The Cowboy Bar and Grill

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This is the continuation of our 'big night out' tale from the previous post.
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Above is a better view of the adobe walls and beams for Mushy and thud. In this photo, you can see how the thick adobe walls support a healthy beam across the large opening to the kitchen. You can also see the hand adzed marks on the central beam holding up the long main beam running from the back of the kitchen to the front of the house. The plaster finish on the walls attests to how solid this building is; almost no cracks in the wall finishes other than in a very low door header for which Slim claims responsibility in the course of a previous 'relaxing' evening. He even lifted his hat and showed me the original contact point on his forehead. Sold.

I was pleasantly surprised that I also captured a glimpse of the brick floor in this shot. Adobe buildings of this age were generally built directly on dirt; walls, floors and all. These dark glazed bricks were stacked together tightly without mortar in the last decade over the original age-hardened dirt floors. They are beautiful!
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. Slim returned from his grill management duties and settled into the dining room with his pile of spuds to peel with his picket knife. Without the young Tyrell here to help out, he surveyed the remaining help and decided that he was best suited to the task. Mark had already found some armaments annual to become engrossed in and clearly placed himself outside of the labor pool for the next hour.

Somewhere in all this, I perked up as I heard planes overhead. Slim looked up and grinned "Yep, that's some of your military birds out there." He knows. I looked disgustedly at their two dogs who did not warn me as Brou would have and then ran outside. Cool! What was taking place overhead was an aerial refueling! I had watched a mid-air refueling from the boom pod before but never got to see one from the ground so I ran back in to get my camera. Sigh, the photo sucked SOOO badly (likely caused by my buck fever moment) so I won't even post it here.

Meanwhile, back in the ranch house, the conflict of the chefs flared continually over when to put Clay's burgers on the grill. I sided with Slim in that rushed and raw potatoes would assail my sensitive stomach in horrid ways, and for several days to follow. With that thought in mind, Slim soon took to munching on raw potatoes, making sure to stand near-by to let their raw crunch ring in my ears as I sliced up his various peppers.

Somewhere in there, an impromptu auction banter was set up by Clay over the contents of the pass-through shelf to the dining room. I knew better than to stand in front of Mark and accidentally up his bids so I played ring man instead, responding to bids and calls for half-price and choice and yelling "Yep, yep!" and pointing to either Mark or Slim. Okay, so now you are getting an idea of why these suppers are not exactly drive-through fast food events. And maybe that is the whole idea - anti-rush.

Probably, oh, an hour later, we sat down at the table and had supper; Clay's burgers and green beans and Slim's canyon-famous grilled potatoes. Awesome good, all of it! Then it was time to head out and up to the bar, up those exterior stairs which I swear will kill one of us eventually. My gimpy knee likes neither the first nor the very last step spacing but, so far, so good (touch wood).

The pool table got a work-out that night. While Slim and Mark had a round of pool, Clay beckoned me over to the round poker table in one corner as he laid out cards and chips. ???! "You talkin' to me, bud?" "Well, of course! Sit down here!" "Uhm, I don't play poker ..." "C'mon .. five card stud?" "Nope". "99?" "Nope." He went through the litany of possibilities without a taker until I feebly offered "I can play solitaire ... ?". I gathered that this was the wrong answer as he let his head hit the poker table with a painful-sounding thud and sighed loudly, the cards sprawling out from his limp hand.

Meanwhile, Slim had donned his bright yellow flannel gloves gained from the kitchen auction. He would hold court at the long side of the pool table for the rest of the evening, holding up a hand in over-sized yellow flannel and offering guidance to the current shooter such as "Ohhh, Big Bird here wouldn't go for that shot, nope, unh-uh." As the evening progressed, he would admit his declining skills by placing his cowboy hat on backwards, putting his dark shades on and singing "Se-e-h-ven Spanish A-a-a-n-gels!" a la Ray Charles before a shot. Clay, on the other hand, and despite some heel teetering which I expected to turn into a backwards collapse at any minute, became more lethal in his shots as the evening wore on. Go figure. This was a vast improvement over his earlier flat-out-on-his-back sprawl after he had scooped up the supper condiments and then tripped over the low step into the kitchen. All four of us were suspended in amazed silence until (you know that someone had to break the shock and decorum here) I broke out in loud hysterics. At least it got everyone moving and abusing again. And poor Clay would wear and bear the abuse of being covered in condiments for the rest of the evening.

Other than that and my own gastric indignities suffered later on (I WARNED you that I had a sensitive stomach, didn't I?) which involved a short but brilliant aria from the second story balcony and some too curious ranch dogs below, the evening went splendidly and memorably. We followed Slim back up the canyon at a fairly safe distance until his turn-off and flicked the generator on back home at the Rat by 3AM. Wow! What a memorable evening out!
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This unimpeded view of the cowboy bar is for Buck. You can now get a better idea of the woodburning finesse of the young lady who sketched in the steer and the bucking bronc. Two of her prints were hanging in weathered window frames around the bar room as well ... VERY talented.

The face of the bar was built with new 1 bys and framed in weathered boards, a well-used rope edged the top, welded half-horse shoe brackets held up the rail at the bottom. You can even see where one brand was held in place a speck longer than necessary and flared a little. All in all, a very unique bit of work. Now I can't wait to start on our own saloon some day!
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