My Dad Sits And Watches Me In Awe!

This is a memory I will never forget, I hope you too may always remember this story too...Issue # 97

ifOnlyi… realized these events could potentially have changed my future forever.

I am living the “Happiest” times in my life at this moment. A wonderful Family welcomed me into their home. Now I must focus on continuing to improve as a bartender in this newfound craft. I have ALWAYS been a very competitive person. Perhaps this is one of the main reasons I loved Tennis so much. Because it was a one-on-one matchup, and I viewed this position in the same light: to win.

My work performance was rising fast, and all I did at any moment of quiet was practice.

Now I have lines of people waiting to perform for them. I had lost all fear of serving multiple people at once; by now, I could do five drinks holding in my right hand at once, unless they were custom cocktails.

It was 1982, and the famous movie “Cocktail,” starring Tom Cruise, was not released until 1988, six years later. When I saw that film, it brought back memories of bartending and reminded me of myself. I was Cocktail before Cocktail came out.

There came a time when I was working this one night again in the front bar. As I recall, a gentleman was spending a good deal of time at the bar on his own. Ordering drinks and mixing them up with exotic cocktails, I was on fire doing what I loved. Towards the early morning hours, he had had enough and came over and asked me to speak for a few minutes. “Sure!” I said.

He shared that he has been coming to Sydney and visiting the top bars around the city, where he has been observing and watching bartenders perform over the past few months. He said that he was soon going to open up an exclusive high-end club in Perth, the West Coast of Australia. It was his, and he offered me the opportunity to become his manager in charge of overseeing the club and the bars within the club. He wanted his staff to learn to perform as I had been doing. He must have seen me on my best nights. LOL.

Wow, that would mean moving 2400 miles west. I confessed that I was honored and grateful for the offer, but my time on my visa was running out. He asked, “Can it be changed easily”? He offered to write and say I have been selected to run his top club and was needed.

But I had another “Major Issue,” I would be leaving soon to see other parts of Australia. I wanted to travel, and I heard that “Surfers Paradise”, also known as the Gold Coast of Australia, was a must-see, located 850 miles northeast of Sydney. I also promised the girl in the Australian General Council’s office in Los Angeles, California, that I would make a stop in Melbourne and visit her. We had gone out on a date before I departed the States.

I was thrilled to have had that opportunity presented to me. I honestly tried to think of a way to make it happen, to continue my journey and grow my newfound skills.

One Thursday night, as I recall, I was working the front bar all alone, and it was booming. The place was, for some reason, busier than on other Thursdays, and I had to handle it alone. I was moving left to right and right to left, serving customers and keeping up with the cocktail waitresses as well as the restaurant staff, all of whom needed one thing: drinks. HELP ME, I thought!

As I was doing my thing, this particular night, I looked over to my far right and saw two older, distinguished men sitting at the front bar chatting. I waved and said, “I will be right with you.” I picked up five tall glasses with my right hand and managed to make all five drinks without spilling a drop, and as I had practiced long and hard this one night, it all happened.

I threw slices of lemons in the air to catch them in the glasses, one by one, and as I turned the glasses around, the lemons landed perfectly, right on the edge of each glass. OMG, I shocked myself, and the people watching were even gasping. “Well done!” I heard from further down the bar.

Little did they know it was the only time that had ever happened. I would get some right, and mostly all would fall into the glass rather than the rim. I scooted down to the two gentlemen who had been waiting, and I yelled out, “DAD!”

He wasn’t a hugger, so I put my hand across the bar, shook his hand, and didn’t want to let it go; I was beyond happy & shocked at the same time. Never paying much attention to his guest at first, I finally shook his hand. Then Dad said, “This is my distributor for Australia.” (This was the man who had thwarted my dream of coming out to Australia to set up distribution for our company, right smack in front of me.) I did the right thing; I poured my Dad his favorite whiskey and a drink for his distributor, without saying anything about my business plan to move here and become Dad’s Distributor in Australia.

Dad said, “Ollie, I’ve been watching you for over 20 minutes, and you put on an awe-inspiring show. You’ve found a new craft.”

I was elated. Dad came to visit and never said a word; he had just arrived from his travels in Asia. I hadn’t a clue. He told me where he was staying and asked me over for breakfast; I got off work at 4 am, so it was going to be a little sleepy. I had asked if I could come around 11 am. “Yes, no problem,” he replied. On this day, I wasn’t going to the beach for a night swim and sleep, but going home to get rest.

Well, as my Luck would have it, I was off work the next day. Saturday, I was free, and Dad was here for 4 nights, which gave us lots of time to spend together. The first thing he wanted to do was take the ferry to see the Zoo. “The Zoo Dad?” I asked. He loved animals of every kind. He knew more about the many species than anyone else I knew. He would always share a good story with me about animals.

