A Simple Sample.

Well, some time ago, a reader (Hey okay) asked me to post some writing samples on this blog of mine. Of course I agreed, somewhat excited about the whole idea, but......I froze. What to chose? What to cut and paste? What if nobody likes my stories? What if I suck as a writer? Like I said before, not too much scares me in this world, except snakes. I really don't like snakes. I have faced dangerous situations and like I said, I even survived a Greatful Dead concert, but the thought of putting my work out there scares the living you know what out of me. Anyway, here it goes. What follows is the first four pages of my current manuscript, it's a work in progress.. The spaces in the text indicate page breaks, I really don't feel like editing this to include paragraph indents. This is the way the document appeared after the cut and paste. If I mess with it then I will end up editing it for content, possibly re-writing the entire thing because that's how I am. Nothing I have ever written is good enough for me. I am still waiting to hear from the agency that is currently reviewing a book I wrote. Maybe next time I will post excerpts from that one as well, we'll see. Anyway, Okay, here it is baby.

Oh yeah, just a little reminder. This is all copyrighted material.


So Mike and Bobby were thinking about getting good and drunk when I got there. I grab a pitcher of beer and a mug at the bar. Old Jinks, he slid my change across to me. I said hey and he just nodded like always . I slide a dollar back across the bar, pocket the rest of my change before joining the guys who were sitting at our favorite table.
Bobby, he’s kind of new in town, moved here about a year ago from some place out west. He’s in his late twenties, a decade or two younger than most of us. Bobby fits right in down at the shop. I walked up and sat down at the table. Mike was glad to see the fresh pitcher of draft. I filled my mug then slid the pitcher on over, it lightly bumped into his half full mug as the crack of the cue ball breaking the rack exploded from the pool table right over Mike’s left shoulder. Bobby said that was cool, he chuckled in that funny way that he does.

Murphy’s is the place, two pool tables and a great jukebox. It’s been the tavern where we all hang out for as long as I can remember. No one knows why Jinks decided to call it
Murphy’s. Over the years there’s been lots of speculation, even a few bets laid down. Jinks ain’t talking. Ask him once and he smiles, shakes his head and walks away. Ask him a second time, Jinks sort of growls. Nobody has ever asked a third time. If you knew Jinks you’d know what I mean.
It’s a red brick building, heavy old rafters run the length of the twelve foot ceiling front to back of what was once a garage, until Jinks bought it back in 1971. Jinks lives out back in the one story two bedroom house that came with place. The first thing you notice when you walk into Murphy’s Tavern is the floor. Sixteen inch solid red oak planks, no stain, just natural. The planks are clear coated with a satin finish. You can just about see yourself in that floor, especially at closing time when the lights get turned all the way up. Everybody loves that floor. Must have cost a fortune for all that oak.
The red brick walls are painted white on the inside, covered with old pictures and beer signs. Outside it still looks the same. Jinks re-pointed all the joints, replaced the windows and doors but left the rest alone. The old sign painted right on the brick, white lettering over a black background still reads Bickle’s Auto and Truck Repair. A small wooden sign hangs over the front door that says Murphy’s Tavern in six inch letters. Yeah, it’s a cool old building. You can’t park on the street there. Jinks has ample paved parking to the right as you face the tavern. Over the years he purchased the houses on either side, tore them down and planted trees. Murphy’s is right in the middle of town, but it feels like you’re out in the country.

So Mike had his name up on the chalk board. Mike likes to shoot pool, he’s pretty good at it too. Bobby was feeding the juke box like always, he got up to stuff a fresh five
dollar bill in the music machine. You get three songs for a dollar, twenty songs for five. Everybody at Murphy’s Tavern likes what Bobby plays. All the younger women check him out as he walks across the bar towards the juke box. We have all heard them talk, they all think he’s cute. They really like his slow and deliberate way of speaking, and his manners. Bobby says yes sir and thank you mam, that sort of thing.
Mike is on the table, he’s got a game going with old Hank Orcheck. Hank works for the county, got a good job with the road department. Bobby got himself tangled up with some college girls, he smiled at me from across the room. He motioned to me that they were going outside for a minute. I knew what they were doing, smoking half a joint in Bobby’s van is what they were going to do. He asked me with his eyes, asked me if I wanted to join them. I smiled and passed on the offer. I’m getting too old for that shit. Besides, I don’t know those two girls and they seem a little too young for my company. I don’t care what Bobby does, it’s Saturday night and we ain’t working on Sunday.
Mike has a game, Bobby’s getting stoned and trying to score, I’m alone at our favorite table when Pepper strolls up and sits down. Her given name is Helga, after her mother but nobody ever calls her that. She’s been Pepper since her auburn hair started coming in when she was just a baby. Pepper, it fits her personality too. She’s kind of hot and spicy, not bad looking either. Me and Pepper go way back, known each other since grade school. My father and her father have been friends since we were kids. Everybody wonders, not if but when Pepper and me are going to get together. Everyone says we’d make a good couple. We both wonder too. Sometimes we joke around about it, guess we sort of flirt with each other sometimes. It’s fun, flirting with Pepper.

She tells me that she passed Bobby and the two college girls on her way in. She laughs and says we should take a walk outside in about ten minutes, see if that big van of his is rocking in the parking lot. She knows how to make me blush, gets me every time. I look at her smile, the laugh lines around her pretty hazel eyes, she starts to blush some too. Yeah, me and Pepper, we go way back. I never said the words, but she always knew I liked her. We only kissed once, that was in seventh grade at the Halloween Dance. Somehow we just kept missing each other. She’s so pretty, she was always so popular I never had the guts to ask her out.
Pepper and me, we both ended up marrying our teenage flames like you sometimes do. We both got burned by those flames. I was in the army when I married a dancer down in Columbus Georgia. She was cheating on me from the outset. She came back here to Pennsylvania with me when I finished my four year enlistment. It was over six months later. We never had children, she went back down south and I never heard from her again. Pepper married a guy she met at college, he was from Boston. She was nineteen when their son was born in 1981. Just a few months later her husband punched her in the mouth. Her father made him go away. He went back to Boston and she never heard from him again.
I still don’t know why, but that night at Murphy’s I had a feeling. As soon as I saw Pepper walk out of the kitchen and straight towards me, I had a feeling. We were staring at each other, we were both blushing. I remember my ears felt hot. All the Saturday night sounds of the busy tavern seemed to fade away and she dropped a bomb in my lap. She asked me to marry her, just like that.