Looking through the glass

 In days past, in the small town where I was born, I would walk the streets, looking into the windows of local bars. Men after their shifts at the factory gathered to tip a few after a hard day's work, some just looking to waste time before going home to a houseful of kids and a wife who went from prom queen to housewife, exchanging high heels and peek-a-boo blouses for a well-worn housecoat. I couldn't wait until I was old enough to prop myself on a stool and order an ice-cold beer served in a frosted glass mug. As I continued to watch through the window, I'd see someone playing the jukebox so loud that the glass I was standing by vibrated until the bartender turned it down. The bar itself was very old and had been in one family since it was built sometime in the 1890s. The walls and the floor were made of wood, as was the long bartop, which the bartender seemed to wipe every few minutes. Sitting on the bar were several large glass containers filled with hard-boiled eggs and pigs' feet that made me gag just looking at them. I don't think I ever saw anyone actually eat one.

There were wooden tables, most scarred with cigarette burns, and at some tables black indentations of a girl's name or a heart that said Mom. A little carving and a lot of drinking. I saw men playing checkers for money and poker games that sometimes went on well into the night, some smiling, and one leaving the bar wondering how he'd tell his wife he'd gambled his paycheck away. I looked into that bar through rain and shine, seeing the same old faces that to this day sit on the same stool they did when they turned 21 and looking the same as they do now, fifteen years later.

Remembering back when I finally became of age, I walked into that bar that I had only been able to look inside for so long. I picked out a stool, looking around and avoiding being anywhere close to pigs' feet and hard-boiled eggs. The bartender asked for my ID, which I gladly showed him, and asked, "What will it be, son?" Your first one is on the house. Sitting there, I smelled the smells of a bar, something I could only imagine as smells don't pass through glass. The smell of cigarettes and cigars, old wooden floors, and the scents of hard-working men that couldn't care less how they smelled.

I became a regular at that old bar right up to the day the city claimed the place would have to shut down as a new highway was going to cut right through there. The owner got a hefty offer to buy him out, and that was that. I stopped at the closed bar one more time, looking through the glass and remembering the faces, the smells, and the genuine laughter of hard-working men tipping a few cold ones and possibly eating a pig's foot or hard-boiled egg that made me gag one last time.

Mike 2026