The Cook and The Tattooed Lady
For years one of the favorite bars in downtown Honolulu was “Mickey Hummer’s Downtown Boyd’s Saloon”. Mostly just referred to as Hummer’s. I even tended bar for awhile, but that’s a whole different story.
It was a downtown businessman’s place with a limited meu of sandwiches, soups and salads, and most importantly, CHILI. The place opened Monday to Saturday, 10 am to 8 pm or so. They closed earlier on Saturdays, later on Fridays.
The clientele was mostly from the surrounding office buildings, stockbrokers, insurance people and such. So when “Lady Blue walked in, she got noticed.
It could have been the very small tank top showing lots of boob or the numerous tattoos, but she got your attention. This was the late 70’s and not very many women had full front and back tats and full sleeves. And Lady Blue, she had it all.
She also had a mad love for life, and infectious laugh, and was just plain fun to be around.
Lady Blue was not young, but certainly not to be considered old. You could say she’d “been around”.
Within a very short period, Blue became a member of the “Hummer’s Saloon” family and was there more nights than she wasn’t. Don’t know what she did for a living but she always seemed to have enough to pay her tab and wasn’t above buying someone else a drink.
Since there was food served, Hummer’s “kitchen” had a cook. At this time it was a youngish (22-24) man with limited life experience but had been a family restaurant cook for most of his life. Sandwich’s, salads, and chili were easy for him and it left him lots of time to surf.
Now, I said he had limited “life experience”; this went for women as well. And very few people had ever had experience with a free spirit like Lady Blue. They met one afternoon while he was sitting at the bar making a shopping list.
Lady Blue sat down next to him, asked his name, and decided he was just the cutest thing she’s seen in a long time. They started talking, she started showing him her tats and they were still at it come closing time.
That became a daily occurance. He’d wait at the end of the bar after his shift, she’s come in and they’d talk and laugh and act like a couple of high school sweethearts.
It continued for several weeks and nobody thought about it until the bar opened one Monday morning. Lying on the floor under the mail slot was the door key and a note.
As you can guess, the note was from the cook.
He and Blue were leaving together. They were going to see the world, live large, and she was going to be his guide. We never saw either of them again.
But I know 2 things for sure;
- He probably saw more of life than most people ever do
- And, it most defiantly was a wild ride.
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