Praying For Rain

"Sir Edmund Hilary and two experienced sherpas couldn't find this place with a GPS and a well-marked map."

-Craig
www.beerfooddude.livejournal.com

Hopefully this isn't too poorly writ, I'm trying to finish this quickly.

Here at the bar, to be refered to henceforth as The White Elephant Tavern, we do good things. The kitchen is amazing. Our Yelp and such reviews are consistenly positive. The bar end of things are good as well. There isn't one bartender here that doesn't know their shit or that's afraid to listen to yours over a beer and a shot. The problem is our location. To describe it as off-the-beaten-path is an understatement. Lifelong residents of our fair city have problems finding it. It's at a point where three large neighborhoods all convene, and the streets don't make any kind of sense... the ones you can still drive down without killing your car at least.

I've had several conversations with another employee about the labor of love this place has become. There's few enough employees here that you quickly begin to act as family, with all the up and downs and joys and pains of course. This bar has become the metaphorical "house we grew up in" and we love it in spite of itself. We want the bar and kitchen to succeed...not just because it's money in our pockets, but because it SHOULD succeed. You want your loved ones to do well, and it's painful to watch them, and a good thing, to fade or stagnate.

There's a hope, that good days are to come. The drought will end. The crops will grow and flourish, and we will reap the rewards of hard work, patience, and the ability to plant for another season. We try to put the thought out of our minds that maybe the good days won't come, that the seeds that have been sown will only amount to shriveled up weeds in the dust.

Truly, I'm just a bartender. I have no financial stake in this place other than the fact that it's where I show up 4 days a week, hoping to walk out with more money than I came here with. I can say fuck it and go find a job someplace else... but I don't want to. I want to be here, at this bar, with people who have quickly become a fantastic motley family. I want to make good drinks and serve good food, and I want everyone involved to go home tired but happy with money in their pockets.

I hope that's not too much to ask.