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Sometimes being Bellied Up to a Bar brings Inspiration

Sometimes when I'm seated at a bar and get an idea for a character, I wonder to myself, "Is this how Ernest Hemingway started in Key West?"  I would then imagine a bunch of six-toed cats running freely throughout a home on the edge of lapping waves where sunrises and sunsets are celebrated daily by the locals.


While Hemingway wrote classics while he lived in his tropical paradise, he certainly is THE master of the written word and I am just another wordsmith.  But, I do think we share the propensity for observing others at any cost.  It is this quality that brought to me some of the characters in "The Long Road from Perdition".  I remember I was seated at a bar in New York where a couple of gals were tending bar.  Both were older than the average barkeep and that much more interesting to watch in action.


One of the ladies was dressed a bit too young for her age and had a pair of eyes that she used to stare down an unruly customer or to flirt shamelessly with a new face sitting across from her.  I watched with interest as she mixed drinks, slammed them down and put the gents in their place. I swore if I ever had a book where I could fit in these bar lovelies, that I would.  Voila!, she became 'Bug-eyed Sue.'  The other woman was older than her counterpart but oozed a sensuality that left every man vying for her attention.


I was fascinated. These women had every customer whether male or female, wrapped around their french manicured fingers. The sultry one gave me a look and actually made me blush.  "Oh look, the quiet one is shy..." I was hooked, I grinned like an idiot turning more crimson by the second.


Everytime I go back to New York, I make a point of seeing the gals.  Funny, the bar is not in the best area of town, but these gals are woman enough to keep their customers firmly under their spell.  I always look forward to gazing at the sultry one and her friend with the eyes.  It makes the scotch I'm drinking go down that much smoother under the slow moving fans which conjure memories of Key West.

JRS

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