Well, they’ve closed her down.
For the last 10 years, every time I made the long drive to visit the extended pack, I stopped halfway in the town where I used to live to take my lunch at the bar where I used to earn my living.
And for the last 10 years, there has been at least one old-timer there who knows my name, and will lie to all the young pups, saying I was the best there ever was.
They roll their eyes and leave us alone, or maybe, if the day is slow, a fresh-faced bartender will stand and listen and laugh – at us? with us? – who knows? who cares?
But not this time. The sign is gone. The windows are dark.
Sure, I bitched and moaned like the rest, hated the managers who came and went while we slugged it out year after year. But boy, there were some golden friendships.
Some of them are still my friends. We live in the secret diaspora. I know their children now. They’re even getting old enough to listen to our stories – “And daddy and Uncle Sample got these tattoos when…”
Maybe it’s all just superstition, or clinging to things I should have let go of a long time ago.
But I nearly cried when I saw the place all left alone like that, with no one to love it – or even hate it – anymore. I even scrounged around in the old concrete bay, where the dumpster used to be. Found the wreath we used to hang on the front door every Christmas, abandoned on an iron breadrack. I salvaged it from the wreckage.
Eventually, I know, the last old-timer had to go. But I didn’t want the place to close. Someone will come along and remodel. It’ll all be different. And I’ll never again be able to take my rightful place on a time-stained wooden stool and say, even if to a complete stranger, “Back when I was a younger man, this is where…”