Joshua grew up about fifteen minutes driving from a bar called The Shrew. The Shrew itself was located in small laundromat/fast-food complex built sometime in the 1980s. It was a den for odd-looking old men and teenagers, with no one in between. Slowly, laundry found its way into people’s houses and that laundromat stuck out more and more and one week in the middle of summer, a brown-stained bag was discovered by a few teenagers behind the laundromat; that day end with a crowd of teenagers watching two rugged looking police officers hauling some greasy launderers into a dusty police car.
The complex only consisted of the burger joint and teenagers for awhile. The quiet hum had long since given way to silence and brown paper drapes hung across …show more content…
Robert decided to buy a TV and hang it up over the bar, mostly for his entertainment as he worked ever more quiet nights. Yet the TV caused the teenagers who hung around the burger joint to swarm like moths to a light. Robert slouched, bit by bit, button by button, as the bar slowly filled with the jeering of teenagers sipping on cheap beer and watching whatever sports match happened to be relevant that night. The sunset hid behind a forest of ripped jeans, sweaty tee-shirts, and baseball …show more content…
Yet, it lasted long enough that The Shrew became a popular spot for the now grown of the initial wave. The furniture improved, the tenants wore their blue collars one button down, but the TV remained, still buzzing out the low-definition play-by-play of the night’s chosen entertainment. It was from this bar that Joshua’s father came home from most nights.
Joshua knew the smell of Coors well, just as well as he knew the bite of an open hand, and the bark of a five-o’clock muzzle. It was the proud work of a construction-worker to destroy, to show weakness. The sores and the aches of a man who built walls, but could never make one to hold himself, were medicated with cheap beer and the perpetual abuse of a scared little boy. Those tears that Joshua let washed out the dust from the heart, but grew pains, eroded deeper wounds into the stone heart of that
The complex only consisted of the burger joint and teenagers for awhile. The quiet hum had long since given way to silence and brown paper drapes hung across …show more content…
Robert decided to buy a TV and hang it up over the bar, mostly for his entertainment as he worked ever more quiet nights. Yet the TV caused the teenagers who hung around the burger joint to swarm like moths to a light. Robert slouched, bit by bit, button by button, as the bar slowly filled with the jeering of teenagers sipping on cheap beer and watching whatever sports match happened to be relevant that night. The sunset hid behind a forest of ripped jeans, sweaty tee-shirts, and baseball …show more content…
Yet, it lasted long enough that The Shrew became a popular spot for the now grown of the initial wave. The furniture improved, the tenants wore their blue collars one button down, but the TV remained, still buzzing out the low-definition play-by-play of the night’s chosen entertainment. It was from this bar that Joshua’s father came home from most nights.
Joshua knew the smell of Coors well, just as well as he knew the bite of an open hand, and the bark of a five-o’clock muzzle. It was the proud work of a construction-worker to destroy, to show weakness. The sores and the aches of a man who built walls, but could never make one to hold himself, were medicated with cheap beer and the perpetual abuse of a scared little boy. Those tears that Joshua let washed out the dust from the heart, but grew pains, eroded deeper wounds into the stone heart of that