but it’s a damn sight better than working bored sick in some topless place when some drunk jumps onto the runway to dance with the Girl, and you’ve got to jump up too, and grin and friendly-like ask him to join you in beer while the poor Girl has a stupefied smile on her face and only a little bikini bottom on her ass, and everyone in the house can see that big weighted flashlight you’re holding behind your back, and you’re wondering if your sphincters are going to hold because that drunk’s got six friends at the bar just as “friendly.”

That happened twice in Weed. I damn near broke character, as well as some poor Indian’s head, before I quit.

Weed was a lot like Crescent City, wet and pungent. Only here the fog is made of ocean spray and clouds crawling upriver on their way to skirmish with the mountains. In Weed the morning haze was pure mosquitoes.

The kids who come to the Yankee Dollar to hear bluegrass and chivy sips of beer from their older brothers and sisters don’t know how to be mean yet. They’re so tied up in teenage smells and teenage aggravation. I remember when I was that age so I try to be tolerant.

It’s funny how tonight I can recollect things like that from twenty years ago, but until recently I had trouble thinking much more than a week either way. Today I saw a jet flying high overhead. A fast little navy fighter, I guess. It got me thinking…

…The growl of engines… launching to a fanfare from Beethoven… laughter and clean flight…

Stop that! Divert! What is the matter with me? Where are these visions coming from?

Ignore ’em. That’s what I’ll do. Nothing like that ever happened… Think about something else. Think about the kids. Think about the kids and bouncer lessons.

I guess I like the kids enough. I watch ’em close, though. The worst they usually do is try to sneak pitchers outside or do J’s in the corner. I put a stop to that fast, and have a rep for the sharpest eye in bouncerdom.