Dear Pals,
How do you sum up Ed O'Brien's life?
Well, I'm going to give it a shot.
And in this case I will be assisted by a shot of Jameson's and my very flawed memory.
So, if my recollections don't exactly line up with yours, just chalk it up to the ramblings of "**BSC" Birk.
Here's the bottomline.
Ed O'Brien was not a perfect man. But he was a perfectly great Irishman.
Like all Irishmen Ed was a never-ending work in progress.
I didn't know Ed as a boy, so I'll leave that area to guys like Joe Serra, who has a memory that is almost as good as President Obama's.
I'm just going to bullet point a few things that come into my alleged mind today.
1. Ed was Phil's kinsman. At least I think so. I knew Phil better because my pal, the late Jack Orbal used to sing at The Piano Bar at O'Brien's on Brentwood, and I threw up on O'Brien's parking lot at least twice. Once on the way in and once on the way out.
But, not on the same day.
2. Ellen O'Brien, the Grand Dame of the clan O'Brien, told me this when I asked how Ed was doing. "He died at 3 o'clock today. He's happy now, I know he's with his brothers."
If you ever want to see class in heels, I commend Ellen for your viewing pleasure. In recent days, she and I have chatted about the days of yore when O.B. Clarks was just a rifle-shot bar in the strip mall.
On the night of Ed's passing. O.B. Clark's was bustling and lots of laughing people we're having fun. That is exactly the way Ed would have wanted it. He was smiling because he loved the ring of the cash register!
3. Ed's erstwhile partner, the Clark of O.B. Clark's once told me while he was seated right next to Ed on barstool #2, "If I knew that O.B. Clark's was going to turn out to be such a success, I'd never sold out to Ed."
Ed said, "Once I got rid of you, there was no one left to hold me back."
4. I once asked Ed about the famous urban legend regarding "The rat in the Root Beer vat at Fitz's."
Fitz's Root Beer stand on Clayton Road was run by Phil and it was the drive-in curb service best burger and mug of root beer hangout of 1950's and 60's Clayton. Famous for Fitz's Kitchen Sauce too!
I asked Ed,"Did you guys really find a rat in the bottom of the Root Beer vat when you were cleaning it out after making a batch?"
Ed laughed, "Actually it was a mouse. We told everybody it was a rat because it made a better story. It sold a helluva lot of Fitz's Root Beer and it became a right of manhood passage to drink a Root Beer there after the story got around. Over the years the rat grew from 6 inches long to over 14."
That's when one of the bar pundits said,"If root beer'll do that, I'll rub it on my prick."
Without missing a beat, Ed drolly observed, "You don't need to be a bigger prick."
5. Ed and Greg Slack and "The Famous 3.5-ounce-6.5-ounce steak incident" is legendary.
Greg used to order the "as advertised 6.5 ounce steak" off the menu 3-times a week for 14 years. One day when the six.five-sizzler arrived before the famished Slack, he whipped a postal scale out of his coat and weighed it. It was 3.5 ounces.
Slack in his usual subdued manner called this to Ed's attention.
Ed said, "Greg the 6.5 ounces is the weight before cooking. And your scale is probably as screwy as you are."
Well that blew Slack's gasket. He quickly sent some moron into the kitchen to retrieve a few of the uncooked steaks. Then he weighed each one of the precisely-cut portion-controlled pieces of beef. They all weighed in a 4.0 ounces...not 6.5 ounces.
Slack sat back and crossed his arms and said, "I knew I was getting (insert bad word here that rhymes with fucked ) because I could read a newspaper through these steaks. I've seen thicker bacon and tissue paper!"
Then the seasoned engineer, Slack whipped out his trusty calculator and figured out the cost per ounce of each steak and multiplied it by the number of steaks he had eaten over the past 14 years and said, "Ed by my calculations, you owe me $12,475.62. So whaddya gonna do about it?"
Ed looked Gregg squarely in the eye and said, "I'm firing Orville Middendorf! That meat slinging kraut bastard has been cheating me! Then he muttered, "Jimmy, next time we print the menus, take the weight off it."
Then he looked back at Slack and said, "Greg thanks for calling this to my attention."
Then he told K.O., the KnockOut busty bartender babe, "What were you thinking serving an over-cooked shriveled up steak to Greg? Don't let it happen again! And take 1% off Greg's bill and don't accept a tip."
Needless to say. I was in awe of Ed's deft deflection of what could have become a very weighty legal matter given the parade of lawyers led by Joe Serra, Ed's boyhood pal, who leapt up to hand Slack their business cards and said, "I'll be happy to represent you in the litigation."
As far as I know, Slack decided not to sue Middendorf.
6. Ed was also nice enough to let me use O.B. Clark's as a setting for some of the action in my first quantum crime thriller: DOUBLE WHAMMY.
7. Ed mellowed over the years. In later life he never yelled above 132.7 decibels. Like all good Irishmen, he knew that the louder the volume was, the more persuasive the argument became.
I could go on to regale you with tales about Ed and clansmen. But the tellin' of more tales is probably best left to his stout-hearted lads Joe and Jim or bar denizens Sage, Jerry, Capt. Ron, Karen and Michelle and the countless colorful characters who trapsed through the doors at O.B.s.
But one last thing, I once asked Ed what his favorite musical was, He said, "Le Miserables."
I said, "Oh, so you relate to Jean Valjean?"
Ed looked at me with his twinkly-eyes and said, "No, I relate to the inn keeper. I admire a guy who can get people to pay for looking in the mirror twice."
I could tell by the look on his face that he was adding up all the bathroom and free A-B mirrors in the place and calculating his next move!
Ed O'Brien took a big bite out of the pie of life.
His kind is not likely to pass this way again.
I wish I had been at The Pearly Gates when Ed arrived.
I'd love to have been a "rat in the vat" when St. Peter asked him the 6.5 ounce steak question.
Ed O'Brien isn't dead...God has just sent him on ahead.
Godspeed my pal.
Birk, Commonsensetarian, Citizen of the Republic and a Mob of One
PS: **BSC = Bat shit crazy
