{"id":7405,"date":"2021-10-19T06:54:39","date_gmt":"2021-10-19T13:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=7405"},"modified":"2021-10-19T06:54:41","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T13:54:41","slug":"oregon-tavern-age-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/oregon-tavern-age-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Oregon Tavern Age: Home"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-7405\" data-postid=\"7405\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-7405 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n\n\n<p>The RC Cola man showed up around noon wearing an RC t-shirt and ball cap. I did a double take. I didn&#8217;t even know RC Cola was still around, let alone on the gun in a dive bar in OTA country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I sat at the bar of a weathered joint situated on one of the most squalid and dangerous streets in Oregon. I drank a craft malt liquor, wrote in my journal, and surveyed the joint, a real choice dive and undoubtedly the residence of hard luck cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What exactly is hard luck?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A couple of homemade posters decorated the door to the women&#8217;s restroom: 1) One advertised a jewelry-making class for an upcoming Sunday night\u2014in the dive. There was a sign-up sheet and incredibly, it was filled. 2) The other poster advertised a lost dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fox News played televised stories about murder, mislabeled cannabis products and Covid stupidity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I noticed a stack of board games and classic gumball machines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The biscuits and gravy special sold for $5. Pudding shots sold for $1.50 each. Pudding shots? That was a first for me in OTA country. I imagined specimens cups full of chocolate pudding doused with Fireball or Frangelico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Forgive them Lord of All Things Godly Liquor, they know not what they do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An OTA man to my left was drinking a double screwdriver and eating macaroni salad from a container.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A few OTAs played the slots in silence and without drinks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I suppose now I should describe the female OTA bartender. I can&#8217;t. She was beyond my literary powers. For one thing, I couldn&#8217;t find words to fathom her hair style. There was a shaved part, frosted tips, colors of the rainbow and&#8230;well&#8230;forget it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some photographs behind the bar and around the joint caught my eye. I somewhat inspected them and they bore the unmistakable look of dead former patrons who were legendary hellraisers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Something else in the joint caught my eye. It was a chalkboard listing all the October birthdays and decorated with orange ghosts, spiders and pumpkins drawn by the hand of an obvious artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lost dogs. Jewelry-making classes. All Star dead patrons. A list of birthdays. Board games. Comfort liquor pudding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was a dive bar, but it was also home.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The RC Cola man showed up around noon wearing an RC t-shirt and ball cap. I did a double take. I didn&#8217;t even know RC Cola was still around, let alone on the gun in a dive bar in OTA country. I sat at the bar of a weathered joint situated on one of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7406,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-7405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-tavern-age","tag-oregon-tavern-age","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7405"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7408,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405\/revisions\/7408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}