“My Three Bars”

These three old dive bars

spaced just right for my stagger

lined with soft gutters*!

• (The story in the poem is fictional.  The truth is one wintry cold – for Central Florida – night I had finished shucking oysers and steaming other shellfish and bar-backed whilst earning my bartab and my college expenses, I had a mite more to drink than an unredeemable reprobate might.  I left the pickup in the parking lot and walked home, about six blocks with but one four-lane major thoroughfare to cross.  Two or three blocks into the hegira, I knelt down and touched the granite curb and gutter and they felt warm, so I decided a brief nap was in order.  The home across the street belonged to the now-retired school secretary of my main elementary penitentiary, Pine Crest Elementary, and on my side was the former home of the mother of Florida’s recent-past First Lady, Donna Lou Askew’s mom, Mrs. Harper I believe.  Some indeterminate time later as I snoozed, a cop car pulled up and shined its headlights only on me.  Polite people, mostly, Sanford Cops.  I arose.  He used his flashlight to query my face.  He asked. I told him.  “I’m too drunk to drive and when I knelt down to feel how warm the curb and gutter was, I just though, why not a few winks before I get to home across 25th Street.  He got my ID, ran my name, and said: “how many blocks?”  Just three more if you don’t count a little jog, I replied.  He said: “OK. Come on and I’ll follow you home.” He did and I was happy to use the light from his car to find the correct key.  He stayed to make sure I knew which way the front door swung.  Like I said: great cops, almost universally, then and now, in Sanford, Florida, USA.