At his apartment, Bob introduced me to his girlfriend, Evie, who lived with him and worked as a registered nurse in Cincinnati.
“She is from a small town near Lexington, Kentucky, farther south of here,” Bob told me. He affected a thick southern accent, and said, “She’s my hillbilly.”
Evie groaned and rolled her eyes. “He’s always making fun of my accent,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Kris.”
It was the beginning of a great friendship. We both enjoyed social outings and drinking beer with friends. I liked to try new things and meet new people, and as the weeks went by, Bob enjoyed bringing me with him everywhere he went and introducing me to everyone he knew.
Almost every day at around 4:30 p.m., Bob would call and say, “Hey, Kris, what’s going on?” Somehow he would convince me to meet him at the Press Club, the local bar, for a cold beer. One or two people always met us at the bar, and they would buy a round. I was a novelty that Bob wanted to show off to all his friends, the “new kid on the block.”
Sometimes on the weekends, Bob and I would go to the local brewery, Hudepohl Brewing Company in Cincinnati, and buy half a keg of beer. Bob knew everyone in the sales office there and introduced me to them. A keg, about fifteen gallons, cost thirty-eight dollars, and lasted the entire weekend and sometimes into the week.
One Sunday afternoon in late June 1970, I went to Bob’s place for a social gathering. As people arrived, I poured beer into cups from the keg tap and handed it to them. Bob had bought the keg on Friday and kept the beer iced so it would stay cold. There were about ten or twelve people standing in Bob’s living room. George, a state senator, sipped his beer and watched me out of the corner of his eye. I had met George at Bob’s place a while back, and he knew I was from India and was close friends with Bob. It seemed he did not like me as much as everyone else did.
“Hey Kris,” he said as I poured another beer for one of Bob’s friends. “The beer tastes flat.”
A complete silence fell over the room. Everyone watched me to see what I would say. George looked at me with a challenging expression.
Turning around, I replied, “George, how can a free beer be flat? It is cold, it is free, and someone is serving you. How can it be flat?”
Everyone laughed and looked at George. He looked embarrassed and didn’t know how to respond to my remark. Later, he tried to make a comeback.
“Hey Kris, can I ask you a question?” he said.
“Sure,” I replied. “It’s a free country.”
Other people were listening with interest. Knowing this and hoping he would embarrass me this time, George asked, “Is it safe to go to India?”
“Hell, no,” I exclaimed. “The moment you get off the plane you will find people with knives, swords, and guns slaughtering each other and then coming at you!” I imitated the high-pitched noise an American Indian would make by clapping my hand back and forth over my mouth.
Now everyone was listening.
“George, you don’t need to go to India to look for trouble,” I said. “Just go to the northern part of Covington, Kentucky, and there you’ll find it.”
Everyone laughed and stared at George for asking such a question. Bob, happy with my comeback, raised his cup of beer to me while everyone resumed their conversations. This story was told many times to newcomers to Bob’s apartment, and no one ever dared to say the beer was flat again, even if it was.
I loved my new job, and most of all, I liked my new boss. He was a man to be respected, and I felt honored to report to him. For my first project, Mr. Gilreath asked me to evaluate the laundry equipment for a replacement plan to meet the demand for clean linen supplies and to provide timely service. The flatwork ironer needed constant repair and was causing an overflow of laundry needing ironing, meaning more overtime pay to the staff.
At the end of June 1970, Mr. Gilreath invited me to attend the annual convention for the American College of Hospital Administrators (ACHA) in Houston, Texas, along with the other hospital administrative staff and their wives. Once we reached Houston, I flipped through the telephone directory to find an Indian to call, preferably a Singh since there were quite a few of them in the US at the time. If he were willing, perhaps he could show us around Houston. To an American, making such a request to a stranger, even a fellow countryman, would seem odd. At the time, this was my way of doing things.
I contacted Mohinder Singh and told him who I was, that I was from Punjab and was in Houston for a conference. I mentioned that several members of the administrative team and their wives wanted to explore the night life in Houston. Mr. Gilreath could not go with us because of a meeting, but he told us to have a good time.
Mohinder agreed, and he picked us up at our hotel.
“Would you like to go to the Body Shop?” he asked everyone.
“Sounds good,” we all replied, having no idea what a Body Shop was.
It turned out the Body Shop was a bar, and not an ordinary type of bar either.
Not long after we sat down and ordered drinks, several girls wearing bikini tops and G-strings came to our table. Everyone’s eyes widened, and the wives stared at each other in shock. We didn’t know what to do. We couldn’t leave after already ordering drinks. One of the girls set a container of brushes and some paints on the table. Apparently, we were supposed to paint the girls’ bodies. The wives of the older gentlemen were fuming.
Walter, the Director of Finances, however, was having
