Carryout confidential

How quickly the mind moves from one thing to another sometimes.

While feeling good about finding a pilsner from Erie (nostalgia has its powers), I noticed the couple at the register buying smokes going a little overboard with the PDA ... to where the guy was actually picked his girlfriend and leaned over the counter.
The clerk-owner noticed at this point too.
In heavily accented English, he yelled at the flanneled man to knock it off.

Then it started.

A lot of profanity bookending the typical phrases: Go home. Go back to Iraq. This is my country. I'm an f'in Marine Come out here and swing that baseball bat (I never saw one, but it would not have taken much to hide one beneath the counter).

The clerk-owner just swore, except to end it by telling the flanneled man to never return.

A tense few moments that for a few seconds looked as if the yelling might cave into something worse.

Now, I frequent the carryout and yes, its owners are Jordanian by birth (yeah, I know, like Zarqawi ... or I like to remember, King Hussein, one of the few good guys to pass through Middle Eastern leadership)and have been in the U.S. for more than 20 years. They're citizens. How do I know this? I asked. One night while grabbing a sixer, we got talking and I asked him, just as I often ask cab drivers.

I'm not naive to buy the Anne Frank line about everyone being good at heart, but I do believe that if people actually ignore politics and talk to each other like humans, differences don't always seem so insurmountable.

Anyway, that sort of killed the tinge of excitement about the beer (Presque Isle Pilsner, if you're keeping score).