The Bar
It’s Saturday night in Midland, TX. Dinner at the country club is winding down after another golf tournament. The players are well-oiled with Girlies and Ranchwaters.* Their wives draw long sips of rosé from under paper lids, trying to beat the flies to the honey. Conversation is buzzing when an instigator approaches,
We’re all going to The Bar.
Calculations are made.
How late do we have the babysitter?
Can you pick up the car before church in the morning?
Do we have it in us?
Ubers are called. The voices of dissension have been humbled to a murmur, although no one is arguing this is a good idea - the night has been charted off course. What was steak and cabernet will now be drowned out in whiskey neat, spiced or otherwise. A hangover is the price of entry.
Upon arrival, a sign meets the revelers at the door - No face tattoos. No gang colors. - followed by a policeman and a cover charge. That’s a West Texas welcome for you. And this is The Bar - no, thee Bar - ordained as the watering hole for the Midland everyman. Half the room is tattoos and tank tops, the other golf polos and branded attire - This and that energy. So and so services. A taxidermied grizzly bear dons a Make Midland Great Again trucker hat. He looks pissed.
The crowd is not paying attention to the bear or each other. They drink their beer steadily in their own company and wait for the band up front to play one they know. Tonight, it is the Chuck Shaw Band, or someone like that, a four-piece rig that fills the room with songs about drinking and drinking to forget. Despite his best efforts, the singer cannot shake his audience from their own glasses.
The country club set has fully acclimated (re: they are a few shots deep). They find a second stomach for queso and tenders and Texas Toothpicks.* Ranch with everything. Someone is shouting for ‘Wagon Wheel.’ The band negotiates covers for tips. More shots. A member of the party is feeling confident (re: drunk). He strides, Michelob in hand, to the dining room’s dance floor. With liquor-loose hips he twerks and jigs his way in circles, a pair of snakeskin boots revealing themselves below his khakis. The sheep join in. More shots. More dancing. A waitress watches, amused, as she ladles a heap of hot gravy onto a Chicken Fried Steak. The cop is toe-tapping.
Hey, momma rock me
They will go on like this until the kitchen closes, until the glow of neon and the last cigarette has burnt out. They’ll throw themselves into strangers’ cars and apologize profusely to the sitter, who is in high school and gladly accepts extra cash. Women will spend days wringing cigarette smoke from sundresses and long hair. Men will abandon their Sunday tee times. They will all of them swear off drinking for a while.
The Bar knows better. In a town that changes between morning and noon, The Bar has stood for 40 years. It is not concerned with the boom and busts or the false promises its patrons make to themselves, or to Midland, about leaving and never coming back.
When the dust has settled, they all come back for another round.
