There Ain't No Devil, It's Just God When He's Drunk

There is a bar in our little town of population 300 that I have always wanted to investigate, but never had the cajones to enter. It's not quite the bar seen above, but Red's was another one from my ol' stomping grounds of Sonoma County that I also always wanted to check out but never did. The bar in BV is like Red's but with less windows (see far left), and thus less natural light. Perfect.

Saturday night was the magic night. My friend Melissy was up from San Francisco and for lack of anything better to do, we headed down to the ol' BV bar . We pulled into the parking lot, as did the car behind us. We got out at the same time as Russel, a 40something chubby redneck already hammered drunk. Lovely. He introduced himself and all but carried us into the bar, he was so eager to get 'two lovely new young ladies' inside.

Inside was dark. That's what happens when it's night, there are only 3 foot-sized windows, and the only light is coming from the two TVs tuned to Bull Riding and the neon of the lights in the window advertising Bud Light. There were no beers on tap, everything came in a bottle, and there were only 5 other patrons. Russel was quick to introduce us to EVERYONE in the bar. Then we found out that there was going to be a live band playing and to expect the place to be hopping. The anticipation was definitely mounting.

Melissy and I sat down, ordered some bottles, and immersed ourselves in true Redneck good times. The first thing I noticed was Linda, our Meth-head mulleted bartender in flannel, was puffing away on a cigarette. In fact, almost all of the other patrons were. Because even though smoking in any public establishment is illegal in CA, silly rules that that don't pertain to redneck bars. The next was the small earthquake that happened every time Russel threw down his cup of dice...in some strange game that he and a fellow named Mike were engrossed in. I tried to see what it was all about, but from what I could tell, they just shook a can of dice, slammed it down, then repeated.

Eventually the members of the band trickled in. And in all honesty, they really weren't that bad. Sure, they didn't have a drummer, and all the drums/rhythm was either pre-set on the lead musician's keyboard or being "drummed" out on the keyboard itself, it's setting changed to the 'beat' setting, but hey- who cares? The electric guitarist and bassist were pretty darned good, and the master of the keyboard had the ability to sing, play the flute (although a wee bit Anchorman style), the keyboard, and a guitar at the same time. They rocked out to Steppenwolf, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Rosemary Clooney (sang by who I assumed was Mike's 70 yrs old mother), and Bob Seger. Meanwhile, the drinks keep coming, and Russel kept interrupting us every 3 minutes to dance with him.

Russel dancing was more like being twirled around by a giant 4th grader who believes that this is how grown-ups are supposed to dance. I held firm that 'fun was a borgouise notion' ( sorry, Being Human quote), while Melissy, who gets persuaded easily, let Russel dance with her. I thought when he picked her up, he was going to run out of the bar and we'd never see Melissy again.

I have to say, it was a fun night. It was everything stereotypically redneck that you would expect from a little country bar: The folks there were illiterate ( Al, after finding out Melissy was a teacher, spoke to her for over an hour about why his son can't read at age 14, even though he beats him every night to 'knock sense into him' - we didn't think Al could read either), most of them were missing teeth, Mike was 300lbs overweight and in overalls, Russel told us that he had to keep his flannel shirt buttoned up because he had spilled BBQ on his white shirt and didn't have a woman around to 'unstain' it for him, Melissy and I singled ourselves out by ordering a Sierra Nevada and Hefeweizen instead of Bud Light ( Al said that he started on Bud when he was 6yrs old, but now is on to Bud Light because of his beer belly- same story for everyone else in there it seemed), and fights almost broke out because someone looked at someone/disrespected him in some manner.

But for the most part, everyone was SUPER friendly (if not overtly so), were excited to have new people in the bar.

I told granny where we had been the next morning.
'Oh, I've always wanted to go in there'
'Grandma, you NEVER went into any bars at home, why would you want to go into that one?'
'It just looks so interesting. Were there lots of alcoholics?'
'Yeah'
'And drug heads?'
'Yeah'
'And I heard someone was murdered there.'
'What?!?!And you want to go there why again?'
'Oh, for fun.'

Go granny go!