Novak and Tuleja were in California not having much to do with the music businesss in years when they got a country western gig in Bodo, Norway. So they retired to Eddie’s home in New Jersey for some woodshedding and in the meantime took some dance lessons so we could teach those cod gobbling Norwegians how to bootscoot. We were due to live in February and girded ourselves against the Arctic blasts by consuming way too much garlic – to the point where, as it says in the joke, “Our perfume arrived before we did”, and we were afforded a generous buffer of airspace when out in public. We were glad of the garlic when we got there. The sun was the color of an anaemic hen’s egg, a sickly pale yellow and cut a small arc across the sky from about 11am to 2:30 pm. So pusillanimous was it that it was barely able to illuminate the horizontal sleet and rain that was the outstanding feature of the weather at latitude 68.
Bodo was a Nato base and our cabin was right next to the runway. We’d hear the F16 roar away pre-dawn on their main mission, to fly those firecrackers up the fjords and as far into the Soviet Union as they could until they got pinged by the Russian radar. Then they’d turn around and fly back. I’ve heard of drunken sailors and occasionally have been one myself, but nobody could drink like those Yankee flyboys. We’d still be throwing back slivovitz at two in the morning in the club where we played but they’d be in the air before dawn, just like those cowboys in “The Right Stuff” .
By the end of February the sun had come out of the closet and spirits were buoyant. On our one days off we decided to have sundowners at the ‘Top Tretten’, the bar on the 13th floor of a hotel – the tallest building in town by at least ten stories. We were getting quite merry due to the fact that the sun refused to go all the way down and we had resolved to drink it down by god. It was like entering an eating contest with fire – we were bound to lose.
There was a smattering of variegated Scandinavians, some Lappish folk in their lavish costumes and deadly curved knives that the government allowed them to wear in public. And One Lone Finn.We’d been drinking with this gentry for five hours at this point when the Finn became agitated and insisted that he show us one of his traditional dance moves. He was quite convinced that the Finnish were from a master race and could perform any feat of skill and artistry. This move I later came to characterise as “The Hammerfest Bowling Ball’.
As the bar was long and narrow he had to have a running start of at least fifteen feet. I think he had planned some kind of a pirouette. I think he had planned to land on his feet. In fact I don’t know what it was supposed to look like but what he did was careen through the narrow bar after a couple of spastic twists and totally wipe out four tables, scattering their inhabitants, and spilling every last drink. It was a violent and jolly set of manoeuvres and was accompanied by a soundtrack consisting mostly of cocktail glasses breaking and shrieks of fear and dismay from the clientele. But he was smiling when he found himself on the floor among the shards of carnage – the contented grin of a Finn who had just had a red hot go.
