I am surrounded with knurled, knobbled wood. My table is the cross-section of a wizened but very large tree. I like wood. It is a large room, and I’m sitting about equidistant from the front door and the bandstand. No doubt they will be playing both kinds of music here later tonight – Country and Western. Any thought I had about sitting at the bar was quickly extinguished when I saw that the barstools are saddles. I’m sitting some fifteen feet from the bar now, watching the male guests subtly adjusting themselves when they think no one is looking.
It seems like it would be hard to fall off a barstool like that, but I bet the real show is at closing time when drunk tourists try to climb down. I bet when they fall there are lots of jokes like “It threw you, pardner!” Hilarity ensues.
Downtown Jackson so far hasn’t impressed me much. It is faintly reminiscent of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a hell-hole of contrived tourist traps if ever there was one. The comparison became all stronger when I passed the Ripley’s Believe It of Not! Museum. I for one find it difficult to believe that anyone would pay money to go into a place like that. Still, what can you do?
Better get to writing. Or, writin’, considering where I am.
Post script. I am in a bar with no regulars. None that I can identify, anyway, and I think I’m qualified on the subject. No one who has gone to the bar has been comfortable with the saddles. I scanned the tables for any signs of regularhood, but I found none. This is a total tourist bar. The kind of bar the locals deride.
Note to those wondering were the hole is: technically, the town is Jackson, the valley in which it sits is Jackson Hole. Since all the promotion encompasses the surrounding area, Jackson Hole is what they (and you) use.
