I mean, you are definitely NOT going to smoke that . . I want to get up and cross the bar, thank him for harvesting wheat, for tilling soil, for doing all the backbreaking years of labor that he wears in his clothes and in his body. He moves with the wariness of a man whose spine and joints frequently disobey him, who has spent more years wearing down than I have spent being alive. I make the silent drunken promise to honor our noble farmers and harvesters on a daily basis, to make a sacrament of my consumption of breakfast cereal and dairy products, to say a little grace in recognition of my farm fresh vegetables. The bartender swiftly runs the table and John Deere retires heavily to his stool.
Next victim has the doughy softness and attire of a middle manager.
His cheap loafers are worn and he wears a spidery dry combover which does nothing to hide the age spots speckling his pate. He misses his first shot and then starts loudly critiquing the non-regulation length of the table and the poor quality of the cues. Victim number two goes down. And, perhaps because my narrative needs drama or perhaps because I am drunk enough not to care, I cross the bar and sacrifice four bits to the machine and hear that sound of the balls dropping and rolling. I rack and shake hands with the bartender.