When thinking of going out or meeting up with friends, many of us have a favorite place we like to go to. Sometimes we go for the happy hour specials, the atmosphere, or just for the cheap beer. My husband and I have such a place. I will stop short of saying it’s my favorite place, but we have a place.
Picture, if you will, the perfect dive bar. Old woodworking, dark and dimly lit, the same servers who have worked there forever and nothing has changed inside in 30 years. In fact, we were just there last Friday night for the first time since December and the Christmas lights were still up! Truthfully, I actually like the lights. They add some color and cheerfulness to the place.
The kind of place where everybody knows your name, and if they don’t, they soon will. A place where people celebrate birthdays and retirements with friends. We actually witnessed one of our favorite Gatsby’smcouples get engaged there! It’s a place where loyal customers care so much about the owner and the employees that they waited in line at a make-shift drive-through during the COVID shutdown to order takeout and help keep the business afloat. We were such customers. We ordered on our way there and ate our pizza in our car in the parking lot, wondering how long it would be before they could reopen. I never thought I would miss that place, but the shutdown proved me wrong. The place I have just described is Gatsby’s in Gahanna.
My husband and I started going there on Friday nights several years ago when we were dating. He likes it because he always runs into someone he knows there and they get to talk about their glory days playing ball together. The main draw though isn’t the cold beer or the pizza, but local legend and Columbus’ Entertainer of the Year, AJ Angelo. Angelo has been playing there every Friday night for the last 30 years. That’s quite a record I must say! Music has always brought people together and that’s ever so apparent on a Friday night at Gatsby’s. Throughout the evening you will hear the crowd singing along and witness people mingling with each other. We used to go religiously every Friday but over the years, we have gradually tapered off. I guess if we were one-time regulars we are now maybe considered “irregulars”. Now when we go, we see lots of new faces and people from all walks of life with really nothing in common except an appreciation for good music and a friendly place to hang out. They come for the upbeat atmosphere that Angelo creates and to usher in the weekend after a long work week.
Unfortunately, Friday night, just as I was talking to one of our fellow regulars, he began to not feel well. I grabbed him a glass of water, and within minutes, someone had called the paramedics. They brought him out to the rescue squad and after determining that he was stable, they released him. Do you think he went home, even though his wife was begging him to? No. Dammit. It’s a Friday night at Gatsby’s and he was determined to go back inside and finish listening to AJ’s set!
I am sharing this story even though it may not seem like it has anything to do with living Fearlessly and Faithfully, but in a way it does. What we witnessed Friday night is a group of people all rally around one guy they know from seeing at the bar every week. That’s it….. Just random strangers who have bonded over the years with music and beer.
We are reminded daily of the ugly side of humanity, but Friday night, my faith in people was restored. We didn’t just rally around him. We rallied around each other. We hugged one another while standing outside the rescue squad in the drizzling rain, hoping our friend would be okay. We hugged his wife and comforted her as she was shaking. I guess my point in all this is that we just never know. We never know what is going to happen when we get out of bed each day. One minute a guy is having a cheeseburger and singing along, and the next, he is about to pass out at a bar with wet towels around his neck. If we could just bottle those feelings of care and concern for one another and carry them in our hearts all day, every day, we could change the world. If we could just spread more kindness to strangers. We could wipe out the ugliness and Fearlessly and Faithfully show the world the best of humanity. We could make every bar and every local hangout a place where Everybody knows your name. And they’re always glad you came!
