IT WAS AN OVERCAST ERSTWHILE SUNDAY MORNING, ON THE HUNG OVER WEEK END OF THE MICHIGAN/MICHIGAN STATE FOOTBALL GAME, THE ANNUAL RIVALRY THIS YEAR HAD GONE BADLY IN FAVOR OF THE MICHIGAN TEAM BY A WHIPPING 32 TO 28, AND THE STATE

When she walked into the huge cavernous bar there

WAS ONE TABLE OF HARD SCRABBLE MEN IN A CLUTCH AROUND THE POOL TABLE, LOOKING LIKE A MOTLEY ASSORTMENT OF FRATERNITY BROTHERS, A FEW ALUMS AND THE USUAL ARRAY OF COLLEGE KIDS WITH A FEW FRIENDS SOAKING UP SOME SUDS

were only the owner, the bartender, and a couple of their buddies/cronies slouching at the bar.

The tv was on AN OLD FIGHT WITH TWO SLUGGERS PUNISHING ONE ANOTHER and just barely standing up through the ringing of the bell signaling the end of the fight before an 8th round decision was about to be rendered....

She had parked out back of the bar, her steed an elderly robin's egg blue 1969 volkswagen with a hot engine having Empi cams and an exhaust system in need of work...sounded like an angry lion cub complaining about an empty stomach when she turned the key off and locked it shut on a car full of empty paper cups, McTrash and taco boxes and plastic food containers...

THIS PLACE WAS THE LATEST INCARNATION of A BAR THAT ONCE HAD OCCUPIED THIS VERY SPOT IN YEARS GONE BY, CALLED grandmothers, known in legend as the place with the roof that had fallen in due to noise stress from cheap repairs and all the loud rock and roll NOISE OF YOUNG UP AND COMING ROCK AND ROLL BANDS...IT WAS NOT LONG AFTER THE FIFTH EDITION HAD ROLLED INTO TOWN AND RockED some balladry THERE, Kenny Rogers heading up the bill...

She had awoken that noontime wondering what had ever happened to Kenny Rogers...Kenny Rogers who had not known when to hold them, or to fold them but had had his face lifted right off him...leaving him unrecognizable...ugly times 38 the only part of his original look still identifiable was his center part the one dividing his grey scalp now turned completely white...

she had THOUGHTS OF WRITING A SONG FOR HIM

SOMETHING SUNDAY MORNING COMING DOWNISH LIKE

a bluesy sort a thing:
" ...the big game of life doesn't look so big...
...in the hung over gaze of a one-time college kid...
...of a mid-thirties peter pan or tinkerbelle
...in search of a job in job market helle

you know what I mean
a sprightly dirge of a tune about... former college boys who still bugged the bathroom sinks of the first floor girls room in what once was the FIJI House on Grand River Ave...but now is a flat in New York or Hollywood shared by a group of erstwhile "Entourage" wannabes...

But later for that, back in the cool dark of The Silver Dollar where ...

...She walked up to the bar and was about to order a beer and a ham sandwich when the owner asked if she had brought in her social security card so she could complete her application...someone had already filled out the employment history part of an ap... but her w-2 and ID proofs needed finishing ... random parts of the application were stuck under the bar...and the owner yanked them out and placed them before her so she could finish the empty sheets that remained to be done....

the name of the applicant was very nearly like her own... maiden name...Annica Jennifer who preferred "Jennie"sirname of Campbell, residence in the 600 block of Spartan Avenue ...a somewhat broken down section of the party street, where weekends were too loud and one might call it an awesomely boisterous place (if one was a mind to lift wholesale that way too much overly used word and crown it an adverbial cliche pretending to the status of postmodern description) where a gal of her age was considered all used up...of course there were men who knew how to wring out the very last extra juice from a bar rag in that particular college neighborhood and she was considered (if she was considered at all) to be another form of bar rag to such as they....

..."hmm"...she thought. She signaled the guy once called "...barman...?", but probably now more commonly called "dude"... thinking on her feet she just pushed the ap aside and ignored it...
She had never found, landed, or agreed to work a job before after going the filling out the application route.

His hair, bundled back in a rubber band and long enough to go past his man bra if he wore one under the old blue cotton work shirt that showed the top of a black Grateful Dead tee shirt with a few petals of a printed red rose was obscured by the thick curls of hair that attempted to cascade off his chest and reach out to the world. . It was the colors of salt and lemon, having once been a natural blond who probably once didn't look like he could wear a training man bra...(some say that male weed smokers grow breasts and this guy might be living proof) his eyes were the color of an unripe lime. Just green enough to not be called hazel.

He didn't appear to know what a "...Barman...?" was so she
raised her voice a half octave and said: "...ahem..." and softened it again to a quieter, "...excuse me...?" This, as
she raised one hand a bit and pulled out a twenty and placed it on the bar.

Then the twenty caught his eye and he came over to her with a clean white bar cloth and polished the place before her that occupied approximately the area bounded by both of her elbows and not including the two ovoids that her breasts might occupy if she were to rise from the bar stool and stand close to the brass foot rail so to lean forward near to the leather bar edge that they might rest there relieving her shoulders a bit with the weight taken off them through the ingenious fabric architecture devised by Maidenform Corporation.

"Listen," she said, looking into his unripe limes and decided on a particular beverage because of their color, "...gimme a half a ham sandwich and a Corona. Ok?" and a few lime quarters, please."

He saw the ap on the bar before the chair next to her and he moved it back in front of her. "Sure, you want the beer now? or with your food?"

She smiled and said, "Yes, one now and another with my sandwich, you got any Little Kings back there?