Yesterday evening I was hunkered down in a motel off the freeway, West of Missoula. Around 1900 I wandered over to the bar next door called Freds, to have a drink or two, and I ended up being entertained, frustrated and insulted (I think).
When I walked in, there were four or five guys at the bar watching four flat screens directly in front of them, so I sat down and ordered a drink. It became apparent to me very quickly that one of those guys, a kid around 25, was very drunk and the female bartender was handing him beer cans on a steady basis.
I looked around the place and in an adjoining room, down a couple of steps, there was a small stage with a metal pole in the middle and there was a girl, totaly naked, writhing around on it. Nobody was down there watching her, they were all at the bar watching TV, and from where I sat, she looked pretty cute!
All of a sudden the bartender approached the drunk kid and told him she had screwed up and put another guys tab on his card. She was horrified and for the next 15 minutes she worked on the bars computer to fix the whole mess, and meanwhile nobody got served. Finally, she took the bill to the kid, had him sign a few things, and I swear he was so drunk he didn’t know what was happening.
How could this place continue to serve the guy? I finally walked over to him and asked if he was driving a vehicle. He got pissed at me and yelled It’s none of your business, old man! I just looked at him disgustedly and walked out of the bar. Little did he know that I was prepared to pay for his cab home…
Weird night, anyway, I’m sitting here at Norris Hot Springs now, in spot 13, waiting for Brian to roll his motorcycle in, and then let the soak begin.