Since I deleted an entire post from the other day and now had to rewrite it, I thought it was only right to redo the beer that I wrote about. Kaye's Place in Port Canaveral. Kaye's is at the far end of the port near Jetty Park, away from the fancy, geared to the tourists places. It's a little white house with blue trim. I knew it was going to be good when I read the sign tacked to the post on the porch that read, Do Not park your bicycles on the front porch or lock them to the white picket fence. Sweet! any bar that has to address bicycles is usually full of colorful characters that can't, won't or don't drive for various reasons.
It was 11:15 when I went in and Carol promptly set down a frosty cold Miller Lite longneck ($2.50), a tailpipe as my friends and I like to call it. I was impressed Carol, the bartender, remembered what I had been drinking the day before. Didn't remember my name, but the drink is what's important. The special was country fried steak, mashed potatoes, veg for $5.95. I had yesterday's special instead. Jalapeno Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato sandwich chips and pickle for $4.75. Kaye's is a full liquor bar and a full fried menu as well. wings, cheese sticks, chili dogs, burgers, BLTs and a daily special. And then the customers came rolling in for lunch and The Price is Right on TV.
"How much you think that blender costs?" says the man to his wife "I don't know? Where'd they buy it? Wal-Mart? Makes a difference." As if Drew Carey is pushing a shopping cart around Wal-Mart to buy stuff for the show. "Hmm, let's see. I need 50 blenders, 10 crock-pots and some Gold Bond lotion for the show." Price is Right is classic American entertainment, but watching it at Kaye's place, even better. One other thing, before I head off to the next bar. If you can't read, don't try and read the closed captioning out loud. It's Indianapolis, not Chicago, but she was close on the price of the showcase.
Doc's Bait House has to be one of my all time favorite dive bars. Ever! Located at the base of the bridge over the Banana River on 520 Westbound next to to the crab shack. It's a concrete building, beige, with teal blue burglar bars on the windows-all of them. Walk in the front door and to the right it's bait- minnows, crickets, wigglers, earthworms, pinheads, rods, reels, nets, crab baskets, lures. Everything you need to go fishing. To your left a Formica counter top, nails with foamy coozies shoved on them, bar stools and beer! Tall boy PBRs for $1.75, ML tailpipes for $2.00. They even carry Sierra Nevada in the bottles as well. Fresh, not sitting on the shelf since 1949 when the place opened. I know because I was there when the beer guy made his delivery and saw for myself. The bar was full of good ol' boys, and I use the term boys very loosely, sitting at the bar with their beards, ball caps, plaid snap front shirts, and summer teeth. (some are here, some are there) Half the boys were drinking tall boy PBRs, the others Busch in a can. Now that, my friends, is a sure sign you are in dive bar territory. As you come around the bar into the open area, there's a pool table, a shelf with 3 or 4 crock pots lining it (don't know if Drew Carey bought them) a fireplace with a 33lb mounted salmon over it that Doc 3, the bartender, caught in NY, fishing poles leaning against the walls, 50lb sacks of catfish food and of course a jukebox. The odd decoration was the big Tommy Bahama beach towel hanging on the wall with a sailfish and the word Relax printed on it. The towel costs more than all the boys snap front shirts put together. I grabbed my PBR and headed out to the deck.
Now why I decided to go outside in the God-awful heat of a Florida August afternoon is beyond comprehension. It's not like I haven't seen water before. I live on the freakin' water, but Doc had given me a bucket of catfish pellets and I felt it was my duty to dump them in the river and see the fish come nibble the nuggets. There are picnic tables in the shade as well as bench seating courtesy of seats from a van. Having dumped the pellets, I went inside to finish my beer and talk with the boys. Now Vernon stood out from the crowd. He had on a Hawaiian shirt with buttons, a straw fedora, not to mention most of his teeth and a stack of quarters in front of him to pay for his next beer. Vernon works for a company that makes handrails and guardrails, but he's also a painter. As in walls, buildings, rooms. " I painted all this in here and fixed the leak in the ceiling." Wasn't sure which leak he meant as there were several patches in the ceiling that looked leaky. "Everybody thinks they can paint, but they can't. That's why you need to call down here and ask for me if you ever need paintin' done." Guess Doc's is his office and showplace. I finished up my PBR as the song Kung Fu Fighting was finishing up on the jukebox. Nice to visit old Florida and good ol boys, but it was time to get back to the beach.
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