It was a warm night. The rain had finally come a day or two before but now it was humid and still warm as I left the restaurant and the heavy air pushed down on me and the cones of light from the streetlights on Baker made the August air look thick as a blanket. A few people were in the alley, taking a break after work I suppose, wispy smoke from cigarettes curling upward past the creaky fire escape.

I walked up past the Taphouse, and they hadn’t closed yet and the tables and chairs were still out front and a few people sat out in the thick night air drinking cold beer from sweating pint glasses and talking loudly and others were standing out on the corner of Baker and Brown talking and laughing. A truck fired up in the parking lot across Brown and the headlights flashed on and the loud motor revved for no reason at all. A bohemian type with a do-rag on his head zipped by on some kind of motorized skateboard and people watched him and laughed. There were people over in Coursey Park sitting at the tables, and couples walked up arm-in-arm from the bars and restaurants a few blocks down on Center, heading toward their cars or turning onto Baker heading who knows where.

Later, a bunch of us service people are sitting out drinking beers and talking about the shift. There are a lot of service people out downtown on Thursday through Saturday nights, and there will be more as downtown develops.

Service people. Professionals, college kids, degenerates, old heads who don’t know anything else. Single moms. Downstairs Downton Abby for the modern day. I call it “Downtown Abby.”

There are all kinds in service and not all of those kinds are represented there that night, sitting out by the empty street on the sidewalk in the thick air. Unwinding after a service. The light flipped green over on Baker, but no one cared. They were smoking and vaping and if you were detached from it all, maybe hovering thirty feet in the air and looking down angelically on the party, you’d feel a sense of camaraderie swirling amongst this band of rogues like the smoke did. I’m an outsider looking in, embedded, but I get it. The ‘normies’ out there probably never get to see behind the curtain like this.

I’m the curious sort, so I like it.

You meet all kinds in the restaurant business. Especially the higher-end restaurants. But they come from everywhere. The quiet kind: beginners who don’t know enough about the business to talk much; a few who just live in the moment and chat about whatever the topic is at the table at the time; the job hoppers who have worked everywhere – nowhere for very long – but everywhere, and they like to tell you all about it; loud posers always talking about themselves (always) and their accomplishments and how they would do things if they were in charge. That last kind is ubiquitous in the business – sociopathic narcissists whose talent rarely measures up to their constant bleating about how they do things, how they’ve done them in the past, and how they would do them. The real talented kind won’t usually tell you about themselves unless they are joking about it. Everyone knows. They let others talk them up. I guess it’s the same in every business.

I’ve made a running joke about it, but most of my jokes are just for me. Sometimes when I’m behind the bar and an owner or a stranger walks by I’ll shout – with no prologue or epilogue – “have I ever told you how good I am at this?” It’s a good joke. Did I ever tell you how good I am at jokes?

The food/liquor service industry hasn’t changed much since the time of aristocracy, at least in some ways. At any moment when I walk into the restaurant, there is the polishing of silver, the dusting of chandeliers, and the straightening of tables and chairs. Cue the Downton Abby music. Food prep continues and baking and gossip and ovens being adjusted and grills being lit. It all smells of fire and bread and meat and hope and desperation. And gossip. Always. It’s Downtown Abby.

Every day is a performance, and have I ever told you how good we are at it?

I slip in and out like a wisp of smoke. Quicksilver. Sliding under the door and walking between the raindrops. I’m a watcher—always have been. And I’m writing, so I’m listening and when I’m listening, I’m writing in my head. If you’re sitting at my bar talking to me, then your secret is safe. Otherwise, everything is fair game. I’ll put you in an article or a book and won’t think twice about it. I don’t care how you come out looking.

You think your waiter disappears after she takes your order, but she doesn’t. There is a whole life going on back there. A Habitrail for dreamers and losers.

Think of the waiters in the big Highclere Castle dining room standing against the wall, invisible to the aristocrats. The service folk hear everything. That’s me, except I can’t help but be drawn into it. I interact with my subject, which maybe makes me a bad writer, but a better bartender.

Back in the day, the service was a high calling. Service folk took it seriously. It was a career, not just a way to pay your bills for the summer or until you could get through secretarial school or off probation or whatever. Your reputation, then, was your resume. It didn’t matter how good you say you were, it mattered how good your former employer said you were. And it was serious business. There was no way up beyond a certain station, but there was a long way down if you couldn’t get hired. From a nice room and good food and some spending money and maybe a pension down the road, the way down was steep and dangerous. Bad behavior or incompetence meant the streets and debtor’s prison.

Behind the bar, we have another running joke. When we hear the chefs talking loudly from the kitchen, we look at each other and mutter “Alcatraz.” They should all be in Alcatraz, and they should be let out in the evening to cook and then put back in at night.

Was it that way back in the day?

In service in a Victorian manor, there was the professional staff who were not considered servants, but who managed large areas of the place. Land Steward. House Steward. These were salaried positions of high esteem and these people hired and fired the servants. Below them, there were the workers of the servant staff. The highest ranking was the Butler, then the Housekeeper. There was kitchen staff, starting with the Chef, and there were the maids and valets. Below them, there were the footman and servants who attended to particular menial tasks.

Service hasn’t changed a lot, but it also has. Service work is more transient now. Everyone is always hiring and even rogues usually get another shot. Even though the money can be very, very good, the working staff usually looks at it more as a transitional or temporary gig. Very few consider it a career. That’s too bad because, as I say, the money can be very good in a successful establishment. We live in a tight labor market right now, so the transient nature of the staff can be problematic. One thing about aristocracy is that, however brutal was its nature, at least everyone knew their place. Hard work was survival. Lazy loud-mouthed socially awkward misfits didn’t become drifters always on to the next job, they became prisoners or street scum and usually died very young. It was all very Darwinian.

But so much remains the same. The work is almost identical. The feeling and the gossip and the constant drama – these things are still there. And they made up the story at Downton, and they are (and will be) central to the story in Downtown.

Always tip your service people, by the way. You don’t know what it means, but it can mean everything. I play poker on Tuesday nights and service work is much the same. You do your best on each hand and then with each table or each customer you just hope. Service people have kids and dreams and wolves at the door too.

Sometimes you break even, sometimes you get your pocket aces cracked and the people for whom you just poured out your life force will walk out into the night, no tip, thinking nothing of it. They are the real degenerates. And you experience all of it every night. It’s service.

That’s the life.

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Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear periodically on the website.