Sport Bar Saga

Intro:

As the 15 shots reported across the University campus, Lon knew, even in his drunken stupor that he had fucked up and made major decision that could not be undone. His immediate problem was what to do now, Lon had no plan, this was more of spur of the moment situation. While some may appreciate he chose to not shoot his girlfriend and her black lover, the police were not going to take very kindly to a car being shot 15 times in the middle of the day on University property. As Lon had no choice but to make a run for it, he wasn't sure which way to go, he headed from the back alley parking lot up to the main street where understandably a crowd was beginning to gather. If Lon had been thinking he may of left the gun behind, instead he was running down the street holding the pistol in his right hand. It didn't take the cops long to spot a 300lb, white male carrying a pistol and running away from the scene.



Lon made a turn down a deadend, predicable, he was quickly surrounded and seeing all the cops, was willing to give up. The policeman who tried to tackle Lon from the side immediately realized this was no ordinary student when Lon fended off the tackle and counter punched the cop knocking him to the ground. Lon's nickname is "the Fat Kid" as he looks strangely like a pre-teen overweight kid. He is deceptively fast and very strong. The rest of the police standing nearby, were just waiting for an excuse to unload their their adrenaline on something, didn't like that too much and proceeded to beat Lon with clubs,boots and fists.



After being booked in the Knoxville city jail, Lon was taken to the University Hospital to set his broken jaw. Lon not being deemed a flight risk was allowed to be bailed out the next day by his best friend Rob.



Chapter 1

The first weekend I worked at H-Rays Sports Bar and Grill was on Mardi Gras weekend in the Old City. I was a student at the University, running out of money and was in need of a job, at the time I was living on UT campus and lived within walking distance to the Old City. Having been in the Marine Corps and into lifting weights, working security in a bar seemed liked a natural fit with hours convenient for studying. H-Ray's was the second bar I came to on the Friday afternoon. I walked in to what seemed at the time a dark bar. My eyes adjusted soon after entering and I walked past the double row of booths with tables and stood in front of serving area to wait for someone to acknowledge me. When at last I was seen and greeted I asked for the manager, Tony was a youngish, bright faced guy who looked bookish but active and very nice. He looked me over and we talked for about 5 minutes and decided I could start the next day just in time for the big street party.

I showed up around noon on Saturday and was introduced to Sean “tall cool one”, who was in charge of security and to Lon. Sean was good looking and tall but not very big physically. Lon on the other hand looked like a fat nonathletic redneck. Lon wears too large glasses sort of like Elvis's, had his shirt un-tucked and it sort of clung to his belly. Lon was put in charge of showing me around the bar and to help me get familiar with the layout of the bar. Following Lon around was interesting in that the way he walked was very peculiar and his speech pattern confused me a little, in that he would start laughing after he told a joke I didn't hear and so I would smile as if I thought it was funny too.

Early evening on that day I had to get involved in my first fight. Now no one really explained what to do, there is no employee manual for handling a scuffle. I was a little unsure what to do, how far I could go in resolving a conflict. I looked around for some help and didn't see anyone so I went to the fight alone. The "fight" consisted of two smaller sized guys getting into a shoving match nearly in front of me. I couldn't determine who was the aggressor or cause of the problem as I ran over and put myself between them. I grabbed a hold of them and told them if they didn’t cut the shit they would both be thrown outside. That's it conflict resolved, so it seemed.

As the day went on the bar had gotten more and more crowded and the crowd more and more drunk. It was literally a sea of people. The servers could not even make it through the crowd to deliver drinks. There was a line outside to get in that stretched down the street and around the corner. The highlight for that day was when I was helping at the front door and these guys tried to walk right in without paying and having cut the queue. Two of our security guys at the front confronted them and held them off but a fight did start and they were outnumbered 5 to 2. I ran up and helped to push them back out the door and then we were in the street and now it turned into a free for all. It's a weird feeling leaving what I thought of as the safety of the bar and being on the street fighting people you don't know over something that isn't even yours. I grabbed one of the guys who was hitting a guy on my side. At the same moment I got punched in the back of my head, I could turn around as my body was trapped by the guy I grabbed. Several more punches hit my head and kidneys. I had started to punch the bad guy I had grabbed. At some point early in the fight Lon ran up to the corner to get a policeman. I don’t think Lon knew how many of them that there were or he probably would not have left us. He did run back to us when he could see we were in trouble and the cop was taking his fucking time getting to us. I couldn’t see everything that happened because I was in the middle of the fight but I know that Lon himself was fighting two guys, he had one on the ground and was punching him in the face and then the other hit him over the head with a bottle. The bottle broke but didn’t cut Lon’s face. Lon stopped hitting the man on the ground and turned his attention to the one standing. Finally the cop that Lon went after shows up and starts to restore order. Several more punches are exchanged by everyone except the guy who hit Lon with the bottle, he got his world rocked by Lon's fists. The cop has the bad guys who started the fight up against the wall and they all reach into their back pockets and pull out their cop badges. The on duty cop tells them to beat it, but before they can go Lon grabs the one who hit him with the bottle and says ”next time motherfucker bring a bigger bottle”, Lon had my deepest respect from then on.