I’m not sure how it began. I think it was a culmination of things, and people, who created the perfect storm. My oldest son grew up hearing the stories of my friends and I’s antics working behind the bar. I had been a bartender in my early 20’s, but the stories will seemingly last forever. He thought that he might like to learn how to bartend, but I don’t recall the interest being job related. I think that it was more just learning about how and why people mixed cocktails. I had also started helping my friend Alissa with her bartending business. She had a couple of people that she worked with, but was having trouble with overlapping gigs. I volunteered to help, just before Christmas and since I could use the extra money. This was was all happening over a about a year’s time, and the ritual of bringing home a jar full of cash seemed to fuel the interest in bar work. I had a makeshift bar setup in my garage, the inheritance from a close friend and my bar manager when I worked for Carlos O’Brien’s in the Riverside Plaza. This became the clubhouse, complete with TV, video game console and most importantly outside of my living room! There were always people coming in and out, mostly a pack of young adults that weren’t allowed to smoke in my house. I was a typical bartender who drank whiskey at home with no frills. The only real variation was whether or not I had ice in the glass.
So the discussion ensued as to how I could teach bartending. I distinctly remember saying that I couldn’t do it from home. I wasn’t about to buy a bunch of ingredients to mix drinks to pour out. I certainly wasn’t going to drink the experiments, so we started talking about the dreaded concept of work. I had the side hustle, but that was not a teaching environment, so what to do?
Alissa, was working events and had asked me if I was interested. She introduced me to Elvis who owns the Long Beach Bartending School, and had connections with all of the staffing companies in the greater Southern California area. I decided that I would work as a barback with my oldest son. Good barbacks inherently make good bartenders. It’s how I learned, and it would be how he learned!
So, off we went to Hard Summer at the Fontana Speedway.
I don’t remember what I was expecting, but it was definitely baptism by fire for the boy wonder. We worked back to back 17 hour days, and made more money than either of us had expected. I’ll never forget how excited he was counting the piles of loot at the end of that last night. Sitting on that dingy brown, garage, couch counting hundreds of singles. Occasionally, finding larger bills that went into separate piles with exuberant celebration. All told he had more cash in a weekend than his current job paid for two weeks. An experience that I would ultimately share with my middle son less than a year later.
Before long, we had enlisted a multitude of friends and family. Often we would roll out to these events 12 deep. Everything from Raves, to Country festivals, to NASCAR and even a Super Bowl. We worked it all. We worked long hours, and we worked hard. I was beyond impressed with the work ethic that these kids developed, and before long we became Team Randall. We all had nicknames, and really did work as a team. I cannot describe how proud of each and everyone of them I am. Not many parents will have this opportunity to work with their kids, but I did. They weren’t all mine, but they were Team Randall, for a brief time in our lives. I wish that some of these kid’s parents could have had the opportunity that I had. They really would not have recognized them. My message was always that the team was only as strong as our least experienced member. That we only had these opportunities based upon reputation. Nobody remembers the rockstars, but inversely, everyone remembers the shortcomings. These kids pulled it together to help insure that everyone had support. Everyone worked to make the team successful. This may sound exaggerated, but we are talking about 32 hour weekends on 7 hours of combined sleep. Oh, to be young again!
We had inadvertently cracked the meillinial code.