When I was a boy most small towns had two or three taverns to every church or grocery store. The store owners ran credit and lived in a fallen down house in town. The preacher took whatever he could and lived in the fallen down parsonage next to the broken down church.
But the tavern owners only took cash and always seemed to have a full house. And speaking of houses, they lived on the top of the hill in the fancy brick home.
So it was some bit of a shock to move to quiet little Quilcene, a logging village on the shore of Hood Canal, and find only one tavern in town.
The Whistling Oyster. A tavern with a great regional reputation. Best fish and chips in the county and hamburgers as big as dinner plates and almost as tall as those served over at Fat Smitty's.
You can imagine my surprise then, when one day we tooled into town and saw the big, "For Sale" sign above the tavern door. All lights were off and no cars in the parking lot. It seems that even unemployed loggers can't afford beer and burgers anymore. Several months ago we lost our only gas station for 20 miles in any direction. No gas, no beer. What's the world coming to?
Curious Carl
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