Two Toke Tom and myself were quaffing a couple of Christmas cheers down at the Pilot House Lounge yesterday, talking about the State of the Union, the last election, Santa\u2019s illegal immigration status and our plans for the holidays. Me, I go away with the mizzus for 3 or 4 days, somewhere that hasn\u2019t heard of Christmas or else is too impoverished to want to participate. We go with a few other childless friends, fellow bah humbuggers, hoping to avoid the DMZ of the War on Christmas we\u2019ve been hearing about for way too many years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you?\u201d I asked Two Toke.<\/p>\n
\u201cSame drill,\u201d he answered, holding his glass up for Jerry behind the bar to refill. Jerry had a red Santa stocking cap on, the tail slung over his shoulder. The place was humming and Jerry was hustling to keep up. \u201cGoing down to the Shelter and serve grub to the homeless,\u201d Tom said, draining the last of his current beer. Tom had been doing this since I could remember.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou make me feel like Scrooge\u2019s black sheep kid,\u201d I muttered and nodded to Jerry that yeah, I\u2019d take another round, Tiny Tim would have to go hungry while his old man got hammered at the pub.<\/p>\n
\u201cGuilty conscience?\u201d Jerry asked. \u201cNot for long,\u201d I answered, \u201cmaybe about one more beer. Tom here serves Christmas dinners to the homeless.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI get a free dinner myself,\u201d Tom told Jerry, almost apologetically. Jerry shook his head. \u201cYou\u2019re a good man, Charlie Brown,\u201d he said over his shoulder with the Santa tail bobbing a white ball. When he came back with our drinks he said to Two Toke, \u201cOn the house, man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMine too?\u201d I chimed in. Jerry laughed. \u201cOh, what the hell, yours too. Merry Christmas, boyz.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou too, Jerry,\u201d T.T. said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd to all a good night,\u201d I answered, ever the comic smartass. What I meant to say was we need a few more Toms in this world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two Toke Tom and myself were quaffing a couple of Christmas cheers down at the Pilot House Lounge yesterday, talking about the State of the Union, the last election, Santa\u2019s illegal immigration status and our plans for the holidays. Me, I go away with the mizzus for 3 or 4 days, somewhere that hasn\u2019t heard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[1418],"class_list":["post-10827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-tiny-tim-and-two-toke-tom"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10828,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10827\/revisions\/10828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}