There's a better place

I sit at the corner of the L shaped bar, Doug, working on his daily crossword, faces me sitting at the short leg of the L, next to him, leaning against the wall and the coat rack sits Linda, reading Roald Dahl's autobiography "Boy". I'm reading I Remember Like Now, The Odyssey of a Polish Jew, a rare find at a used bookstore. I'm on my first pint, after that, forget about reading, sentences make sense, but don't stick any more. Linda can read well into her third. I'm usually out of there after one or two pints.

The place is nearly empty, there are no championship games to draw boisterous crowds to the muted TVs hanging above the front windows. Outside, an endless stream of buses, cars, people. Workers returning home, students going to and from classes, street people pushing their shopping carts, beggars, bicycles, and no visibly pregnant women ever, come to think of it. We're on one of the main drags of the city.

The jukebox plays an old Animals song. Young Eric Burdon pleading:

I'm just a soul whose intentions are good,
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

Behind him, I remember, Alan Price on keyboards, Hilton Valentine on guitar, Chas Chandler, who would later discover and manage Jimi Hendrix, on bass, and John Steel on drums. Who could be playing this 44 year old record? Not the young Chinese and Indian students sitting at the front table, whose grandparents might have been being born then. The black clad punks of the pub's staff? Not me. I haven't dropped money into a jukebox since one could get three songs for a quarter, and Gene Pitney crooned:

If I didn't have a dime,
And I didn't take the time,
To play the jukebox

Well, not really that long ago. I think how inflation and technology wiped out a whole subgenre of popular music, songs about having (or not) and inserting dimes in jukeboxes and pay phones. What are our shared experiences now? We each walk around with a telephone and a jukebox, not having to share any modern conveniences.

I order my second pint, close the book, and gaze at the scene outside. Faces of people I know by sight move past the front windows. A middle aged man walks in, spots me looking in the direction of the TV screens, and asks if I know what time the game starts. I don't. He didn't mention a team name or sport, it could be baseball, basketball, hockey, or even indoor American football that I have seen displayed (and ignored) on these screens lately. He asks a waiter, who doesn't know either and walks out.

A waitress approaches and says there is a phone call for me. I take it behind the bar. It's home, there was an important call from an important person, do I want to call back. I look around, listen to the din of the place, and say, no, later. Important persons can wait. I return to my seat and wonder about the people I know who know I'd be here right now. At least half a dozen, who when pressed would answer, "Oh yes, 5:30, weekend afternoon, he must be down at the pub sipping his ale." Only one of them is a steady customer here, another has been here with me, another has been here once a long time ago. I imagine one of the six or seven waltzing in the front door to buy me a beer, or to slap my face, or to beg forgiveness, or to return a borrowed book, or to ask for a small loan. A sort of It's a Wonderful Life in reverse, with myself playing the Jimmy Stewart role of a desperate man who finds himself wanted after all. We'd call it It's a Rotten Life and play it on television after each Holiday Season, (as Christmas is now called), as a hangover antidote to the syrupy unreality of the Frank Capra classic, that incidentally, isn't recognized as such outside the gates of our current paradise.

Another Animals song is playing on the jukebox:

We gotta get out of this place,
If it's the last thing we ever do,
We gotta get out of this place,
Girl, there is a better place for me and you.

I gulp the last sip of the ale, pick up my book, and get out of that place.