11/ FRIDAY AT FELICIA'S ATOMIC LOUNGE

After scaring up a little dinner after work, I cycled downtown to Felicia’s Atomic Lounge on West State Street, next to Gimme Coffee. Some Friday evenings an eclectic old-timey band plays there, and tonight I lucked out.

They call themselves Long John & The Tights—a latter-day Holy Modal Rounders with more instruments. John Hoffmann, one of my coworkers in Olin Library, plays a wicked fiddle. There’s a 5-string banjoist, a banjo ukelele player also from the library, a tenor guitarist, and percussive accompaniment from a small woman on the upright piano in the corner. A banjo uke is a four-string banjo about the size of a ukelele. The tenor guitar is about the size of a mandolin, also with four strings. Whatever it is, it’s fun. It the kind of the music people played outdoors at impromptu get togethers in the Arkansas Ozarks when we lived down there in the 1970s.

A few songs after I arrived, a young man ducked out the door and returned with a small wooden box open on the bottom side and covered with thin plywood on the top. It was about two and a half by three feet and three inches tall. Turns out it was a clogging box or pedestal. After shimming one corner with a couple of pieces of folded paper, he began dancing to the music. Not your high-stepping Irish-style clog, but a shuffling, syncopated, heel and toe routine. Turns out he is the son of the woman playing the tenor guitar. Turns out he also made the guitar. A dancing guitar maker.

Felicia’s is that type of place—low-key and eclectic. People wander in and out. There’s a bar on one side, and two couches and some black Naugahyde easy chairs by the music. [Background on the Nauga, source of Naughyde, at http://www.naugahyde.com/history.html]

As I left Felicia’s, two cyclists straddled their bicycles in the sidewalk out front. One was an older man with a ponytail and a beard dressed in full pirate regalia—black pirate boots with the turned-down tops, the black pirate hat, full pants, the full-sleeved shirt, a black leather vest, and flying the Jolly Roger from a tall whip on the back of his bike. The whole nine yards. Another Friday night in Ithaca.

Footnote: Today (Sunday, two days later) I figured out that Friday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day [http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html]. That put the pirate costume in context. The revelation came via the Friday, September 19, New York Times crossword puzzle. The clue for 8 DOWN is "'Well I'll be!,' as it might be said on September 19." The answer is "Shiver me timbers." That's when the light went on.

--Michael