The Life of Lou Ruppert

Back in the days before cell phones and pocket pcs, people still used to hang around together. Way back when I was in college, my friends and I would often stop by each others’ rooms unannounced to visit. And certain friends would always hit the same venues at the same time each week, and so people would know that Lou would be collecting tickets at Gifford every Friday night, so if Doctor Death wanted to hang out, he needed only to swing by the movie theater. Joe might be sitting in the lounge waiting for three or four people to join him before heading down to Hungry Charley’s, so if you wanted to touch base with Joe, you’d swing by the TV lounge around 9pm. There was no need to coordinate or text back and forth to set it up. It just happened.

When I was in England, the local pubs all had weird hours. They’d be open like Tuesdays 8-10pm and Thursdays 6-9:45pm. The cool thing was that everyone in the surrounding area, and their dogs, would descend on the same place at the same time. It was like an impromptu party. It’s probably a kind of centuries-old tradition at its core. Nobody could text or phone each other, but they wanted to hang out each week and stay in touch with their neighbors, so they’d just agree to show up at the same place at the same time each week. There was no sending Bob an SMS to see how he was doing. You could walk over to his farm, but if he was in the middle of shearing sheep, you’d have to help him and that could take hours. Luckily, you knew Bob was always at the tavern on Thursdays around 6pm, and so you’d wander down there and meet him there instead. Problem solved. You’d catch him at his office hours at the pub.

My friends and I have a few “office hours.” There are so many of us that it’s hard to coordinate things on short notice. Luckily we know that on Mondays, for instance, there’ll usually be ten or fifteen of us at the Tully’s on Seventh North, so we need only drift down around 10pm and we will see people there. It’s a great way to build a close-knit community like in the old villages or like the floor unity of the old college days.

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