The Men

As a kid sitting in a yellow vinyl booth in the back of Earl’s Tavern, you watch the late-afternoon drunks coming and going, sunlight breaking through the smoky dark as the door opens and closes, and it’s the future flashing ahead like the taillights of a semi as you drop over a rise in the road on your way to Amarillo, bright lights and blonde-haired women, as Billy used to say, slumped over his beer like a snail,make a real man out of you