Free Callahan's Place 10 - Off The Wall At Callahan's (v5.0) by Spider Robinson

 
     
    Foreword
    -
    Wall Flowers
     
     
    A)   Begin reading here if you’re not familiar with Callahan’s Place [if you are, feel free to skip down to B)]:
     
    Callahan’s Place, the now-vanished tavern in Suffolk County, New York owned and operated by Michael Callahan (a.k.a. Justin of Harmony), was an unusual establishment in many respects.
           (Understatement of the millenium!)
           Among the many peculiarities of that merriest of oases:
           Aliens, cyborgs, transvestites, talking dogs, telekinetics, telepaths, clairvoyants, immortals, Intergalactic Traveling Salesmen, time travelers, vampires, victims of severe Tourette’s Syndrome, and even editors   were all made welcome there, from time to time.
           Patrons were encouraged   to smash their glass in the big fireplace after drinking—so long as they were willing to propose a toast first, naming the reason they felt like smashing a glass.   Exercising this prerogative doubled the price of your drink…to a dollar.   (Mike got a bulk rate on glasses.)
           Puns, and competition therein, were encouraged—nay, actively abetted—by Callahan, himself a hopeless and utterly shameless paronomasiac.  
    Privacy was defended by force : any patron heard to ask snoopy questions of another patron was customarily blackjacked by Fast Eddie the piano player and dumped in the alley.
           But perhaps the most remarkable and most important thing about Callahan’s Place was the converse of the last paragraph: any customer who displayed any desire to discuss his or her troubles received the instant and undivided attention of—not merely the bartender—but everyone in the room.
           Consequently, a plethora of interesting stories ended up getting told in Callahan’s.   All those presently known to me have been set down in the three volumes CALLAHAN'S CROSSTIME SALOON, TIME TRAVELERS STRICTLY CASH, and CALLAHAN'S SECRET (all currently in print in Ace paperback), and collected in the omnibus CALLAHAN AND COMPANY (Phantasia Press hardcover; contact Alex Berman, Phantasia Press, 5536 Crispin Way, West Bloomfield, Michigan 48033 for details).  
           Regrettably, the last of these stories, “The Mick of Time,” involved the utter and final destruction of Callahan’s Place, a few minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve, 1984/5…
     
    B) Begin reading here if you already know Callahan’s:
     
    But although it is gone, gone for good, echoes of Callahan’s Place linger on.
           For one thing, there is a related cycle of stories having to do with Mike Callahan’s wife, Lady Sally McGee, and the fabulous bordello she once operated in Brooklyn, Lady Sally’s House—a House of healthy repute, and like her husband’s tavern an equal-opportunity enjoyer.   (Also, sadly, gone now.)   Two books full of these stories currently exist: CALLAHAN'S LADY, and LADY SLINGS THE BOOZE (I did   warn you about the puns…)
           For another, a yet-untitled book is presently in progress concerning Mary’s Place, the remarkable tavern opened elsewhere in Suffolk County by Jake Stonebender (folksinger, guitar-player, songwriter, and narrator of all the Callahan stories) after the obliteration of Callahan’s Place.
           And of course, there is this book, which represents my own desperate attempt to feed the voracious maw of ongoing Callahan Mania.
     
           You see, another oddity of Callahan’s saloon was that Mike Callahan kept no mirror behind his bar.   The wall above the gallery of bottles—known as “The Wall,” to distinguish it from the other three—was bare and featureless…save for decades of graffitti, inscribed there by Callahan himself.   Any time he heard something that struck him spoken in his bar, it was Mike’s custom to grab a Magic Marker and preserve it for posterity on The Wall.   Many a newcomer found him- or herself so fascinated by this