Ninety-nine Bottles    Joseph G. Peterson   (2019)

This past summer, my wife and daughter and I endeavored to swim in every Great Lake. We called it, 'The Great, Great Lakes Adventure.' The impetus was the wedding of my nephew in Buffalo. My sister lives in Syracuse and that's right on the way so we would of course stop and visit. Lake Ontario is just north of there and well, Buffalo is right on Lake Erie, so a plan started to hatch. 

We took a day trip from my sister's up to Lake Ontario. One down. We hit Niagara Falls, got wet but didn't swim. Attended the wedding and headed for Cleveland where we stayed with a college buddy who lives right on Lake Erie. Two down. The longest drive was around Lake Erie up to the top of Michigan's thumb where we discovered an amazing beach - Lake Huron, number three. Up to Michigan's upper peninsula where we stayed in a cabin for a few days and hit the freezing but incredibly beautiful, Lake Superior. Back down the west side of Lake Michigan to Chicago and civilization. It had been two weeks on the road and we were ready for some big city amenities. We got an apartment in Lincoln Park for a few days and swam in Lake Michigan right downtown. And had Chicago pizza, which isn't pizza at all. 

Our first night in Chicago we decided to go out with some friends to the famous Green Mill. I've played jam sessions there but have always wanted to perform there with my trio. It has quite a history. You can sit in Al Capone's booth. 

The show was at 8, so we thought we would take Lucy. I called to make sure but they told me no kids. The club was just 10 minutes from our apartment,  so we decided to leave Lucy alone. Rather than get sidetracked with should we have left a 10-year-old alone in a strange apartment in a strange city, let me just say that both her and us felt confident in our decision. 

She has a phone, has been alone before and knows what to do in a variety of circumstances. We even have a safe word.

We got to the club, walked in and the first thing I saw was a 10-year-old boy standing in the back with a guy. My wife and friends went and sat down but I wanted to talk to this guy, so I went over and told him the management told me no kids. He told me the management is his sister and that next time just tell her that Jimmy the Builder told me it was OK. I shook his hand, thanking him and introduced myself. He needed no introduction, so he introduced me to the guy who was now standing next to him, Joe Peterson. We exchanged some pleasantries and I asked him what he did for a living. He told me he's a writer and Jimmy chimed in that he just published a new book and it's called, Ninety-nine Bottles. No shit, I said, and told him I just published my first book, 50,000 Bonghits. We all laughed hysterically at the coincidence of our titles and made jokes like, What's yours about? We became fast friends and I took them outside to smoke some weed. 

Turns out Joe Peterson is a great writer. When I think of barfly stories, there is only one master in my mind, Bukowski. To take on such a colossal comparison - as anyone would do looking at the title - is ballsy. But this is Joe's 6th novel and it's great. Divided into 99 entries, it counts back from 99 like the song, each entry revealing more about the broken narrator slowing killing himself in the pink glow of a Hyde Park bar, his desire 'swimming like a great fish in a murky aquarium with nowhere to go.' There once was a time, though, of hope for our hero - a time when 'all the convoluted minutiae of the inexpressible world seemed on the cusp of being said.' But that's all gone and all that's left is the bar and its inhabitants. 99 bottles of beer on the wall. 99 bottle of beer. You take when down, pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall. 

There is absolutely nothing cliche in this book. Joe - we're on a fist name basis, after all - writes prose that borders on poetry. It's soulful and taut. There is even a beautiful ode to Hyde Park our hero - who is/was, of course, a writer - puts down on a napkin one afternoon as the sun slices through the windows at the front of the bar, silhouetting the hunched over day-drinkers on their stools trying either to claw their way back to sanity or to go completely insane. 

When Hyde Park swings upon a hinge

And each and every mind is ajar

Then the beaches like waves shall slowly swirl

Rise themselves up and spit loudly upon the gloomy lake

And the earthlike clouds shall gather themselves thickly

And darkly spit rain into the star pocked sky

And the buildings like bums shall weakly uproot themselves

And stumble penny poor and raving mad through the streets

Then crazy you and crazy me shall look madly eye-to-eye

and tremble firmly upon the ground

As twisted tongue says to bent tooth:  Dese are mad times Mistah Jones

Bad times indeed.