Two vodka-tonics and a scotch and soda. Finally some adult drinks. Maybe I'll make more than a quarter tip on this round. How many stupid sodas and juices can you pour in one shift? C'mon folks, you're on vacation here, live a little. All these first-timers are taking seats away from our regulars. A few more days, and our seasonal nightmare will be over for another year.
My name is Rick. I work in a run-down hotel bar in a small rural community in the South Eastern corner of Pennsylvania. We are nestled in the Allegheny Plateau, just over the Appalachians. On an average summer night, the place gets forty to fifty reservations. Mostly tourists visiting Amish country or Gettysburg. The bar gets a regular happy-hour crowd of salesmen and truckers. In the evenings we have Karaoke or "oldies" sing-alongs.
There is no actual "young crowd." But we have enough dart teams and pool shooters to keep us serving until midnight on most days. No need for bouncers and no reason to card anyone.
Then comes August.
Every year thirty-thousand people from all over the world descend on our quaint little farm town to watch kids play baseball. In the old days the circus rolled into town with elephants and a calliope. Now it's satellite trucks and video games.
Trailer-parks spring up from the earth where the corn was just harvested. Hot-dog carts and ice-ball vendors appear on every corner. Mobile arcades, paint-ball venues and water-slides blossom overnight. Twelve-year olds from twenty countries get their first taste of American excess. And they are all in bed by eight thirty.
Then the bar fills with lonely moms, often on their first trip to the States. And the hucksters have something to sell them, too. There are phony Chanel bags and knock-off Rolexes, Gucci and Lauren. And for the adventurous moms, there is always a troupe of second-rate Chippendales who can communicate in the Universal Language.
Our hotel caters to the bargain hunters. The room-rates only double at this time of year. At about nine o'clock, the moms drift down in pairs or groups and grab tables in the back. Those who speak English do the ordering and they all congregate around the jukebox. They brag and worry over their sons and then bad-mouth the husbands they left behind.
Most of the visiting guys are father/coaches, chaperones, or officials from the four-letter cable station that televises the tournament. These guys manage to find the same entertainment that's available in any town around the world. So the ladies are on their own.
Tonight, the dull and dreary was just settling in and I was preparing to break down my section and close the bar. At least, I thought, I'll be able to catch the sports on t.v., change clothes and still find a place to get myself a cocktail.
"Is this the best it gets," I heard her say. I looked around the taps and saw a smiling face. She had dark blonde hair worn in a ponytail and bright blue eyes that stood out sharply from the white skin, the only light circles on her otherwise sun-scorched face. Her sunglasses must have been on all day, and her light-blue tank top clearly showed the outline of the tee-shirt she must have worn to today's game. For whatever reason, people forget that ninety degrees and blazing sun is just as hot, here in the sticks, as anywhere else.
At the end of the night this place smells like suntan lotion, cold cream, and sweat.
She slid a fiver across the bar and said she had a joke to tell me. So I listened to her as I cleaned, and I told her that her comedy-act must have knocked 'em dead in Iowa. She dead-panned, "Nebraska." It only took a moment to freshen her drink and make her one of my special flaming-shots for last call (on the house, of course.)
I tallied the register and turned up the lights as the last guests were leaving. Her face lit up as I placed a paper rose in front of her. Then I said, "now it's time for me to find a friendly little pub."
She honestly surprised me when she asked if she could join me. I said that there was a dive-bar about a five minute walk from here, but that I still had twenty minutes of work to do. She asked for the bar's name and said that she would meet me there in half an hour.
I had nothing better to do so "The first round is on me, see ya there...hey wait- what's your name?"
"Just call me Debbie, and the first two are on you!" She smiled with a twinkle in her eye and slipped out.
She made me laugh. Okay, so an older broad wants to drink and tell farm stories to her bartender before she tucks in her son and watches some late-night television. I did not get a real good look at her, but I have certainly walked into bars with worse. I can always cut out early or make-up some bullshit about a girlfriend. I don't want to be too nasty, if her kid's team keeps winning, I may have to see her all week.
