Country/western bars are getting few and far between anymore, at least the bars where you can be sure there won't be a fight at some point during the night. That's a damn shame because I always liked the atmosphere.
You'd see a bunch of young girls in tight jeans and tight check blouses doing line dances on the dance floor and a bunch of young guys holding long necks standing at the rail around the dance floor and watching.
Usually there was at least one pool table in the place and you'll see a bunch of guys waiting to play the winner of the current rack. Eight ball was the standard game, and early on, there'd be some pretty good eight ball being played. As the night went on and the beer flowed, the play got a little sloppy, but everybody had fun.
In a real country/western bar, the DJ loves country music and knows what to play and when. He'd probably be playing some old standards until the crowd started coming in, but then he'd play a two-step or two followed by a couple of line dances for the girls, and then a slow song. The slow song was so the guys standing at the rail could ask the girls to dance when they walked off the dance floor.
Usually the girl would nod, they'd walk out onto the floor and the girl would drape her arms around the guy's neck. The guy would put his hands on her back unless they were a regular thing. If they were, he put his hands on her ass and pull her into his chest. They didn't really dance. They just rocked back and forth until the music stopped. I know several couples who met that way, ended the night dancing slow dances together and finally got married.
There's only one real country/western bar left where I live. It's pretty small but it's like they all were back when. Sandy, the owner's wife, tends bar and Trixie, an absolutely gorgeous blonde, waits tables. That night, I was sitting there listening to the music and nursing my second beer. When Tommy, the DJ, played "The Fireman" by George Strait, I had to smile. That song took me back about thirty years, back to when I was a volunteer fireman.
In case you don't understand what a volunteer fireman is, he's a guy who volunteers his free time to be a fireman. Volunteer fire departments are pretty common in small towns, because small towns can't afford full time firefighters. Instead, they build a firehouse, buy a used fire engine, and send the volunteers to fireman's school. Volunteer firemen don't get paid for risking their lives so it's a wonder that almost seventy percent of all firemen in the US are volunteers, but they are.
I was one of those guys who had a pager on his belt 24/7 and responded to every call if I wasn't at my regular job no matter the day or time. I had red lights and a siren on my pickup and was authorized to use them on my way to the firehouse. It felt pretty good to be serving my little town, but then at twenty-two I didn't have enough sense to really understand the risk. As my uncle said when I enlisted in the Army the month I got out of high school, I was full of piss and vinegar but flat out of brains.
The reason I was smiling was I was remembering a fire at Patty Cramer's house. It wasn't a big fire. At that time, most people had an empty fifty-five gallon steel barrel with the top cut out in the back yard. That barrel is where they burned all their burnable trash. Over a few years, the bottom of the barrel would rust out from the heat and rain. Pattie's had a big hole in one side and a stray piece of paper had fallen out and caught her back yard on fire.
She called the fire department and I happened to be there with two other guys, so we drove the fire engine out to her house. By the time we got there, the fire had burned through all the dry grass around the burn barrel and had slowed down a lot because the rest of the grass was green. It took us only about five minutes to put it all out.
I knew Patty from high school. She was a year younger than I and I already had a steady girlfriend then, so I'd never dated her, but she had some classes with me so I saw her a lot. I also liked her a lot because she was one of the smartest girls in school. Patty was one of those girls who smiled all the time, and she always said "Hi" if she saw me.
She'd gotten married to Joe Cramer a year after she graduated high school, but it didn't work out. That didn't surprise me because Joe was pretty much a horse's ass to everybody. He thought being the quarterback for the football team when he was a junior and a senior somehow made him special. Joe did get a football scholarship to the state university, but with all the women around, he apparently couldn't concentrate on studying what little he had to study. He flunked out the first semester.
Joe came back to town and started working at the feed store. I never understood why Patty married him except that Patty wasn't really very pretty and she was a little overweight. I figured Patty must have thought Joe would be better than spending the rest of her life alone.
Once he was married to Patty, he stayed straight for about three months, but one night, Harry, the town cop, caught Joe and Sheila Moore, one of the former high school cheerleaders, in her car behind the feed store.
Sheila tried to tell Harry she'd had car trouble and Joe was helping her get it running again. Harry told me he'd had a hard time not laughing because when he shined his flashlight through the back seat window, Sheila's blouse was open and her bra was pulled up over her breasts. Harry didn't write a report or do anything except tell them they needed to do their car work someplace besides the alley behind the feed store.
Something like that was too good to keep secret though, and though Harry denied telling anybody, word got out. I always suspected it was Joe who told somebody. He'd always been pretty proud about having sex with a lot of women, and I didn't figure he'd changed much.
Anyway, Patty found out about Joe and Sheila, and divorced him. Joe didn't deny it had happened. From what I heard, he just shrugged, grinned, and said he couldn't pass up the chance to fuck Sheila again.
Joe didn't have much to start with except the house his grandmother had given them and his pickup, and after the divorce, all he had left was his pickup. He drove his pickup to Middleton to start a new life and Patty kept living in the house. She worked at the bank as a teller to make ends meet, and I'd see her there when I deposited my paycheck every week.
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After we put out the grass fire, I talked to Patty for a while so she'd understand what happened and wouldn't do it again.
"Patty, you really should get a new burn barrel. This one's all rusted out at the bottom and that's what started the fire. It wouldn't take much because the grass around it is pretty dry. You're just lucky it rained a couple of days ago. We could have been out here trying to keep your house from burning down."
Patty smiled.
"I've been meaning to get one. I guess I better do that now. Do you know where I can get one?"
"They usually have a couple down at Don's Garage."
Patty frowned then.
"I don't know how I'll get one home because it wouldn't fit in my little car."
Well, like I said, I'd always liked Patty.
"I can go down with you and haul it back in my truck."
Patty smiled again.
"I'd really appreciate it if you could do that. Are you busy on Saturday afternoon?"
That Saturday about two, I picked up Patty at her house and drove over to Don's Garage. Ten minutes later, I had a new burn barrel in the back of my pickup and we were driving to Patty's house.
When we put out her grass fire, it looked to me like Patty had lost some weight. She wasn't wearing anything tight, but her face looked thinner. That Saturday, it was pretty warm, so she was wearing shorts and a snug T-shirt, and it looked like her thighs were a lot slimmer than I remembered. Talking seemed more polite than staring at her.
"So, how you been doin', Patty?"
She smiled.
"Well, except for the fire, pretty good."
