Russell Freeman, long white hair tied back, dressed in jeans and white cotton shirt, got off the bus and walked down a side street of the city he grew up in. He looked around and shook his head. Urban renewal in the late sixties had taken much of the character out of the center of the city and replaced it with parking ramps, cheap prefab buildings and fake facades. According to city elites the old sturdy brick buildings of the past were obsolete and old fashioned. We must look to a bright new future said the politicians as money flowed to demolition companies.
“Renewal my ass,” Russell mumbled.
He was on a mission and his destination was the Royal Lounge. He instinctively knew the way but wondered… when was he last there?
The Royal Lounge opened in the thirties after prohibition ended and catered to city dwellers for decades. Tin ceiling, wood floor and dark ambience. The only thing Royal was the name. It too eventually labeled old fashioned. But the building survived. The Royal Lounge, now named Penmans, had gone through five owners and five names. Russell seemed to remember that as well as the gaudy facade of white and yellow that now hid the old brick although confusion racked his brain as he went inside. Where were the cigarette machines, the jukebox, the dingy walls covered with cigarette tar, the old timers in a mindless stupor leaning into the mahogany bar watching a black and white portable TV on a shelf? Where were the posters for upcoming concerts by Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane?
Now there were bright lights, an internet jukebox and multiple flat screen TVs tuned to sports channels for the masses. Warily he walked over to the bar. The mahogany painted over with a shiny black. A twenty-something girl with green and purple hair looked at him.
“What will you have pops?”
“I’ll have a CC and ginger please.”
She looked at the bottles on the shelf.
“Uh, I’m not sure what that is.”
He shook his head in exasperation and was sure they had been through this before.
“Just give me your cheap whiskey and ginger ale. Don’t screw me with that high priced shit.”
He looked around the bar as he waited for his drink. He was certainly the oldest in the bar… far older. Some were talking but most were just staring into cell phones.
The girl brought over his drink.
He reached into his jeans pocket and put a crumpled dollar bill on the bar.
She looked at him and waited.
“Haven’t been out in a while have you.”
“I’m not sure. Why?”
“The drink is six dollars”.
“Jesus! For the cheap shit?”
He pulled out a twenty, smoothed it out and put it on the bar. He wasn’t sure where it had come from. Did someone give it to him or did he steal it?
“I remember when these drinks were 50 cents,” he grumbled as the girl scooped up the bill.
She shook her head and went to the cash register for change.
He sipped the cool drink and looked around for a familiar face. His mind saw Vinnie, long hair, denim bell bottoms and jean jacket rocking to the song “Gimme Shelter” from the Rolling Stones on the jukebox as he played pinball. Tony and Gary bad mouthing Nixon as they played pool. A couple of Vietnam vets, newly home, backs to the wall at the far end of the bar, nursing their beers, suppressing nightmares.
He remembered the good times in this bar. Local rock groups would play covers of the most popular songs as people danced. Cigarette smoke and something sweeter filled the air. The talk was animated, fun and sometimes angry. The war had taken a few from this bar. Some came back and some didn’t. As time went by, he lost track of his friends who stopped coming to the Royal. Some died or disappeared. Most got married and forgot the Royal. Russell didn’t. He held out as long as he could.
He slammed the whiskey and ginger.
“Give me one more then I have to split. I got places to go, friends to meet,” he said to the girl.
She poured the good stuff into his glass and didn’t charge him full price.
“For old times’ sake,” she said.
He looked at her.
“Have we met before?”
She smiled and walked away.
He was on the last of his drink when they came walking in.
“Figured you would be here, Mr. Freeman. Time to go back.”
“Ah, you caught me boys,” he said in his best Humphrey Bogart voice holding his arms out for handcuffs that never came.
He gave the peace sign to the bartender. “It’s been a gas, babe.”
She laughed.
“Until next time Russell.”
“Ok, boys, home we go,” he said to the two attendants from the Shady Pines Long-Term Care Facility. He turned and put a clenched fist in the air one last time to friends no longer there.
Image by Kevin Campbell from Pixabay – dollar bill slightly crumpled
literally stories 
Lee
This is really (especially the setting) is really well done and you didn’t tip the end. I like him having a clear idea of what he thinks is going on even though he doesn’t understand “when” it is going on. A lot of dementia is like that; coherent but inaccurate.
Leila
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Thank you, Leila.
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Simple and sad and that’s why it packs such apunch. Hes not angry just regretful and at the end there he accepts reality which is a subtle twist. I enjoyed this even though it addresses a rather sombre subject. The setting was very visible – thank you – dd
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Thank you, Diane.
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Lee
Well, this is a little close to home, but I can appreciate the premise.
I had an idea for a story about a guy driving along a highway until he notices the description of the car he is driving on the “Silver Alert” sign for demented runways.
You beat me to it and did a much better job, too. Nice!
Gerry
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Thanks Gerry. I had a couple ways I wanted to go with it. It needed interaction with people to make this one work. Glad you like it.
