The Wide Angle: 1 night with a bartender, Jenny and Snake

Published 7:32 am Saturday, July 21, 2018

Memories are not something that should be taken for granted. It’s what serves us throughout our lives, reminding us where we’ve come from.

Some of these memories are but motes of dust in a sunbeam. Floating before our eyes one moment and then gone in a blink, but others stay with you, clear as the day you experienced them.

I can remember clearly the first time I played third base. An amateur game for our hometown team, the Lake Wilson Bison. I can remember my first play, a sharp, one-hopper that reached my glove before I really realized it was there. I remember it scaring me half to death.

Email newsletter signup

I remember a blond girl from nearby Pipestone, one of the few girls to really want to spend any “time” with my awkward self. I don’t really remember her name — Sarah perhaps. My boyhood friend Mike Ziemann might remember. He was, after all, the one who introduced us.

It was short-lived, but I remember her smile — mischievous and fun — and her laugh. But most of all I remember her eyes. The sharpest green I have ever seen, then or now. Bright and on fire.

Then there are the memories that involve a night at Up Your Glass, a shady little dive bar/strip club in Corson, South Dakota.

And here you thought you were getting a Bob Seager song ,didn’t you?

Rest easy, this won’t be one of THOSE memories because quite frankly, I don’t have any of those memories from this place, and that person auditioning to be my 14th reader, I don’t want to scare them away.

Ultimately, I sidled up to the bar and wormed my way into free Coca-Cola all night.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

I was in college at the time, attending South Dakota State University. A friend of mine from high school turned 18 so another friend of mine going to SDSU at the time as well decided we needed to throw him a special birthday party.

Apparently Up Your Glass qualified as special.

Corson itself is a tiny little pitstop on the way to something a little more entertaining in life — or at least that was my impression at the time. It could have changed since then.

Just off Interstate 90 east of Sioux Falls, Corson was a typical farm community that just happened to have a strip club.

I agreed, excited at the idea of seeing a strip club for the first time, wondering if it would meet the standards set by movies.

It did not.

As strip clubs go it was small and cramped with a stage not much bigger a large living room, decked out like a cabaret. A single brass bar stretched across the front with lights rigged into it.

In the room next to the stage, which you entered first, was the bar itself with a mirror spanning the length behind it.

I say this establishment was a “bar” but this was an 18 and over gentleman’s (ahem) club, so while the dancers themselves were … revealing, there was no alcohol on the premises.

In the back there were private rooms — three I believe — for your assumed private audiences.

Up Your Glass wasn’t a place you stayed at long, or at least you didn’t try to. It was run down and dirty  seeming, but somewhat kept in its own paradoxical way.

Floor boards were worn, almost as much as some of the older clientele holding down chairs and tables in the stage area, yet the tables were clean as was the bar. The area where the bottles of booze should have gone was neat and orderly.

Honestly, I probably mis-used the strip club itself in that I didn’t watch any of the dancers really. I’m not a prude by any stretch, it’s just this night I will say I was happy at the bar. There is something very off-putting about an obvious grandfather with his grandson. It’s just wrong.

My memories of Up Your Glass were rough and a little bit weird — and by the end of the evening I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Let me first tell you about Snake. Yes, Snake.

Snake, for I never got his real name, sat on a bar stool at the door, grumpily selling us tickets as we came in and gruffly telling us there was no booze at Up Your Glass. “Bar’s next door,” he said, or something close to it. “You can bring drinks in you just can’t buy them here.”

Not entirely sure if age mattered in either establishment. Twenty-one was more of a guideline than anything else.

I made a point just to stay out of Snake’s way on general purpose. Clad in leather from his head to his boots, a sweat-stained bandana covering unruly long hair. Snake had seen some things and I was pretty happy not knowing what those were.

We went to the bar, where I pretty much stayed for the night as my two friends checked the stage out. The bartender (and owner I would come to know later) got us all Cokes as we sat uncomfortably, not sure what to do next. Hah, hah, of course we knew what to do next … Up Your Glass had a way of making you uncomfortable at first.

