22nd Street isn't much different than any other street in the older part of any city. There are big maple and oak trees lining the street and shading the houses. Those houses sit on half-acre lots. The lots are that big because when they were built, there wasn't any city sewer yet and the zoning code said half an acre was the minimum size lot for a septic tank and proper drainage of the drain field. There usually aren't any trees in the back yard. Those would have clogged the drain field pipes. Several of the houses have flower beds in back though, along with a tiny patio.
All the houses now have city sewer connections so the septic tanks and drain fields lay unused a few feet under the grass of the tiny back yards. Each house has a one-car garage in back, and the drive to that garage goes between the houses, so there's really no side yard to any of them except what grass grows between the two, foot-wide strips of concrete that serve as a driveway.
Between the lots in back is an alley. That's where everybody keeps their trash cans. Once a week, the city garbage truck comes by about five in the morning and dumps the trash cans. The alley is also where the kids played when there were kids in the neighborhood. The kids are all grown now and have moved to the suburbs where they have an acre or so of yard, concrete drives to two car attached garages, and fences to keep their neighbors on their own property.
Like most of these older neighborhoods, on the corner of 22nd Street and Walnut are a couple of businesses. One used to be a grocery store before Walmart built a huge store five miles away. It's now an antique shop. The other is "Dick's Bar".
Dick's Bar isn't one of those fancy places where you can order a pomegranate vodka martini and the bartender won't say anything except ask if you want Luxsosowa, Absolut, or just the bar brand. You won't find any craft beers on tap or in the coolers. Dick's Bar doesn't have little crackers with cheese, and you won't be waited on by a young waitress with her breasts spilling out of her top.
Dick's Bar is a quiet place now, except for the bell on the door that dings anytime anybody comes in, and the taps have handles that say Busch, Miller, and Budweiser. If you like your beer in a bottle or a can, Mary will get you a Pabst or a Hamm's or a Corona from the cooler down at one end. Mary can pour you a shot of Wild Turkey or Jack to go with that beer if you want, and she can mix most drinks though she'll probably have to look up the recipe for anything that's not common.
Liz will fry you up a hamburger and fries if you're hungry, and on Friday night, you can get a fish sandwich instead of a hamburger. Trudy will bring it to your table and ask if you need another drink. Trudy's breasts aren't spilling out of her low cut top. They're big enough to do that, except she wears T-shirts.
Mary actually owns the bar. It became hers when her husband, the "Dick" of Dick's Bar, was killed in a car accident. They'd lived upstairs over the bar, it was paid for, and she didn't want to move, so she kept it open. She's not getting rich, but I guess she makes enough to keep herself in what she needs.
If you ask her, and several men have hinted that they're interested, she'll tell you one of the things she doesn't need is another husband. I didn't know this for a while, but Trudy lives upstairs with Mary. I guess they're happy with that arrangement. She never said why, but Trudy once told me Mary wanted to experience what she'd always fantasized about but never got the opportunity to try until Dick was killed. Apparently she liked the experience a lot.
I started going to Dick's Bar two years before because my wife had divorced me. "Incompatibility" she said. That was after we'd been married for twenty years. What had really been "incompatible" was me wanting to have sex with her a couple times a week. She came up with this shit that her body was hers and not mine and if and when she decided she wanted me to have sex with her she'd tell me.
There are always two sides to any divorce, and I probably wasn't the same guy she'd married. Time can do that to people. They get married and they're happy and start living life together. They have kids, and the kids keep them happy and together. When the kids are grown and move out, it's just the two of them again and they find out what they used to like they don't like anymore. I probably was the asshole she said, but she was the bitch I thought she was too.
Anyway, after one fight over why she insisted on wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt to bed every night, we came to the conclusion that we couldn't continue to live together. I let her divorce me because she didn't have much of a job and I did. I paid both lawyers, we each kept our cars, and split everything else down them middle. She moved a little over three hundred miles into a duplex our daughter owned, and I moved to 22nd Street because the houses in that part of town are relatively low in cost and that's all the house I could afford.
I usually spent a couple hours down at Dick's Bar on Friday and Saturday night. I'm no big drinker. Hangovers seem to hurt a lot worse when you're forty-eight than when you're twenty. I'd just go down about six, have Liz fix me a hamburger and fries, and drink a couple of beers. After a month, I knew some of the regulars, and we'd talk about what we'd done in the military or what we did at work and how fucking crazy the world was getting.
It was after I'd been going to Dick's for five years, I got a new neighbor. The Madison's, a couple in their seventies, had decided to move to an assisted living home and put their house on the market. It took it forever to sell because it wasn't in the best of shape, but one day when I came home from work, the realtor's sign out front had a "sold" sign on top.
I watched that house for a week before I saw the new owner, and I was surprised to find the new owner was a woman about my age. That Friday, a small moving van pulled up in the drive and two guys unloaded a bed, a couch and a couple of chairs and end tables, and a small dining table with four chairs. On Saturday, she pulled into the drive and started carrying boxes from her car to the house. Just to be neighborly, I walked over to welcome her to the neighborhood and to ask her if she needed any help.
Well, if the truth be told, I walked over because she was a pretty good looking gal and I wanted to meet her. I didn't have any illusions about doing anything with her. I'd just not really talked to a woman socially in five years and I missed that. Sure, I'd talked to women at work, but that was just about work. Saying anything different than something about work would probably have gotten my ass fired because women today don't seem to appreciate the fact a man might find them attractive and don't think he should tell them that like Harry told Marilyn.
Harry got fired for saying Marilyn made his day brighter when she wore a particular dress. Marilyn made my day brighter when she wore that dress too, because the neckline was pretty low and her cleavage showed. All Harry said was "Marilyn, you should wear that dress more often because you look like a movie star in it". Marilyn went to Personnel and demanded some sort of action because Harry was making sexual remarks about her body.
I was standing beside her car when the woman came out of her house, and she frowned when she saw me.
"Who are you and why are you here?"
I hadn't expected that so I stammered a little getting out what I said.
"I...I'm Rick Harrison, your neighbor...that house over there next door. I just...well, I thought I'd say hello and ask you if you needed any help."
She was still frowning.
"No, I don't need any help, thank you very much. I'm busy, so go away."
I really hadn't expected anything like that. She was more of a bitch than my ex. At least my ex had been civil most of the time. I turned to walk away when she said, "you can answer me one question though. Is there anyplace close to get a drink around here?"
I smiled, hoping she'd at least stop frowning, but she didn't.
"Yeah, Dick's Bar, down on the corner."
"Any young kids go there?"
"No, just people my age or older."
She just said, "OK, thanks", picked up another box and started walking up her walk.
As I walked back to my house, I was wondering if she was going to always be like this, or if she just had something bothering her. If she was going to be that kind of neighbor all the time, life on 22nd Street wasn't going to be much fun. I hoped she'd get over whatever it was and be at least a little friendly.
That night, I made my usual walk down to Dick's Bar for a burger and a couple beers. The normal crowd of six older guys was sitting at the tables on one side and talking. I walked to the bar and took the stool I usually used. A few seconds later, Mary sat a frosty mug of Millers in front of me and smiled.