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Lee
This was a well-constructed tale with an effective O. Henry twist at the end. The whole thing was accurate and believable, as opposed to blown out of proportion and fake, or unrealistic. The likeable main character seems to be in search of more than just his lost youth, maybe a more human time when people still talked to each other in a real way instead of walling themselves off with mini-computers and received opinions that are shared by millions and millions of other people. The way too many bars have been cleaned up these days in the USA, made so bright and shiny, and filled to the brim with more screens, will make any former bar hound from before the year 2000 hang his head in shame and turn away sadly. Even if I were still drinking, which I’m not, I would choose to do it in some other locale than the lame, tame, expensive, screen-filled places they have now. (There are still a very few exceptions here and there; very few.) Thanks for a likeable and human story with something to say that needs to be said.
Dale
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Thanks Dale. Some of the spark to this story was a neighborhood bar we used to hang out in many years ago transformed itself with bright lights and TV’s all over. The character was stripped from it. Then Russell got in my head and the story was born. Glad you like the twist at the end.
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Russell is a well-developed character and the descriptions do a fine job of showing his disillusionment with the modern world. I think Dale makes a good point about Russell longing for a more human time. The final image is excellent. Good title as well.
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Many thanks, David.
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A man walks into a bar . . . but in this instance worlds collide, if gently – with BOTH bars, then & now, coming vividly to life. A great read – touching & unsentimental.
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Thank you!
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I relate to the MC. Early 1960s. Beer was a dollar or so. Didn’t do much hard liquor then. Three students renting for $100 a month total. Cheap places torn down for Urban Renewal (known as Negro removal), new freeway that ran through Goose hollow, expansion of Portland State. Government – destroy cheap housing so we can spend lots of money on housing. I’m the old fart who used to amuse me.
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Yep. I can relate, Doug.
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Well-written, thank you. Fact and fiction often walk the same road. A senior relative of mine with dementia would sometimes slip out of his care home (sometimes in his pajamas) and head down the road to the pub. The understanding publican would park him in a corner of the bar, pour him a free halfpint, and call the care home to come and pick him up.
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Glad you like it, Mick.
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I love the warm, laidback, but slightly sassy tone of this one, almost Chandleresque in places. It also reminded me of Bukowski slightly (that could be because I just finished his ‘On Writing’ yesterday). It also made me reflect on the price of booze! I’m 57, but since my first pints aged 16 it’s gone up from under 50p to over 5 quid!
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Thanks Paul. Glad you like it. My son and I will go to a bar once and awhile and the prices still shock me. The scene were Russell asks for a CC and Ginger (it is an old-timer’s mixed drink here, Canadian Club and Ginger ale) actually happened when were out one time. The young server had no idea what I was talking about.
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Hi Lee,
It’s great to see you back.
This is a superb piece of character writing. I’m not sure if I feel sorry for Russell or think of him as being lucky. He did have his memories and he was able to go between times in a fashion.
When things change, all we have left are our memories and any form of realisation about those memories – You hit that idea square on the head!!
Excellent!
Hope all is well with you my fine friend.
Hugh
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Many thanks, Hugh.
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This is definitely a bit of me! Societal decay (in the main character’s mind), generational dissonance, and then a twist at the end. Really enjoyable read.
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Thanks, Alex.
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Really enjoyed this from start to finish. The only improvement I could possibly suggest would be to remove the odd word that isn’t entirely necessary.
I also thought that ‘Russell didn’t. He held out as long as he could.’ didn’t need to be underlined. For emphasis it could simply be placed as it’s own one word paragraph. The line is powerful enough without the underline, and hit me hard – in a good way.
In short this is genius in the sense that it is far, far better than anything I could write, so consider this a comment from a student to a master….
Selah,
Michael Tyler
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Hello – please see my response to Lee’s comment.
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Glad you like it. As for the underline, I didn’t put that in. Must have happened after I submitted it. A glitch somewhere.
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Yes indeed a glitch. For some reason a few of the stories recently have presented a link (which is what the underline is pretending to be) There is no link but it’s the devils own job to get rid of. I think I did manage it in the end but I’ll be honest – there was swearing! Not your fault at all and I don’t hink it was mine it must be some hidden code that misleads the website.
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Thanks for the reply, Diane.
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Makes me nostalgic for the cigarette smoke…fun story, I could picture the old guy…. all the details of the times. Russell filtered out the bouncers and the guys itching for a fight he he but maybe the Royal was a classier bar. The waitress was good, not charging the elderly fellow for a full drink. Good last name for Russell.
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Glad you like it. Yep lots of changes since Russell’ youth.
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This is a fine story. It really stuck with me. Later I thought about Russel at the bar and where life leads. On Thursday, we saw the band America play in Indianapolis at Clowes Hall, (a great small venue) and there were a lot of old folks getting down. It was an amazing concert, despite having only one of the original trio, the incredible Dewy Bunnell. The other guys picked up the slack and did a kick ass job! I could imagine Russel when they sang for the encore, “A Horse With No Name,” flicking his, Bic. Which of course is not allowed.
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Thanks. Russell would have flipped his Bic even today and told people to fuck off. 😉
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Good moody, atmospheric writing, evocative of the hard-boiled works of the ’30’s. I laughed at the surprise ending which shouldn’t have been a surprise to me.
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Glad you liked it, Jon.
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