and I ran the place together, sharing responsibilities, taking turns washing dishes, and I bought an old upright piano and shoved it beneath the stairway. It meant losing a table (15 percent of seating space) but what the hell? I wasn't into turning tables and wringing profits; I was into creating a zone.
And, of course, hosting the regulars, a fairly crackpot bunch.
There would be amazing jam sessions, centering, at first, upon an intense fellow named Malcolm, no eyebrows and a bad wig (he suffered alopecia), who played guitar and sang while all the other cuckoos shook sugar dispensers and tapped on ashtrays with their forks. A grown man named Little Frankie played a spoon on his lips like a harmonica.
One night, a conservative looking gent in a grey tuxedo and spats marched in and joined the jam, strumming a guitar.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, I heard a trumpet. I'd been smoking Thai stick, a notoriously strong weed, so for about a minute I thought the trumpet was my imagination and that, damn, I must be higher than I thought.
I searched the small, crowded room with my eyes for a trumpet. There was none. No trumpet. I whispered to Bob, "Where's the fucking trumpet?" and he just shrugged, searching with his own eyes, red as mine.
Then I realized, watching tuxedo and spats: He was the trumpet, blowing through barely open lips.
This realization convulsed me into howls of stoned laughter, totally bowled over by Roger Okin and his invisible trumpet. And then I remembered what Michael had said in Cape Cod, though I never believed it till now.
An extremely talented actor named Larry Viner would come into Tricky Dick's costumed as an elderly eccentric hunchback. He would ask unsuspecting customers if he could sit with them at their table. He was so good, so real with bad false teeth and an evil leer, he fooled me too.
And then the nightly jam would start and Larry would beat the table with a knife and fork, his hunch bobbing up and down. Then he'd reach over his shoulder and use his hunch as a drum, tapping it with a spoon, grinning madly and wheezing, "You like it? You like it?" to his horrified, unwitting table mates.
When he reverted to his usual debonair self, Larry's first question to a newly-introduced young lady: "Would it be presumptuous of me to ask how you like your bacon cooked?"
Larry was part of an odd assortment of men and women known to themselves as The Hampstead Ineffectuals. Their routine was to talk the night away, starting at Cyrano's, a vegetarian restaurant on Heath Street in Hampstead Village, always concluding at Tricky Dick's.
There was Ernst, a middle-aged Austrian with a steel-plate in his head; Eddie, a Jerry Garcia lookalike who was said to be into S & M and, though pushing 60, always had a different young blonde in tow; Little Frankie, boyish, in looks and mind; two women: Alison and Tessa, earthy types who knew dirtier jokes than the guys; Mike Ruby, shy; Alan Rose, a bear-shaped bambi with red afro and thick mustache.
And John Altman, a quite spectacular sax player and musical arranger destined for greatness. He would arrive late at night with his new arrangements, which we'd slap into the cassette player and get our minds blown.
It was around this time Bronco wandered in—and I never would have believed him either.
Tricky Dick’s was a kind of magnet for every eccentric and nutcase within a two-mile radius. We somehow drummed up vibes that reached out on a special wavelength, heard only by those in need. And if they weren't locked up, they made a beeline straight to our coffee house and committed themselves.
Bronco breezed in, right up to the counter, looked me square in the face and said, "Cup a tea?"
His eyes said he couldn't pay, and he read mine, trying to read his.
"I'm skint," he added. (London street slang for broke.)
He played himself beautifully in a dirty old raincoat and wide-rim hat, a dirty vest over a grubby sweater, baggy, stained trousers and worn-out shoes. He looked like Fagin in Oliver Twist, with decaying teeth and a scrawny thin beard and mustache.
I said okay, and Bronco rubbed his hands together, blew into them, saying "Oh boy oh boy oh boy. I love Americans, I really love Americans. They're the best, Americans. Can I have some cake?"
And with that he blew his nose into a dirty hanky, sat down and rolled himself a cigarette from old stubs and papers he kept in a beat-up tobacco tin.
