A Life Interrupted Nothing Is As It Appears

Outside in the fresh air it was a cold, dark and uninviting December early morning. I took a deep breath, exhaled, and wished for a smoke of which I had none. A pleasant, mild burning sensation from the beer warmed my guts. To my left a street light cut a conical form of light in the darkness emanating from the bulb at the top of the pole. A row of similar light forms stood as sentinels against the darkness down the road behind it off into the distance.  Same thing in the opposite direction. The streets were empty. Not a soul could be seen. There was an eerie silence. I rolled up the collar on my jacket against the cold and started off at a leisurely pace to the right in the direction of the city center.  Having been in the city for over a week I knew that along the way I would run into a derelict 18 wheeler truck cab abandoned in a small field where, being homeless, I planned to spend the night protected from the elements. It had a bolster and would keep me dry if it rained as it often did in Langley, a veritable five star Hilton to me compared to the places I had become accustomed to sleeping in and the concrete floors I had known. read more

Dots of light flew in the dim light before my eyes from the rotating disco ball in the ceiling above the dance floor and danced across the dirty walls and the worn floor. I could just sense the bass of the music pounding in my chest as AC/DC’s song Highway To Hell raged out of the sound system, the only new equipment in the place, as it stood out in relief against a backdrop of the outworn and outmoded accoutrement of the rest of the bar. Around the edge of the dance floor gut high, scarred, and dented wooden tables with patches of the finish worn off the tops punctuated the otherwise empty room. The stools around the tables stood largely empty and expectant awaiting the patrons that would not come. There might have been six people in attendance besides the staff in an establishment that could easily hold a hundred. The place smelled of cigarette smoke and stale beer. The walls were covered in pictures of rock superstars of a bygone era.  The bar appeared long in decline and held a worn look of a place well past its heyday. In my youth I would have called the place a dive.  Today I just called it a place to get cheap beer. read more