Bars were hopping on Thanksgiving Eve, packed shoulder to shoulder with both chatty students home from college and sometimes quieter older types, Wal-Mart right before midnight was having employees instructed to do a last flurry to prop up signs on pallets saying “not available until 6 p.m. Thursday,” when they would reopen, managers themselves were actually getting on the phone at liquor stores and tap rooms, but then saying they were too swamped to talk for long, and The Hideaway smokeshop was making last plans to make public for the initial time their Black Friday specials.
With all this activity, I’m thankful on this holiday for people I saw for the first time in a long time as they were out and about, in particular a tall beauty who walked over to say she and her BFF now both work at Hooters on the other end of the Twin Cities, after other quite similar gigs much closer-by, so they’re not present much as patrons in downtown Hudson anymore.
– The first ugly sweater of the season was seen on Nov. 17, as a woman decked out that way, from head-to-toe PJ style, was getting her ID checked at the Smilin’ Moose door. Despite her garb, they let her in. Also let in was a friend of mine who is doing quite a bit of globe-trotting on his new job, and who despite being new to the company won the Halloween costume contest — he spent $200 to win $30 — but that wasn’t the point. He now has his sights on winning the company ugly sweater contest at the company party, too. If that will eventually be part of his legacy, he’s fine with that, because as he said jokingly, this is war! (One wonders what his overseas clients would think of his lack of wearing a three-piece suit).
– A friend had a rare night out for music right before Thanksgiving, and her son would not be home for this holiday, as he was conducting military business far afield. That man made national headlines a few weeks ago, she said, when he helped fellow soldiers come away unscathed after being surrounded by a dozen enemy boats in Iraqi waters.
– Despite being the rhythm guitarist, Malcolm Young was featured prominently in an AC/DC video clip aired by deejay Ben Michaels at Dick’s Bar and Grill on Thanksgiving Eve. This was the first real chance to honor this founding member of the seminal hard rock band, who died last Saturday at 64, and whose face was resurrected on the clip by showing him doing of all things background vocals. (Brother Angus Young is more the public face of the band, and also is the one more typically shown, in his mocking schoolboy outfit, as he plays the lead guitar, then Malcolm even though the latter was the band’s main songwriter, not slowed much by the dementia that was the cause of his death). The deejay gave the video piece a couple of sentences of buildup, but it wasn’t audible enough to tell if this was praise of the older Young, for a change, or just a standard song intro.