The neighborhood ain't that big but is fully of entertaiment, if you are old enough you can even call on your own terms, you only need a little Manuelito.

One wonders in a hot late afternoon with the butt almost asleep by the long hours of rocking-chair sitting, the blessing of a bladder the size of Texas being a plus after emptying the cooler of my Coors, it was now time to go visiting a man about a horse, and with a grunt, or it was the old bones rearranging themselves inside, I was up and going.
It is one of the best pleasures of life, when that Hoover-dam below on you is at the bursting point and you open the old spigot and feel like a balloon is deflating somewhere inside, just like finishing making love…that gooooooooood.

The missus was out, probably rearranging the local news with other missus about who sleeping with whom, how many months to the big event of Mrs. Whatisname’s unmarried daughter and the new hunk of a butcher after the old weight-cheat one kicked the proverbial bucket.

The orange cat was sitting this side of Willard’s picked fence looking at me with its kind of Chinese inscrutable eyes or amusing itself with the though of this old geezer falling flat on his beer drinking kisser. Well…shoo to him! Now that he had found his fighting side surely wasn’t a moronic dude to challenge a man holding a two-barrel, mean, full loaded kind of a shotgun born on the other side of the blanket. Was he? My bladder told me to hurry up.

After the man-with-a-horse business was time to call Marty, Joe and Manuel to arrange meeting time for our weekly billiard night out.
Mind you our bar ain’t a fancy one, just enough bottles to drown your sorrows if you got some, a few tables and one billiard table with its green color long time ago paled to ghostly hues and a thinning fabric that let the balls make the sound of an bowling alley as they went.
No matter what time of the day it was, that table was busy; so, if you had a yearn to play some you needed a weekly plan to do so.

There weekly plan includes Little-“Manuelito”, a six foot three-hundred seventy some pounds kind of slow on the top floor fellow, strong as a bull and looking like an overweighed one, always good humored living under Manuel’s roof which took him in after finding him, many winters ago, squatting on a run down house full of rats.
Since then, “Manuelito” did odd jobs and gave a helping hand to others as a thank you for kindness received or not, as I said, good humored.
By noon or thereabouts of billiard’s night, say, no latter than 2 PM, Manuel would had prepared a big Mexican dish, which included chili, like road-kill meat, and a most generous percentage of Jeremiah’s weight in mean, colon-expanding beans.

After eating super we all would then head to our Social Club of Choice with a signs hanging over its entrance door proclaiming that you were entering some fancy dive, Royal Promenade no less, maybe the wife of the barky was one of those that reads romance novels by the pound.
Our bar isn’t Royal for all what it means, and a Promenade were only leading to the Rest Room after consuming a few pitchers of bath-tube brewed beer.
That beer was stronger that paint remover, but cheap, after a while you would feel like a hustler a la Fast-Eddie in the Color of Money flick.

Because of distance, Joe and me would arrive together while Manuel, arriving much earlier would shot the wind with Marty coming to a halt a minute or two before puffing his indescribable nauseous cigar.
We could hear the commotion of voices, laughter and banter screams from about hundred yards away telling us that Friday night was weekly payday for some as usual and were drowning their happiness on a bath tub.
We could also hear now and then the paste ball clicking on each other as we approached the open door that, to an uninitiated, will look as if fire had broken inside by the sight of the smoke escaping in waves, like even for the smoke the place was too crowded.

We then will proceeded, all four of us, elbowing our way until our bellies were firmly supported against the long bar (light varnished wood before, but now after a dedicated refusal to ever wipe dry the damn thing was dark as the face of a coal miner after a double shift)
As we were trying to call the attention of the barman waiving a green Abby for four big pitches of beer, Manuel eyes had been scouting for little “Manuelito” which was sitting against the wall by the cues-rack with a few empty soda bottles and a reddened face like a constipated whale that “for God’s sake!” was on the straight home.
Little “Manuelito” looked directly at Manuel with the same eyes of a Christian looking at Caesar when the lions cage door kind of opened, saw Manuel’s little nod, like saying hello? and the fat young man face broke into a smile of relief.

We had got our beer pitchers, and as every Friday evening we patiently waited for the billiard game to finish and could claim our turn.
The noise inside the bar was too great to understand anything the good people was shouting or laughing about, but suddenly the four players suddenly stopped and accusatory looking at each other’s demonstrative “no me!!!” wrung their faces in utterly disgust with one of them washing the shoes of his friend with a well aimed down a beer puke or what he had, as we knew “Manuelito” would fart until the cows refused to come to that smelly home. “Manuelito” perfumed roses wouldn’t bother us because we had all eat from the same pot and were clearing a path ourselves.
But seeing the former players kind of jumping up and down, like the floor was covered with hungry crocs, withdrawal…I don’t know why it made me think about balls, bouncing balls.