“Hey, Yank! Yeah, you.”

His tone was challenging and ugly. Snarling. He was pretty drunk – I had just served him his seventh pint. His mates laughed, glad of the entertainment.

“Yes, sir?”

“Damned Yank. Why don’t you go get a job in your own country?”

I was bar tending at a pub called “The Crown” in downtown Oxford. Getting paid under the table – “working black,” they called it. I was surprised how easy it was for a foreigner without papers to find a job. I just wandered around town expressing a desire to work, and got three offers in about an hour.  The idea was to break even over the winter months, and continue my travels in the spring.

Bar tending there was pretty easy – mostly just “pulling pints.” The occasional glass of wine, very few cocktails. The drink prices were awfully high for 1983 – about $5 a pint. I was paid a pound an hour – about $1.65. The Brits don’t tip bartenders, though occasionally an American would come in and I’d make an extra buck or two. I came to appreciate their easy generosity. I later learned that the average American had five times the discretionary spending money of the average Brit at the time.

My favorite part of the job was the big juke box – lots of Pretenders, Thompson Twins, Duran Duran, Joy Division, Tears for Fears, Clash. That song “Ninety-nine Red Balloons” was huge. I sang along as I worked – no one seemed to mind.

The UK laws for pub hours struck me as hilariously bizarre: open 10:30-2:30 and 5-10:30. The idea that a pub was required to close every afternoon, and every night at 10:30, seemed silly. It was a vestige of hard times during WW1, when too many munitions factory workers would start drinking at lunch, and never come back to work. So they changed the hours to reduce absenteeism, but why not change back after the war ended?

“Well, by that time it was a habit – a tradition, like. And once we English have a tradition, we keep it, even if it makes no sense,” one Brit told me with a grin. Over time, the laws have been progressively relaxed.

The pub was in the heart of Oxford. The upper crust came in at lunchtime – the professors and the students – the best and the brightest, and a few spoiled rich kids. The middle classes – shopkeepers and corporate types – came in around 5, usually for a quick pint with their co-workers before heading home to dinner. Around 8 pm the rougher crowd would come in – bikers, drunks, football hooligans, petty criminals, prostitutes. I saw a few fights, but nothing too serious. Saturday nights were a zoo.

Watching the three classes rub elbows at the bar was an eye-opening experience. Actually, it was often kind of sickening. The class system in the UK appeared to be a form of nation-wide mental illness. The subtle and not-so-subtle snobbery, resentment, one-upsmanship, desperation – it was so ugly. Watching people judge each other (and keep each other down) based on their accents felt like pure evil to me.  The Canadians, Ozzies and Kiwis I met felt the same way.

Oxford is a beautiful town. The ancient university there has produced dozens of famous literary figures, scientists, prime ministers, saints, and a few notable villains. As you walk the cobblestoned streets, you frequently come across chatty little brass plaques: Lewis Carol lived in this building when he composed Alice in Wonderland….JRR Tolkien taught Norse history in this building…This is the tree under which Isaac Newton sat when he was struck by a falling apple….This is the dorm room where Margaret Thatcher lost her virginity…. and the like.

On my nights off, I’d often hang out at “The Eagle and Child” pub, across town. The locals called it “The Bird and Baby,” – the gruesome sign showed an eagle carrying off a child, presumably for dinner.  I liked it because it was where J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis drank and read their work-in-progress to one another every Tuesday night for decades. They called themselves “The Inklings” and sat in the quiet and simple back room. I’d bring a book – I usually had their room to myself. A kind of homage.

That winter was brutal. Oxford lies in a large swampy valley where three rivers come together – everything was dark, cold and damp. It drizzled for weeks at a time, there was nothing green, and it rarely got above 40°. My room was cheap and drafty – I slept in all my clothes, inside a sleeping bag, wrapped in blankets. I got bronchitis twice in six weeks, anyway. Luckily, they had universal health care, like any advanced country.

I decided to have some fun with the belligerent drunk. This wasn’t the first time a bored customer had decided to entertain himself with a round of “hassle the Yank.”

‘Well, actually sir, this job is part of my larger job. An assignment, if you will.”

“Whaddyamean?”

“I actually work for the CIA. They sent me over here to evaluate England – the people, economy, natural resources – everything. From my position here at the pub I get a good view of how things work in the intellectual capital of the UK.”

“What for?” He blinked at me through heavily hooded eyelids, weaving a little.

“Well, my government is trying to decide whether it might be a good idea to buy your little country and turn it into the 51st state. It might make a good missile base. I’ve told them that so far, it doesn’t seem worth it. Not at all.”

He roared, and tried to climb over the bar to get at me. Luckily there was a rack of glasses hanging there – not enough room. I just laughed.

Halloween was a festive affair at The Crown. I can’t remember where I got the hat.