He also had a story on this trip that didn’t involve animals. This was him sharing after traveling through Asia on this extended trip. While he was going through customs in Taiwan, he told the customs officer to be careful while checking through his suitcase. The officer was perplexed, and he wondered why. Just then, a buzzing sound went off in his hands. Dad saw this man faint, or at least fall to the floor, as he must have thought it was a deadly bomb.

All it was was my Dad’s electric shaver that went off. The customs officer hit the on switch button by mistake under his clothes as he was looking at my Dad’s eyes, as if he was trying to hide something. My Dad looked down and asked if he was ok, and saw his pants were wet. It was time for him to leave.

Dad had been in a rush leaving the hotel, and rather than put his toiletries in a special bag, everything just got put into his suitcase. That’s all it was.

By now, I had moved out of Peter’s family home. Peter and I had become best of friends, and he helped me find a room in a three-bedroom apartment with one bathroom. I paid $50 per week, that’s all, thankfully. I was given a pull-out couch mattress by Peter, which I used for my entire stay. It was thin, so it was just foam on the floor, but I didn’t care. I was grateful. All I needed was the phone service to wake me up, and the owner had a phone. My life could not have been any simpler. I used boxes as a table and lived out of my suitcase.

Why isn’t life that simple anymore?

One thing I will never forget is the window in my room, which I always left open for air during my sleep; it was hot, and air conditioning wasn’t available. The number of mosquito bites I woke up with daily was crazy. They were everywhere on my body as I slept in the buff, and these mosquitoes were giant. It felt as if I were their dartboard. What did I ever do to them? Blood suckers, drained me dry daily.

I was blessed in another significant way: Lee, the owner of Rogue’s nightclub, would drive me either to Peter’s home while I was living there or to my new place in Rose Bay after work. Rose Bay was on the water, or for me, very close to the water. Unless I was going out for the night, I had a driver named Lee. I was so appreciative, and he knew it. I gave him my all while working at Rogues.

Dad had purchased tickets for us to watch Swan Lake at the Famous Sydney Opera House. Late in the afternoon, he said he was feeling a bit ill from too much traveling, and he asked me to take someone. I immediately thought of the concierge girl whom I fancied when I went into the hotel for breakfast the day before. Ok, Dad, and I went downstairs and asked if she would like to attend. I’ve never been there, she replied, neither had I, so let’s both break bread together and enjoy, as total strangers. “Ok,” she said.

Dad had asked if he could go out into the Sydney harbor and take a boat ride. Well, as Luck would have it, my roommate was from the bush of Australia —a beefy guy, about 400 pounds of muscle. Most people raised in the bush are massive and undoubtedly strong. He happened to be what’s called the grinder on a 12-meter racing sailboat called Gretel II. Gretel II won the America's Cup in 1970, and he would go out on it often, racing other 12-meter sailboats. This was just a hobby that a bunch of grown men pursued on their days off, then spent the evenings drinking pitchers of Bundaberg Rum and cokes. OMG. Best Rum I've ever tasted.

Dad and I were invited to go on that dream of a 12-meter and fly through the harbor together. Dad was loving it. He even got to steer the Champion Sailboat. I was holding on for dear life as the boat leaned into the ocean as if we were about to tilt over, but no, we were about to fly fast in the world's second-largest harbor together, how wonderful. He must have held on to those memories forever, as I have.

My job at the end was to stuff the Jib. Took about 15 minutes, but at least I can say I was a part of history that day. What a memory we created together, Dad and I.

Soon, it was time for Dad to check out and continue on his business journey. Before he left, he took me out and said he wanted me to buy a nightclub; he would pay for it, and I would run it. I had asked my best friend Peter to help find a place for my Dad to buy while I was traveling. This was not something he put much effort into; therefore, it never came to fruition. I think he thought it was a dream of mine, with nothing to back it up. He hadn’t realized Dad could back up anything he said. He was not a man to waste anyone's time. I was ready to see more of Australia and then go back home.

I set foot in Australia, having never poured anything other than drinks for my parents, and now I was blessed with my Dad offering to buy a nightclub for me to run after just four and a half months working at Rogues. He was impressed with how far I had come in a very short time.

My time was not yet over; it was time for me to travel again, and this time I was going to see the Gold Coast, Surfers Paradise, as they called it.

The memories from this next part of my journey could be a book in itself, and I can’t wait for you to read all about it.

Please subscribe, share, and comment if this story touches your heart.

Your comment will mean a lot.

ifOnlyi…short stories follow my true-life journey. If you've just found me, you can check out my publication and choose a story of interest or start from # 1.