Midnight at the Zoo
by unkillbilly
“They asked us to leave.”
“Yes. But that’s okay, because they’re a gay bar.”
“They’re not a gay bar.”
“Oh yes they are. All those motherfuckers are gay. They’re all cocksuckers. They’re all—”
“Hey, man, I look at it as an honor. That’s our first time! To get kicked out of a bar! We were eighty sixed, man.”
“Yeah from a gay, Tempe bar. Every bar in Tempe is a gay bar, everyone in Tempe is gay!”
He winds up shouting and I figure it’s time for us to get in our vehicle and make like a tree. We climb into the Ford and back out of our spot in front of the bar.
It’s half a block to Mill Avenue and the bridge. We turn onto Mill Avenue and go over the bridge and just after the bridge there is a sign for the Phoenix Zoo, turn right at the next light.
“Hey, man, we’re going right at the light.”
“What? We’re what?”
“Turn right! Right here at this light.”
“Okay, okay,” and we make the right turn. There’s a winding road that cuts through the desert and momentarily the sign for the Zoo appears.
“Here, man, turn in here.”
We make the right turn into the parking lot for the Zoo. The lot is opposite a pseudo mote. It’s a mote on one side, not all the way around the zoo. There’s a bridge over the mote that leads to the ticket office. We head for the bridge.
“So what are we doing here?”
“Well first of all, check this out, man.”
There is a device, a machine, if you will, that dispenses cereal. You put a quarter in the device and it dispenses a handful of cereal—which can be used to feed the fish in the mote. I produce a quarter and plug it in the device and out comes a handful.
“So watch this.”
I drop a Cheerio into the water and a half dozen fish come to the surface to try to get the cereal.
“Whoa!!”
“Yeah, man, did you see that? Here watch this.”
I drop four or five Cheerios in the water and a swarm of fish fight each other for the food.
“Whoa!!”
“I know, man, isn’t that cool? Here you drop some in.”
The fish have a field day feeding on the cereal, and we are laughing and carrying on…until I look over and see the ticket room is lit with an eerie glow—and there’s somebody sitting there! In the ticket room. Plainly visible. And somehow they haven’t noticed us? I mean, it’s after midnight, it’s probably ‘against the rules’ for us to be here at this hour. Maybe the guy is security and he’s just waiting for PPD to come pick us up….
We pipe down and freeze and just stand there. After a minute that seemed like an hour, I’m determined to carry on with the little plan I hatched when we left the bar and I saw the sign for the Zoo.
At that point in time, access for patrons of the Zoo went through these tall turnstiles, made of these horizontal metal bars welded to the center pole, that you could grab onto to push the turnstile so you enter the Zoo. The first time I saw those turnstiles, when we first went to the Zoo when I was eight years old, I thought they looked like ladders. And that’s exactly how we were going to gain access to the Zoo after hours.
We walked right up to the turnstile, the guy in the ticket office clearly visible to us, and thus we must be visible to him, but he never quit concentrating on whatever it was he was doing and we just went up one side of the turnstile and down the other side—and we were in! We had just trespassed in a major way. And were soundlessly celebrating out wildness.
“We are such wilddicks! We’re in the Zoo! I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it man. C’mon, I know where we’re going.”
We march our way up the main path through the Zoo. Past the anteater, past the desert-centric exhibit with rattle snakes and scorpions and tarantulas, straight up to the rhinoceros exhibit. There just happened to be a rhino standing right next to the wall, we could reach over and touch it. I reached over and ran my hand along the back of the rhinoceros. My buddy reached over and punched the rhino as hard as he could.
“Whoa!! You just punched the rhino!”
Now there was no being quiet. We were boisterous and rowdy as we did our best to rouse the beast. No go, the rhino was impervious to our assault.
From there, it was time to go see the gorilla exhibit. Its habitat was surrounded by a deep pit to keep the animals from escaping. I couldn’t see any gorillas anywhere, so I climbed up on the railing to see if they were deep in the pit … and I fell. Off the railing. Toward the giant maw of the containment pit. Fortunately for me … there was a low hedge between the railing and the edge of the pit and I became entangled in it. Which kept me from rolling into the pit.
I did need my buddy’s help to extract myself from the hedge.
“Man, I thought you were a goner.”
“Ha! I’m not afraid of the gorillas.”
“Gee, I didn’t know you’re such an idiot.”
We decide maybe it’s time to leave. On the way back to the front of the Zoo, we encountered the moose enclosure. The fence for the moose enclosure hooked up to the exterior fence for the Zoo.
I have the brilliant idea to leave this way.
There is barbed wire on the top of the exterior fence. But I plan to go to the top, stand on the top and hop up and over the barbwire and land safely below….
The next thing I know, I’m waking up on the cot in the living room of my mom’s apartment. I’m on the cot because grandmother is in my bed in the bedroom. I slowly realize I have numerous scratches and contusions, and my muscles are all spasmed and aching.
It would be some time later, perhaps days, that I learned what had happened. When I reached the top of the fence, I tried my little hop maneuver and the cuff of my jeans caught on the barbwire and I flipped over and landed on my head, knocking myself unconscious.
