A Delightful Evening

Don't get me wrong! I love living in Wilber, population 1,900, but I have to admit that I miss the intellectual atmosphere of a city or university town. There is virtually no one here that shares any of my, admittedly, esoteric interests, mediæval history, scholastic philosophy, theology, etc. But once in a great while, something different happens.

There is a bar here in town called 'The Foxhole Tavern'. It was founded in 1947, but had set empty and uncared for years until it was purchased recently and completely restored. It has a good selection of beers, a fairly complete lunch menu (Thursday's special is a Bohemian feast, pork, potato dumplings, and sauerkraut!), and a deep fried 'basket menu' in the evenings.

Even tho' I'm no longer one for going out in the evening, I have 'liked' their Facebook page just to keep an eye on the events on offer. Usually it's 'open mike night', or 'karaoke', or something similar, but a couple of weeks ago, an event caught my eye. It was 'A Talk with Paul Wilson'.

Who is Paul Wilson you might ask? I know I did! But being curious, I searched for him on the 'net. It took me a bit, but I discovered that he had been the singer with a band called 'Plastic People of the Universe'. That told me absolutely nothing until I discovered where they were from and when they were active. The were formed in the middle 1960s in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Now Czechia or the Czech Republic). It turned out that Paul Wilson had been in Prague through the Prague Spring, and knew people involved in it, including a playwright who later became a bit well known. That playwright was Václav Havel, a major figure in the Velvet Revolution, and later the last President of a post-communist Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic after the Velvet Divorce.

Now this was different! Usually, the only time something like this would take place is during 'Czech Days', our massive Czech festival during the first weekend in August, when Wilber swells to become the 4th largest city in Nebraska. I immediately planned to attend, so Friday evening after supper with the Cuter and Shorter Half, I walked downtown to the bar. As I walked in, I saw a friend that I had told about the event, and he invited me to sit with him, his mother, and a mutual friend of ours.

I ordered a pint of Praha, a Czech beer from Prague, and we chatted for a few minutes, until the owner introduced Paul Wilson. I had expected the standard format, a short talk by the featured speaker, probably followed by a question and answer period.

Not this time! Wilson got up, gave a few biographical details about his time in Prague, and began to circulate around the small gathering, beginning with our table.We chatted about Czechia, Czechs, other Slavic peoples, and political philosophy. I asked him about Plastic People of the Universe, and he told me that when they began, he was the singer because they sang only English lyrics. After convincing the band to sing in Czech, he discovered that whilst he was fluent in spoken Czech, he couldn't sing in it, so he had talked himself out of his job as a singer!

After talking with us for about 30 minutes he indicated he should talk to some of the other people. However, he took our friend, Mary, with him and she returned with his wife, Patricia.

Paul had told me that she was a socialist, so I immediately said, 'So you're a Socialist, who lives in the Centre of the Universe?' Noticing the Maple Leaf on my hat, she realised what I meant, and replied, 'Well, I am a socialist, but I don't think Toronto (where they live) is the centre of the universe.'

We discussed politics and more ethnicity. She wanted to know all of our connections to the Czechs. It turned out there was a Dane, a half-Czech/half-German, a half-Dane/half Czech, and English/German/Swede who's married to a half-Czech/half-Irishwoman (moi).

We discussed Brexit for a bit, but since she and I were the only ones who knew much about it, we moved on to other topics. All in all, the chatting with Paul and Patricia had been going on for about an hour and a half, and it was getting late. We finally broke up after I had a few more words with Paul.

At any rate, it was a very delightful evening and not one I expected to have here in Wilber!