In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [2]
We were getting into painfully familiar country: ragged vacant lots, clumps of signboards advertising paint, American Legion halls, bowling alleys, all woven together with a compact web of high tension wires, telephone poles, and gas stations.
Home is where the heart is. In fact, not more than two blocks from where we now waited for a light I had spent the festering years of my childhood.
I got out of the cab at the intersection and headed directly for Flick’s Tavern, the tavern whose floors I had helped to clean as a tot, and where I had learned a few of Life’s seamier lessons. Flick himself had been an old boyhood sidekick who had taken over the tavern from his father, long since passed away. I hadn’t seen him since my Army days.
It was a cold, early December day and a few plastic wreaths were in evidence. The sign hanging out over the sidewalk read:
BOOZE
Flick’s sense of humor obviously was still operating.
Inside I instantly saw the place had changed little. The bar was longer, the jukebox bigger; there was a color TV hanging from the wall, but the air was as gamy and rich as ever, if not more so, a thick oleo of dried beer suds, fermenting bar rags, sweaty overalls, and urinal deodorants. I breathed in a deep gulp to clear my brain, kicked some snow off my Italian shoes, and sat down at one of the stools near the window.
Down at the far end of the bar I saw a white-shirted back banging away at what appeared to be some sort of ice cabinet. He glanced up in the gloom and called out:
“What’ll you have?”
“A beer.”
“I’ll be right with you.”
He went on working. Through the window I could see a Used-Car lot where once, I recalled in the dim past, a stand of willows had grown. It was midafternoon, between shifts, so the tavern was empty. I looked back down the bar just in time to see the white-shirted figure draw a stein of draught, topping it off neatly with a good head. He sat it down in front of me.
“How the hell are you, Flick?” I went right at him in a frontal attack.
“Uh … okay. How’re you?”
“Don’t you remember me?”
He looked at me in that long, wary Bartender stare, suspecting, at first, a touch.
“Fer Chrissake!”
“Yep, it’s me. Your old buddy.”
“Fer cryin’ out loud! What the hell’re you doing back here in Hohman, Ralph?”
I will now lightly pass over the ensuing sickening scene of boyhood companions meeting after years of elapsed time. Back-slappings, hollerings, and other classical maneuvers were performed. I told him why I had come back, about the piece I was supposed to do for an Official magazine on The Return Of The Native To The Indiana Mill Town. He snorted. They don’t think of Hohman as a mill town. It’s just Hohman.
He had drawn a beer for himself and another for me, broken out a bag of pretzels, and we began to do some really good, solid Whatever-happened-to …?, Did-she-ever-marry …?, When-did-they-put-in-the-bowling-alley-down-at …?, and all the rest of it. I could see that Flick was wearing a bowling shirt, white, with his team name stitched over the pocket. Bowling is the staff of life, the honey of existence, the raison d’être for most men in Hohman. Flick was no exception.
“Did you ever learn to control that hook, Flick?” I remembered him as a wild fastball bowler who lofted a lot and who had a wicked, uncontrollable hook.
“I’m getting my wood.”
We sat for a long moment, sipping our beer and looking out into the gray, gloomy day. A big red Christmas wreath hung over the cash register.
“Are you gonna be around for Christmas, Ralph?” he asked.
“I hope so.”
He had reminded me of something that had crossed my mind a few days before. The Christmas season does things like that to you.
“Flick, do you remember that BB gun you used to have? That 200-shot Daisy pump gun?”
“That what?”
“Your BB gun.”
“Hell, I still got it. It comes in handy sometimes.”
“You won’t believe it, Flick,