How my buddy got me back to the car, and then from the car into my mom’s apartment, I’ll never know. And you know what? I haven’t been back to the Phoenix Zoo since….
When I first got to Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi I was reading the local newspaper and I kept seeing advertisements for drinking establishments listing their hours as 4:00 pm till ? That’s they way it would be printed in the ad, with the time listed as an understandable unit of measure … but what the hell did the question mark mean.
I had to ask.
“Oh, that’s because there’s no closing time. Alcohol is legal twenty-four seven in Biloxi. The bars close when the last customer leaves….”
​
Imagine my surprise. I’d been in places that had screwy alcohol laws, including limited hours of operation. I’d never been any place that had NO laws regarding hours of operation. One of my first weekends at the new station, the locals took me out for a Friday ‘evening’ of drinking.
​
“We’ll get started at four,” I was advised.
And so we left the base at four in the afternoon, and went to a bar directly outside the main gate. We pile out of the car and go into the bar, which relatively small, but well equipped with an array of arcade games.
“The happy hour here is from four to six,” said one of my cohorts. So we set about playing the various games they had available, the most popular being Missile Command. That’s the one with the ball controller in the center of the console and a CRT screen that showed incoming ICBM’s. You’d work the ball controller to send anti-ICBM missiles at the incoming bombs. Ralph was particularly good at Missile Command, and I’d never played before, so I got creamed by the machine.
But.
There were other games I did better. There was a pinball machine based on the Alien movies that I was fairly adept at, and that I enjoyed playing. Ever played a pinball machine? It’s actually quite a lot of fun. You must have good hand to eye coordination to excel at pinball, and mine is pretty good.
The games were played and pitchers of beer were disappearing on a regular basis and I like day drinking, so the first bar was a pleasant experience.
However, as soon as happy hour was over, we moved to a second bar that had a happy hour from six to nine. And it this bar, they had all you can eat free tacos! I was in fact hungry, so I scarfed on a disgusting quantity of tacos. But they were so good. The hot sauce was really hot! The flow on the pitchers slowed down a little bit, but we still kept them coming—until nine o’clock.
At which point it was time to make another move. The next happy hour had commenced at eight o’clock and went to ten … and this happy hour just happened to be at the local titty bar. So we doubled our pleasure and doubled our fun with a brief stay at the dance hall. Without wanting to sound judgemental … the women were not the prettiest. Oh, it was bad. At least, as far as my experience had been with topless bars, the women were generally stunning in their appearance. Not these gals. And my cohorts were letting them know, even booing outright. And the girls talked back and gave my pals shit. It was a hilarious exchange, most of which I don’t remember because we were now into double digits on the pitchers of beer.
Promptly at ten we made our departure, the next bar we went to was on the beach.The beach bar was built to look like an old Mississippi paddle boat. The bar was long and had a one hundred and eighty degree view of the Biloxi beach. It’s the bar for the restaurant housed in the boat-like structure. The restaurant is actually a fine dining establishment, and our rowdy crew coming in at ten at night contrasted with the rather quiet clientle for the dining room. Hey, there the ones with the late night happy hour, ten to midnight, you can’t beat that. With three moves, we’d managed to put ourselves at a happy hour from four in the afternoon to midnight. I was impressed with the Biloxi bar scene!
Turns out, our night wasn’t done yet. At midnight, we went to this tiny little bar in this tiny little hotel way down at the east end of Biloxi. The had a happy hour that technically went until 6 in the morning, but practically ended at the question mark. When the last customer went home, or six in the morning. More pitchers were ordered. The drinking continued. My consciousness wandered at the most recent happy hour. I learned that the hotel offered pornographic movies in the rooms. Hmmmm. And rooms were cheap. This would be important information for later in my stay at Keesler.
I managed to stay upright until six in the morning, at which point we departed the hotel bar—and went to what would be the last bar of the night. Turned out the bar right outside the beach gate had a reverse happy hour that ran from six to eight in the morning. We went inside—and the place was packed! I mean, people were shoulder to shoulder and the noise was phenomenal. And … most of the people there were Air Force who has just got off work from the Keesler hospital. And everyone knows the best looking women in the Air Force work in the medical fields. There are stunningly attractive women in the building, but they’re a blur in my mind after two dozen pitchers of beer. I don’t even try to get to the bar, there’s no clear path. But Rich takes control and gently works his way to the bar, with Frank going with him to carry glasses. I just kind of leaned up against a wall and waited to their return.Which took a while. But those guys were persistent and experienced in this reverse happy hour festivity and eventually returned with two large pitchers and four mugs.
“We had to wait for the glasses!”
As far a I’m concerned we had broken a record. I’d never participated in such an extended drinking campaign. And twenty-six pitchers was an impressive mark no matter how many people you process it through. I definitely set my personal record. And with just five moves we’d managed to be at a happy hour from four in the afternoon till eight in the morning. That’s significant. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship with the city of Biloxi.
Until it all evaporated when I got married to one of the students. Oh well, I bombed in Biloxi—but I would flourish on Guam! But that's another story....