Silver bells, silver bells
It’s Christmas time in the city
Ring-a-ling, hear them ring
Soon it will be Christmas day

For many years – since the kids were little – it’s been a family tradition to spend Christmas Eve eating dinner in Chinatown at the House of Nanking, across Kearny Street from Francis Ford Coppola’s patina green flatiron building at the corner of Columbus Avenue. In the early years the place wasn’t too crowded on Christmas Eve, just us and a scattering of Jews, Buddhists, and proto-hipsters. The owner usually took over the ordering process, bringing us a table full of family-style surprises in addition to a few favorites we asked for. We liked the food and took perverse pleasure in the minimal service, mostly intended to turn over the tables with new customers as fast as possible.

In the early days the place was tiny and there was always a line out the door. Eventually they expanded into an adjoining space, but the lines of people waiting to get in never went away. But even waiting in line was part of the fun. We loved the Chinese dive bar two doors down, with the tattered green awning promising that was “Where Good Friends and Girls Meet.” Over many years, we never saw a single female in the establishment.

We met others in line, often from around the world after the place got written up in the tour books. We met colorful local characters, like Tony Baloney, who good-naturedly sang and entertained the kids while we waited our turn inside. This year, a woman came up with two pit bulls on leashes, wearing sweaters. She described the very friendly female as the jiggy one; the dour male seemed decidedly less jiggy. The female was all over everyone, licking and wagging her tale. The lady said for the right contribution either could be ours to keep. We passed, though my eldest son made a small donation to the dog food fund.

The line this year was especially slow and the restaurant was packed. As we arrived, I saw a drunk had latched on to a group of young people right ahead of us in line. We tried to will him away from us by avoiding eye contact, but when the kids ahead of us ignored him sufficiently, he turned to us. He was nursing a can of Foster’s in one hand and a cigarette in the other, which kept flying out of his grasp onto the sidewalk. He was blond and thin, maybe in his early fifties but he could have been younger given the effects of alcoholism. His nose had clearly borne the brunt of past interactions gone wrong. He was talkative and labile, his mood turning on a dime from friendly to vaguely hostile. He wasn’t talking gibberish, but he wouldn’t shut up and his topics veered off suddenly, in unexpected and unwanted directions.

He first focused on Cynthia, who was particularly uninterested in gaining a new friend.  When he touched her shoulder she told him in no uncertain terms that she “would be much happier if he never touched her again.” He backed off and started trying to engage me and our three twenty-something kids. We did our best not to engage, but he was relentless and ignoring him seemed to rile him up and focus on us more intensely. The kids spoke to him kindly and calmly, but tried not to get into a conversation. I tried to get him to leave them alone by focusing on me instead.

Always standing too close, he said his name was Elvis Christ. He bragged about being “the King of the North Beach poets.” He said he put his poetry on masking tape then taped it to the sidewalks of North Beach. I was surprised, because I’d actually seen his poetry on the sidewalks for years. He dropped names of his “friends” in the neighborhood, like legendary hippie criminal defense lawyer Tony Serra, and Paul Kantner, founder of the Jefferson Airplane. It seemed like he’d once been intelligent, before drinking himself into his present sorry state. At times he talked nonsense. Another time he leaned in to me and told me I’d accomplished the best thing a man could accomplish, raising three great kids. I couldn’t disagree with him on that one, but it stayed painfully awkward and unpleasant as the line moved at a snail’s pace.

In a moment of clarity, he finally told me and the kids he was so drunk he was about to start “acting retarded,” and since he was going to do that with us or away from us, he was going to bid us adieu. We gave him sincere goodbyes and he weaved away from us, across Kearny.

Unfortunately, his “retardedness” kicked in the instant he crossed the street. He made a 180 degree turn and barreled right back to us. This time he focused in on my daughter, who studiously ignored him as he babbled at her. His mood turned ugly again and he got so close to her that I pushed him away. My daughter wisely told me not to touch him, but my instincts as the elder male in our little tribe urged me to keep him away. He got very hostile and started shouting that she was an “ugly lesbian.” Cynthia took out her phone and told him she was calling the police if he didn’t get away. That didn’t calm him down and he encouraged – almost dared – her to do it. She did. My youngest son told him very calmly it wasn’t going to end well for him and that he should just walk away. But trying to talk sense to the very drunk is usually a waste of breath, and it was here.

The scene at this point was getting so ugly – and so close to violence – that the manager of the restaurant took notice and moved the line into the restaurant itself, locking the door behind us. Evil Elvis cursed and shouted obscenities at us through the windows.

Moments later we were at a table on the far side of the restaurant from the door, taking some deep breaths. Within a few minutes a police cruiser rolled up across the street and they were talking to him. But since he hadn’t assaulted anyone, and apparently got his act together enough talking to the cops to avoid a drunk and disorderly charge, he walked away and the police drove off.

That bit of ugliness behind us, we tried to calm ourselves down and ordered.  It had been traumatic, but nothing that a beer and a plate of Nanking Chicken couldn’t soothe.

As we waited for the food to arrive, the waiter brought a pile of six plates and forks, stacking them by me at the end of the table. Moments later, my family members sitting across from me – looking into the restaurant – went pale as I heard a commotion behind me, getting louder. In an instant, Christ’s evil twin was standing next to me, picking up the pile of plates in a threatening way and screaming at Cynthia that she’d turned him in to the police. As I rose from my chair – grasping the beer bottle I intended to apply to his head – a young guy in his early twenties at the table right behind us leapt out of his chair and lunged at him, sending our attacker flying end-over-end in the middle of the packed restaurant. Dazed, drunken Elvis sputtered as he tried to untangle himself from a pile of overturned chairs, while we shouted at him to get out of the restaurant. Slightly cowed but still crazy drunk, he gradually made his way back through the restaurant, towards the door, shouting at us all the while.

Throughout all of this, the restaurant staff went about their business feigning complete ignorance of the ungodly scene that had just taken place right before their eyes. At first I was angry they hadn’t intervened to protect their patrons, but I figured they probably felt, not unreasonably, that they weren’t paid enough to put themselves in harm’s way. After the cops returned, Cynthia talked with them and they agreed to at least hold him in the drunk tank so we could eat our dinner in peace and walk to our cars unmolested.

The heroic young guy and his mother finished their meal and headed out past us. We thanked him profusely for coming to our aid and he humbly said we were welcome. When we thanked his mother for raising such a fine young man, she said it made her nervous “every time he did that.”  So this was not his first rescue operation. I’d wondered why he was wearing tights and a cape.

We were all flustered, to say the least, but the Chinese comfort food did its magic and we calmed down, agreeing it had at least been a memorable night. As they say, “any Christmas Eve you can walk away from is a good one.”