Any day above ground is a good day.

I heard a lot of interesting things while tending bar at Lucky's Lounge in New Orleans. If you don't know the place, it's a dark, solitary bar on St. Charles. Lucky's doesn't have the flavor or character that a dive bar should have. Neither does it have the style or customers that a non-dive bar should have. It is almost entirely soul-less. I considered the AC, the TV, and the relative quiet payment enough. Tips were short-coming. But I gleaned a few fascinating stories from the occasional patron.

"Any day above ground is a good day."

Old Jerry said that to me. He was a scrawny, raw-boned geezer who came in every morning for a Bud. He made his rounds to every bar within walking distance of his secret abode. He hobbled along the sidewalk, leaning on his cane, hand on his toothpick thigh. He took the stairs gradually, stopping on each one, pausing. He wasn't as old as he looked, which is often the case in New Orleans.

He had served in the Air Force as a younger man. He was stationed for a while in Greenland where he chased polar bears across great plains of ice in a tiny airplane. He served two back-to-back tours of duty in Vietnam as a foot soldier.

Once he took a trip to Florida and didn't tell any of his regular bartenders. A rumor began that he was dead. I was saddened by the news. I enjoyed his grumpy humor.

Then one day he showed up, doddering up the stairs, leaning on his cane. He shuffled to the bar, put his hands on the sticky top, and peered from beneath the rim of his mesh farmer hat.

"What?" he said with a surly, ratty grimace.

"I thought you were dead," I said, popping the top off of a cold Bud and pushing it at him.

"Yeah. I heard the same thing. It ain't true."