Vietnam Bob

My friendship with the strangest bar regular I ever had

Bob was a regular at the bar I worked at. He had been a regular long before I worked there and he’d be a regular long after I left. This I knew before meeting him.

What I didn’t expect from Bob was that he’d take to me particularly, that we’d form a special friendship and mutual admiration and eventually, I’d overstep in a way I didn’t realize and never speak to him again.

We called Bob Vietnam Bob because he was a Vietnam veteran. Creative, I know. He was a tall man, probably larger in my memory now than he’d ever been in real life. And he walked with a slight limp that would be more exaggerated after sitting for a long time, which he always did when I was behind the bar.

Bob would come in right around 10:50pm on Friday and Saturday nights. The kitchen closed at 11pm every night, which he knew. He would order a salad, usually the beet salad, and an entree. He loved fish and often ate the trout, but sometimes he’d get the short rib or even the special. He would want his meal coursed out and got visually upset if his entree came out before his salad was gone. Despite the staff shutting down the kitchen, Bob wanted the full treatment.