Oregon Tavern Age: Convoy

Two OTA women were drinking bottled beer and playing video poker.

It was raining outside.

A woman sitting near the bar was telling tall tales about herself. Or maybe they were rock solid true. She’d just got off the wagon.

I was writing an academic paper about the existential brilliance of The Rockford Files.

On screen, Kris Kristofferson and Ali MacGraw were acting in Convoy. Christ almighty, was there ever a better looking couple in the history of Hollywood couples?

The scene where they make it in the sleeping cab of his big rig was playing. Black Sabbath was rocking through the speakers.

Two weird-looking non OTA dudes sat near me and did inexplicable things. They were drinking straight whiskey with tomato juice backs.

Somehow the ventilation changed and I caught a drift of the female conversation. It went like this:

How would you feel about a poker game if every one is vaccinated?

I’m in.

I’ll set up.

What kind of game?

Texas Hold em’.

Good, I like losing. People love me to come to their poker games because I always lose.

Ahhhhhh, normalcy, easily the worst word in the American vernacular, and invented as a campaign slogan to elect one of the worst American Presidents in history, Warren Harding, was returning.

That is both a good and bad thing. Normalcy wasn’t working out so well for most Americans before the Pandemic, but a return of a house poker party for OTA women was a good thing for sure.