I had intended writing impressions of the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains on Tuesday. But, the trails were closed and the entire forest seemed to be off limits, suggesting that perhaps the redwoods were not Covid resistant. Down to Ben Lomond, a nice redneck town with hipster babes—like every small town in Pennsylvania, built around a creek bottom crossroads.

Fifteen minutes on by highway, Santa Cruz was nice, an impressive appearance of tropical trees against the vast blue, within sight of the redwood mountains. If I were a successful writer I could imagine settling in one of the cheap hotels to write.

Waking Wednesday and writing, the jitters to pack came on, my baby-fears of moving from my crib welling up. My rider was coming to pick me up at 7:00 A.M. Thursday to take me to the train station. At 7:00 P.M. I decide to visit a bar within stumbling distance, with no intention of drinking to excess, but to do a parting social study of a Bay Area dive bar—which still means $5 beers and $8 shots. I just drank beer and observed the changing of the various shifts:

The after work crowd was good and drunk by 7, with a big muscled up tattooed redneck buying drinks and acting the blowhard part with a Latina and an old fat hippy, and a fat, tanned dancing man, playing dance and motown on the juke box.

Soon, the pool players came in, the after work crowd that changed clothes before heading out for a couple hours of beer and pool. They were construction workers, two rednecks and two Latinos, speaking the same dialect and appearing to hold to the same cultural norms. The towering redheaded man with the beard who was the bast player. He bought the drinks.

As these men retired to the tables for one last round of drinks the hipsters of indistinct ethnicity rolled in. I could not tell if this was a coke dealer and his associates or an IT guy and his underlings. There were three wives and a girlfriend present, with a pet Bantu man in a pseudo-security role. Over three hours the dapper, forty-something man of Latin appearance and clear American diction, had spent $500 on his party—Johnny Walker Red was the drink I think.

Three middle-aged men with dad body types, obviously on business but dressed casually, gathered at a table. By 9:00 younger Latinos who liked to shoot pool and brought women—including a gorgeous indigenous girl in side braids and tiny jean shorts who screamed Land O’ Lakes Butter of old—gathered about the tables. A good-looking man-seeking brunette of 30 was hovering about the pool tables.

The man who bought the Patrone and beer for his two middle aged fellows, came to stand by me at the bar to get his order, looked at my Teamsters Local 162 hoody [the bar was quite cool with doors open] and extended his hand, “Tony, from Texas.”

“James from nowhere—My brother’s name is Tony.”

“Well, I suppose there is one of us assholes in every family! Let me buy you a drink, it’s on The Company.”

“Thanks for the beer, Tony.”

Tony and his two mates and the man-seeking babe were soon playing pool.

A sketchy tweaker stalked through the bar and left the back way.

The Latino men had a very stayed and respectful demeanor and their women obediently wall-flowered for them, all in their 20s.

Tony came back for more drinks and bought me another beer, going on 11:00 P.M. I was pacing and fine, just buzzed. But, having eaten very little for two days, I was holding away from keeping up and thinking about leaving.

Tony crowed at the bar, “I love California, a nice breeze, beautiful women—and business, good business.”

The pretty mixed Asian-Latina barmaid snarked at him as she brought a stack of Patrone shots in tumblers, “Yes, but you hate us and our laws.”

“Not you, not the girls! Hey, Baby, you’ll never guess we’re I’m from.”

She sneered over her shoulder, attired in jeans and hoody, “Austin—your voice, you all have it.”

“That’s right baby, I’m Tony from Austin, by way of the great nation of Texas! Oh, and buy my friend, James here another beer please.”

As Tony hauled off the liquid loot the barmaid came to me, already tired of drunks and said, “You’ve got one coming James. Where are you from—not Texas I know that.”

“Oh, I’m just a bum.”

She raised her eyebrows and went back to the register.

The well-shaped man-seeker was not much of a pool hand. But by bullying one mate, joking with another, coaching her, and missing a few good-leaving shots, Tony manged to engineer a win for the lady, who stood and raised her hands over her head as the three men from Texas clapped.

The four were now a group, whiskey tumblers and beer glasses piling high, when Tony returned to the bar and said, “James, come join us—its on me...I mean The Company!”

The night shifted into haze as shot after shot of Patrone washed into my gullet. Tony was the man with the plan. I had been brought in as an interesting commodity—a man with a story from some goddamned Yankee shithole. As Tony and his mates, who both turned out to be his bosses, got sloshed, he made time with the man-seeker 20 years his junior and his bosses had me to socialize with.

They are in the semi-conductor business and “cutting on a fat hog’s ass” with output delayed by a year and demand through the roof. The head man, whose name eludes me at this sober remove, has a son who is developing his own branch of the business. These men bring Texas money to Silicon Valley.

The night reeled drunkenly on and the bar remained packed with those of us who did not want the morning to dawn, the drear of our workaday making the haze of the suddenly friend-filled night seem like the place to stay…

A beautiful woman of 45, a babe who used to be a 9.5 on the International Usement Scale, and who was now barely holding at 8, but new her target market, arrived just as Tony departed with his young prize. This well-manicured cougar approached the Boss and I, the third man gone somewhere, wondering what we were doing after the bar closed.

The boss ordered a round on Tony and winked at me, a man a year my senior, and nudged my shoulder, “She’s all yours hombre—whiskey dick done set in,” and winked with a wry smile. I liked this man.

The woman thanked the boss and squeezed up between us and asked him his story and he said, “Oh, just about to stagger off.”

Last call had come and gone—seemingly the three of us having two drinks together, Patrone, of course.

At that stage of inhibition I openly admired her still firm and at once athletic and well-rounded figure, tastefully encased in black jeans, above black boots, black sweater and adorned with a tiny black purse to match her short black hair. Her easy brown eyes, encircled by the first creases of age, were quite appealing and showed intelligence. Looking at my beard of white and my Teamsters hoody she asked, “So how is retirement, sweetie [1].”

“Oh, I’m not retired—I’m a bum. These nice men adopted me, as did the fellows who gave me these clothes.”

“Oh,” she said, kind of drinking in my eyes. “We better go.”

We walked outside, the boss holding the back door for us and shaking my hand and imploring a good time as he staggered off into the rear parking lot.

The woman, whose name I never asked looked up at me, and nodded to her shinny black Charger, indicating a possible charitable default date, since her clients had all slipped through her fingers—Tony having already bagged his California girl for the night and the other two: one married and one disabled by Don Patrone, having headed for a cold bed.

She was getting old for this, a few more years left as I admired her gently creased brown eyes and she asked, “What do you think?”

“That you’re beautiful and I have a train to catch.”

She smiled and entered her sleek machine and waved as she cranked it up and I turned wondering where the parking lot connected with the street I needed to access to walk home.

I do not recall the walk—at all.

I obviously picked the correct route, as I woke at 7:05 with my driver pounding on the door, “Rise and shine, Jay.”

“A minute bro—I’m still drunk.”

Notes

-1. Hooker code for I’m yours for the night.