Bar Stool Falling and Rising

Still wearing his fedora, he toppled backwards from the barstool, hitting the floor with a thud.

My heart skipped a beat, watching the event in slow motion as the sound reverberated through the old, nearly empty Cannery Row bar.

The bartender called 911. Within minutes, paramedics rushed the unfortunate drinker into the waiting ambulance.

Through the years I wondered if he had survived and if so, in what condition. Had the fall made it even more difficult for him to use his metal crutches through which he swung his paralyzed, likely from polio, lower limbs? Had he been drunk when he fell? Was it merely a case of losing his balance because the bar stool was hooked over the brass rail near the floor?

A friend and I had met at the combination neighborhood and tourist bar near Cannery Row one midweek night to share stories and have a drink when we saw the unfortunate episode. Now, probably ten years later, here he hobbled through the door where I was a visitor.

He sat behind me I couldn’t see if he was enjoying the meeting as much as it appeared the other 400 attendees were. This event was the January birthday meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous for the Central California Coast.

When a friend learned that I could receive academic class points by attending and writing about an AA meeting, he invited me to join him on a Saturday evening for this monthly event. January, four years earlier, he had stopped drinking alcohol. The event was a special…