Bronco lived on tea and whatever scraps he could scrounge. When he was in good humor, he pronounced himself "Minister of Tea" and talked about how he was going to move to America, live in the wild west and become a cowboy.
When he was in a bad mood, usually when it was raining, and it rained often, he would curse about "Golders Green rich kids beeping around in fancy cars, beep-beep- beeping little bastards, they don't know what living is, beep-beep, damn rich kids with sports cars going beep-beep-beep."
With his beep-beeps he sounded like a Road Runner cartoon. And after a while, customers would start to ask for Bronco when he wasn't around, like he was the entertainment or something.
Late at night, closing time, Bronco would be the last to leave, and I'd let him play the piano, and he'd improvise, playing and singing a song or two, and I could kick myself now for not tape-recording them. He'd sing, "I'm gonna get you, I'm gonna get you, runaway," his own composition.
Some nights Bronco would get up, pace the aisle and threaten customers, and I'd have to toss him out into the rain. He was harmless, but not everyone knew that. Outside, he'd stand at the plate glass picture window pulling faces. Then a few minutes later he'd storm back in, ranting and raving, and I'd have to bounce him again.
Bronco never took off his hat. I tried for weeks to make a grab for it, but he had eyes in the back of his neck when it came to his ragged, wide-brimmed hat.
Finally, I nabbed it, and I had to run like hell because he transformed into total madness in pursuit of me. I jumped into my van and drove off, circled around and caught up with Bronco, who was walking furiously, completely bald on top with long fringes.
I pulled over and tossed his hat at him.
Bronco stooped to pick it up. He looked at me, and said, "Oh, thanks," like I'd just given him a cup of tea. He returned to the restaurant five minutes later as if nothing had happened. I felt bad about my stupid antics and treated him royally to as much tea and cake as he wanted.
Another time, he missed his chair and fell smack on the floor, hot tea everywhere. He thought nothing of it, just picked himself up, looked around bewildered and said "Sabatooge!"
Tricky Dick's regulars told me they'd known Bronco for years; that he never changed, never aged.
Bronco was forever in search of a girlfriend, the "runaway" in his song, and he'd walk up to pretty girls in Tricky Dick's and politely ask, "Can I sit with you?"
The girls would every time recoil in horror, and when this happened three or four times within a couple of hours, Bronco would go mental, screaming, "Can you believe it? Me, the best looking bloke in Hampstead. What do those other guys got I don't got? Class. They got no class. I got class. I'll fix 'em. I know, I don't have a car, that's what it is. All these girls want is a guy who goes beep-beep-beep…”
And I'd have to bounce Bronco out the door. And he'd pull faces at the window before beep-beeping into the night.
Finally, Bronco created an imaginary girlfriend. Her name was Puff and he'd bring her into the restaurant for tea. He would talk to her lovingly, hold her hand, caress her, and everything would be swell until we filled up after the pubs closed at 11 p.m. and, wouldn't you know it, someone would grab Puff's chair and, in Bronco's mind, Puff would go flying, sprawled onto the floor.
Of course, Bronco would be furious. He'd jump from his seat and holler that they couldn't do that to Puff, how dare they take her chair, dump her on the floor like that?
And I'd have to bounce Bronco's righteous self out onto the street. And he'd come bouncing back, saying he couldn't leave Puff there, she'd have to come with him.
And I'd assist Bronco to help Puff from the floor then escort them both out.
Then Bronco fell in love with Cathe H, real flesh and blood, a 16 year-old adventure-seeker who'd dropped out of ASL and was living in a squat, working as my assistant on weekends. Bronco would sit, elbow on table, chin in palm, and stare at Cathe for half an hour, entranced by her, then discover that his tea had gotten cold and ask for another.
Whenever Bronco came in, he'd ask for Cathe. I'd tell him she was down at one of our favorite pubs and he'd beg to go with me to see her. I took him once, for kicks. Drove him down to The Red House in St. John's Wood, and he got so excited he bounced up and down in the passenger seat.
When we got there he was terribly out of place, and I learned you just don't do that with people. Plus my car smelled for three days.