An After Christmas Day Story

by Daniel Cano                                                                          

A bar scene, not unlike the Lucky-U

     The story made its way around town for a number of years but passed-away along with many of Los Angeles’ Westside old-timers, who were young men and women when the event occurred.
     According to Westside lore, the story even made its way into a column of the now defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner, where an intrepid reporter turned it into a poem, which appeared the day after Christmas in its evening issue. So, the poem began, “T’was the night before Christmas and all through the….”
     That’s about as far as anyone can remember the poem, but they all remembered the incident. I have googled the original poem, to no avail, so it must be buried some place, I’m sure, in the Los Angeles Herald’s archives, but without a date or the reporter’s name, it is lost to posterity.
     Indeed, old-timers agreed it did happen on the night before Christmas.
     On Santa Monica boulevard just west of Sepulveda across the street from the Nuart Theater, and two blocks from the Soldiers Home, was a notorious beer joint known as the Lucky-U, where the heartiest of spirit enthusiasts spent many a day and night.
     Since the Lucky-U was located down the street from the Veterans Administration, many disabled WWII and Korean veterans lined their wheelchairs along Santa Monica boulevard and Sawtelle avenue, where the Lucky-U competed with a couple of other bars, one famously known as the Vet’s Bar.
                                                                           

Happy to survive the war, top, Freddie Santana, Ray Cano, kneeling L-R, Dario Sanchez, George Saenz, Richard Sanchez

     Seeing as it was barely 20 years since many of these men had returned home from battles in the Pacific and Europe, they numbed their ailing bodies and minds in the local bars. Of course, the government denied war had anything to do with their mental maladies, including high levels of alcohol consumption, which led to a variety of negative conditions, such as family disruptions, divorce, unemployment, and absentee fathers.
     It must have been the late 1960s. Inside the dark, musty room, the Lucky-U reeked of booze and spicy food. After 5:00 PM, it was rare to find an empty stool at the bar. The men played pool, sat at the tables scattered about, but most stood around, drinks in their hands, laughing and talking boisterously. All of the men knew each other, had been raised in Westside towns, and, many were, in fact, related.
     Behind the bar was a kitchen, of sorts, serving an assortment of Mexican quick meals, burritos and tacos. Some claimed the weekend menudo the best in town. Everybody knew the owner and bartenders, what Sly Stone would come to call “a family affair.”
     Actually, a few men claimed to have seen Door’s lead singer Jim Morrison knocking back a few brews; though, nobody, at the time, knew who the long-haired kid was. Morrison verified his presence in the Lucky-U to one of his biographers, years later.
     I will only use our protagonist’s first name, Joe, seeing as some of his children and relations might still live in the area, which is highly unlikely, since increased taxes and property values have driven out the old paisano families, as John Steinbeck might refer to them. Yet, Facebook is a mighty weapon, and who knows how many friends may read this and pass it on to unsuspecting family members.
     On that fateful Christmas eve, the bar had closed before midnight, seeing as even serious drinkers needed to make it home to their families on such a blessed day, our savior’s birth.
     Apparently, Joe had something else in mind. He hid in the bathroom and waited for the bartender to announce he was locking up for the night. There wasn’t much need to search the premises. Who would want to stay in the Lucky-U after it closed, anyway?
     So trusting was the owner, he left the cash register full of money until opening the following day when he would empty the till and collect the prior night’s earnings. My father once told me, “Who would rob the Lucky-U. It was like a second home,” a displeasing admission to many wives and children in town.
     Eventually, Joe came out of the bathroom. He called to make sure everyone was, in fact, gone. He walked straight to the cash register, opened the till, and started cramming the bills into his pockets.
Joe had been a loyal, long-time Lucky-U customer and not a thief, by nature. Surely, he thought long and hard about the course of action on which he was embarking.
     He considered the Lucky-U’s owner a friend, who was known to give patrons credit to partake in the establishment’s delights, so Joe must have had good reason to abscond with the cash.
     Here, Joe's motives become somewhat murky. He might have been out of work and didn’t want to return home broke and with no gift on Christmas eve for his wife and kids. Maybe he had bills to pay and found himself more desperate than ever. Either way, he now had his pockets lined with enough money to do whatever needed to be done.
     As he made his way to the back door, which led to a dark alley, and an easy getaway, he looked back at the bar and thought, why not just one drink before making his way home? One drink, how could that hurt? Sure enough, vice got the better of him. He headed to the bar, sat down and poured himself a drink.
     Once he finished, he figured it was time to make his getaway, but then, he thought, hey, why not one more, even if his conscience warned him against it. Why push fate? He had his money and one free drink. That should have sufficed.
     But now, with his whistle wet, the desire for another drink became overwhelming. So, he took advantage of the open bar and poured himself a tall one. Well, you know what happened from here. He couldn’t stop, and he just kept pouring and drinking.
     The next morning when the owner opened to collect the prior evening’s “take”, he found Joe slumped across the bar, passed-out cold. Of course, the owner was confused as to how Joe had gotten in, seeing as there was no apparent break-in. Complete confusion, until he looked down and saw dollars spilled on the floor beneath Joe’s bar stool, and greenbacks of various denominations peeking out of Joe’s pockets.
                                                                                   

Innocent swagger before the war

     The following is supposition on my part, for nobody told me how the reporter learned about the story. I can only surmise the owner called the police to report the robbery, which generated buzz from an otherwise listless Christmas day Herald Examiner news desk, sending the reluctant reporter from his warm cozy desk in downtown Los Angeles out to the wilds of West Los Angeles to check the minor criminal infraction.
     After conducting rudimentary interviews with people at the scene, who had fits of laughter at Joe's poor execution of robbery, the Herald’s reporter, his creative juices flowing, decided against writing a boring piece about a neighborhood drunk serendipitously breaking into a local bar, choosing instead to memorialize Joe’s escapade in verse, borrowing the elements of prosody from a Christmas poem published anonymously in 1823 which began, “Twas the night before Christmas/ and all through the….”