It was wonderful to be back.
Even though the bar stools were new and you could actually sit on them without sliding off the cracked vinyl and even though the beautiful lady wasn't living over the cash register anymore, the millions of cuts into the old wood tables of millions of initials hadn't been replaced with new shit looking old but clean.
Best of all, the ancient smell of tough drinkers and tenderhearted writers that I knew since I was a teenager drinking with Florence was still the same.
Even the bartender looked familiar.
"I've been coming here since 1975, 1976," I said.
"Me too," he said.
I laughed. "What, since you were five?"
"Yeah," he said. "My dad is J__."
One of the owners.
Those long-ago afternoons when no one was there, just us regulars drifting in late day sun, the Daily News, Post spread out on the bar, Frazier flipping through the gossip pages and the crimes that shouldn't have happened, maybe a late lunch, not even a drink, just the company we all needed to keep during those times.... occasionally, in the corner, were two little boys playing as their father checked out the beer pipes and the 100 year old wiring.
**
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