I don’t remember the bartender/owner’s name, but she was very nice and affable. She talked us up, asked where we were from and why we were there and guaranteed us a good night. And we did have a good night, just not the night we maybe thought we would have.

At one point my friend celebrating the birthday asked about a plastic lizard on her shoulder to which she smiled and let him get a closer look. That’s when it jumped on him or moved. Not sure which came first. That part is a little fuzzy, but I still remember it because it was a very real lizard.

As my friend talked and laughed with the bartender/owner I noticed something on the counter behind the bar and then uttered the question I never really counted on ever asking.

“Is that a foot?”

Next to the bottles of booze was a big jar and in that jar of fluid was hovering something that looked very much like a foot. Naturally, like any fool in that situation, I thought, “There is no way that is actually a foot.”

The bartender smiled devilishly and said something to the fact of, “Ask Snake.” To which she yelled over to Snake, “Snake, tell them about your foot.”

That’s when I glanced to Snake and noticed he was missing … and you’ve probably guessed this already … a foot.

Refusing to believe it was actually a foot, a real foot … Snake’s real foot … we listened to his tale of a motorcycle accident, not really wanting to believe they kept and displayed his foot like some macabre trophy. Of course I wasn’t going to doubt either. Did I mention Snake’s seen some things?

Snake went on to tell more stories and basically BS us but for everything, I found myself getting sucked in, forgetting the adult entertainment aspect of Up Your Glass. We listened, we laughed and we told our own tales, which naturally paled in comparison.

We found out the bartender once danced at Up Your Glass before taking over ownership, joking she was a in better dancing shape in those years.

I think I used the line of “I find that hard to believe,” to some varying degree, probably the suavest thing I’ve ever said in my life. She smiled an easy grin and we drank Coca-Cola for free the rest of the night.

Then there was Jenny. Jenny was one of the dancers and probably the prettiest woman I can say I’ve ever met. Long brown hair, curled at the tips, standing in high heels and wearing a pink type of robe that failed to really keep anything a mystery.

And with a personality that made me wonder at the story behind her getting to this particular Corson stage.

She did her job and asked if any of us wanted a private dance. I don’t think any of us took her up on this, I know I didn’t for whatever reason.

Like I said, she was very pretty, but I was content to enjoy my fourth Coke of the evening and more conversations with the bartender and Snake. Believe it or not, I might be a heartthrob now, but back then I was a bundle of nerves any time I came close to a woman like Jenny.

Jenny stayed though and after a little bit of time and some chatting we found ourselves in a game of Slap-Jack. Each of us put a dollar on the bar and placed a hand on the bar. At a count we slapped our hands on the stacks of ones with the pot going to the one who got their hands down first. Admittedly she had an advantage with those perfectly manicured nails, but I won my share.

Did we close the bar down? I don’t remember, but I do remember there were very few remaining when we left. I know I was laughing a lot by that point and truly enjoying my new friends for a night.

Those are memories, those are what keep bringing the past along with us.

We went  for a night of rebellious and devious fun, but came away with a lifetime of memories from a night inside a seedy strip club.

Was that actually Snake’s foot or a joke to sucker visitors such as myself? What happened to Jenny? Does the bartender still raise lizards? It was a lifetime ago and these things might not be exactly as I’ve related them, but they were close.

I ended up returning once more a couple years later. The bartender was still there, but she didn’t really remember me. Why would she? I was there but one night a couple years earlier. Snake was at the door still, grumpy as he was the first time. He actually remembered telling us the story and grinned when I asked if it was real.

Snake’s seen some things.

I never did play Slap-Jack with Jenny again which was too bad. I was actually looking forward to that.

Over 20 years later, I’m remembering this one night, adequately listening to “Tuesday’s Gone,” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I see the bartender’s smile beneath a tight-roped head band, I hear Snake’s gravel-filled voice next to the door and I hear Jenny’s laugh as she stole another stack of one’s out from underneath my hand.

For one night, I found myself in a strip club in Corson, South Dakota.

And I was having the time of my life.