Happy Hour was a charming decrepid pool hall in downtown Gainesville. Was, as in long gone now to the machines of progress and commerce. Worn linoleum battered floor, decent tables, and a jukebox that didnt get much service or rotation. There were bag chips, a jar of beef jerky and two varieties of chees crackers for food selection. Three brands of cigarettes. Three beers on draft but no glasses. Draft was served in a short pitcher that the spout lip had been ground off of in the back maintenance room. Various beers and sodas in bottles and cans in a reach in cooler. Refreshments followed a trend of what was popular with the crowd of college kids at night the regular locals or the neighboring establishments employees that wiled away hours on occassion. I generally spent five hours or more a day, weekdays after work. Sometimes reading, sometimes writing, playing pool with the bartender or other regulars.
Generally open around three or four p.m. depending on owner or present bartenders mood or schedule.
There were two small televisions mounted on either side of the short two-sided bar that generally played animal planet shows, comedy central or our 7pm favorite Jeopardy. There were stools for the railing ledge that extending around two sides of the open room, an old gymnasium wooden set of fold down seats and my favorite, an old barbers chair at one end of the open end of the bar.
The kind of place you could leave your pool stick on the shelf behind the beer cooler and no matter its value it would be there whenever you needed it. If the bartender was busy you served yourself and noted your drinks by hashmark slashes next to your name on the notepad next to the register.
Something about toilet seats must have offended someone from the rowdy college set that frequented on the weekends. Every so often on a Monday I noticed that the toilet seat was always obliterated of its mounting fixtures and removed and left cast aside leaning on the wall under the sink. The owner told me he gave up trying to maintain it and wasn't going to repair it anymore. I salvaged four good seats from a doctors office building I renovated and brought them to use in repairs at the poolhall. After I replaced two in two months time I gave up on the task myself. It didn't bother the local regulars. If a toilet with a seat was necessary, they used the womens bathroom. After about eight months I considered myself a local regular but had never seen or needed to use, the womens bathroom.
I was scribbling in one of my dystopian journals one late afternoon and another regular, I can't recall her name now, asked to borrow one of the pens I had at my disposal on the bar. She had just returned from the ladies room and immediately returned. When she came back several minutes later, returning my pen, she commented, "That'll fix her."
I was clueless and it showed. I guess I finally earned the rite of passage because I was directed to go take a look at the womens room. I was astonished when I walked in. This was not the handywork of your average male testosteroned gorilla that wrote a scathing derogatory one liner about a girl or some homophobic diatribe. The walls were covered in fine neatly written print. I had to actually sit on the stool to follow the story from one wall to another. One cut down, its reply and the general observations made, back and forth in between. It was the work of no more than three regulars and the smittering of odd retorts thrown in by a person or two who couldn't resist the temptation to jump in.
It became a weekly ritual to go have a look to see what the latest add-ons were. I sometimes wonder who the other culprits were and wondered if I ever ran across them in my time in the poolhall.
One things' for sure: These girls played rough. Boys that scribbled on the bathroom wall would never win an argument with any of the girls that posted on that bathroom wall. Hands Down.
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