This is more along side a piece from some years back...called:

sprtcs
My Journal
and a little unpolished story about being a woman alone in a bar....




2010-05-11 10:32 AM
Internal combustion engine / Kenny Rogers

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 BLITHELY IGNORED THE ROUTINE STUFF OF THEIR REPEAT SQUABBLE.

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

There were only the owner, the bartender, and a couple of their buddies/cronies slouching as she approached them at the bar.

The tv was set upon 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, it was semi-legendary as the place with the roof that had fallen down due to noise stress from cheap repairs and all the loud rock and roll NOISE OF YOUNG UP AND COMING ROCK AND ROLL BANDS...and that WAS NOT LONG AFTER THE FIFTH EDITION HAD ROLLED INTO TOWN AND RockED some balladry there, Kenny Rogers heading up the bill...what was it...1971?

She had awoken that noontime here in the newer century wondering what had ever happened to Kenny Rogers...Kenny Rogers who had not known when to hold them, or to fold them when it came to his own face but had had the thing purely 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...it, the memory of the once handsome man named Rogers had put her in mind of a big ham sandwich and maybe a beer or two.

she had awoken with thoughts of maybe sitting there in that very tavern and WRITING A SONG FOR Kenny Rogers, just for her own enjoyment.

SOMETHING SUNDAY MORNING COMING DOWNISH maybe a

a bluesy sort a thing like maybe:
" ...the big game of life doesn't look so big...
...in the hung over gaze of a college kid...
..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 who now probably live in flats in New York or Hollywood shared by a group of erstwhile "Entourage" or actual 'live theatah' wannabes, all way past their primes...

But later for that, back in the cool dark of The (former) Silver Dollar Saloon 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...it was a case of mistaken identity...someone had already filled out the employment history part of the ap he placed on the bar where she was about to sit... 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 fill in the empty sheets that remained to be completed....

the name of the applicant was very nearly like her own... maiden name...Annica Jennifer who preferred "Jennie"having a surname 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...as in "...AAAwwwsome dude...!)and 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 by an outdated appellation "...barman...?", but probably now more commonly called "man" or "hey 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 by going the filling out the application route, it had always been that someone she knew knew that a job was there for her and she went there and got it..simple...friends being friends and jobs being jobs...but that was then and this was now... hard times in the job market...people actually filled out aps...and there were even aps on line if you wanted to do the test that asked you what you would do if you knew someone was a thief wherever you worked...a trap for anyone with a brain...if there ever was one.

The Bartender...
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 t shirt with a few petals of a printed red rose. Said Dead Head 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 upon a time did not yet look like he could wear a training man bra...(some say that male weed smokers grow breasts and this guy might have just been 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, "sir?...excuse me...?" This, as she raised one hand a bit and pulled out a twenty and placed it on the bar.

When the twenty caught his eye 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. But not including the two ovoids that her breasts might have occupied if she were to rise from the bar stool enough and stand close enough to the brass foot rail so to be able to lean forward near enough to the leather bar edge where they might rest, as she would have liked, relieving her shoulders a bit of the weight of them better than that lifted through the ingenious fabrical architecture devised by Maidenform Corporation.

"Listen," she said, looking into his unripe limes and deciding 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 slid well over next to her and he moved it back in front of her. "Sure, you want the beer now? or with your food?"

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

He looked frankly now at her breasts, large enough to warrant his next question: "So,do you want a job or not? We need someone part-time nights."

She chuckled slightly, remembering that she had an old social security card that might fill his needs and said, "Yes, I guess I do want that job. I need some loose change. What are you paying? and how many nights are you planning on stealing from me?"

He looked into her eyes as if he had just noticed she had a pair and turned around as if she wasn't there to get her a beer before the sandwich was up in the kitchen window at the end of the bar.

So that's how Annie J Kane, nee Campbell became Jennie Campbell, and I opened a bank account under an amazingly convenient alias. I wonder what ever happened to the real Jennifer Annica Campbell, who seemed to have just dropped off the planet.