What Money.

So Bobby, Hank, Mike and me. We followed Jinks across the alley behind the bar. We followed him into his two car garage, entering through the walk in door at the side. Jinks turned the lights on and my jaw dropped. The others were caught off guard too. I heard somebody whistle low.


Standing in the middle of the garage was a chopped out custom 1941 Harley Davidson. A real old school knuckle. No big rake. Just chopped, the way the old guys did it back in the day. The whole bike was black and chrome. Screaming Eagle intake and straight pipes riding low under the frame down the right hand side.

The handle bars were not stock. They swung a little higher. Not ape hangers for sure, just higher than the original.. The bike didn't sport any fancy gauges, none of that crap. Just a speedometer sitting on top of the tree between the handle bars. Yeah, we were looking at some real nice work here. I couldn't help but wonder how Jinks had done it without any of us knowing anything. We were the only shop in the area who did that type of custom work. Then it hit me. My father.

Jinks smiled at me. He winked and that answered my question. The old man had helped him build this ride. Jinks walked over to the fridge that stood against the back wall next to the stairs that went up to the room above the garage. He opened the fridge and grabbed a six-pack of Rolling Rock beer. He tossed a can to each of us and retrieved something from the top drawer of his big red tool chest. Whatever it was that he took out of there was slid into his shirt pocket.

I was thinking about the money. Whatever that meant. I was thinking maybe Jinks had hit the numbers and built himself this bike. When I asked him he said no. That's when things got a little weird.

Jinks turns on a small work light. A trouble light. You know, a bare bulb in an orange plastic case that hangs from the ceiling on a cord. He turns off the big overhead fluorescent shop lights and makes sure the old shades are all pulled down on the three windows in that garage. He turns on the old stereo that sits on a shelf made of plywood hanging over the workbench. It was the oldies station. Dion was singing The Wonderer. Jinks turned the volume down a little. He grabbed a folding lawn chair and motioned us all to do the same. We did.

Once we were all sitting in a half assed circle, smoking cigarettes and sipping our beers, that's when Jinks reached into his shirt pocket. He tossed it to me. It was a key. Jinks got up and checked the garage doors. He then walked over and locked the walk in door we had used when we got there. Mike had enough.

Jinks. What the fuck is going on here old man? We all laughed, including Jinks. Leave it to Mike to bust the tension. Jinks sat down and said he wanted to tell us a story. He said we all had to promise to listen until he was done. No interupting and no questions. He looked at Mike when said that. Jinks then asked Bobby if he had a joint. Bobby got a little red in the face and said no. Bobby said he knew that Jinks didn't want that shit in his bar. Jinks told him to knock it off, light a joint and pass it around.

Bobby lit up and passed it to his left. Mike took a hit and held it tight while he passed on to Hank. Hank said he couldn't. Hank said he couldn't risk losing his county job. Jinks told Hank not to worry. Jinks said that before we all knew it, we would never have to worry about money again. Hank took a hit and coughed a little. He said it had been years since he'd smoked. Hank passed it to me and I took one quit hit before handing to my left. Jinks took it and said he hadn't smoked since 1967 in Vietnam. The joint went around two more times before Jinks stubbed it out on the garage floor. I kept looking at that key. You could tell that something was stamped in it. It was so old and worn out you couldn't tell if it was letters or numbers. I slid it into my own shirt pocket because it started to drive me nuts. Bobby grabbed another six-pack from the fridge and Jinks told us his story while the oldies cut through the smoke in that old garage.

Bobby At The Bar.

Bobby must have heard the celebration. He must have left those college girls out in the van. Jinks asked Bobby to watch the bar. Bobby was more than happy to comply. Our regular Saturday night at Murphy's turned into one hell of a party. Mike's wife Kelly showed up because he called her and told her what was going on. Kelly and Pepper headed for the kitchen with Hank in tow. Hank had worked for Jinks in the past. Hank knew his way around Murphy's. Kelly put Hank to work on the grill so that Pepper could enjoy the party. Hank was more than happy to help out.

Jinks didn't seem to mind that Bobby had found the hidden juke box remote behind the bar. He was kicking out free tunes, and he'd even cranked the volume up. Yeah, old Jinks was enjoying himself. We were all having a real good time. I can honestly say it was the second best night of my life. I didn't know it then. The best night was yet to come.

Pepper and me ended up at a table together. We actually had a few minutes to ourselves. Mike and Kelly made sure we were left alone for a little while. There we were planning our wedding. There we were talking about the rest of our lives together when Jinks strolled up with a whisky grin and a twinkle in his eye. He asked Pepper if she'd told me about the money. I sat stone faced while she kissed his cheek and said no. She had not yet told me about the money. Jinks laughed and said that it was about time I knew. Pepper agreed and waved Kelly over to the table.

I must have looked nervous or something. Pepper gave me a smile that said everything is okay. She stood up and whispered in Kelly's ear. Kelly headed back towards the bar and I saw her send Bobby out back into the kitchen. Jinks told me to go out back behind the bar and wait for him there.

I cut through the knitchen and saw Hank heading out back. When I got outside Bobby and Mike were already there. Before anyone had a chance to ask just what the hell was going on we heard Jinks walking around from the parking lot. Jinks told us all to follow him. We did.

Mike, Bobby, Pepper and Me.

And Everything Else
copyright 2007


So Mike and Bobby were thinking about getting good and drunk when I got there. I grab a pitcher of beer and a mug at the bar. Old Jinks, he slid my change across to me. I said hey and he just nodded like always . I slide a dollar back across the bar and pocket the rest of my change, before joining the guys who were sitting at our favorite table. Bobby, he’s kind of new in town, moved here about a year ago from some place out west. He’s in his late twenties, a decade or two younger than most of us. Bobby fits right in down at the shop. I walked up and sat down at the table. Mike was glad to see the fresh pitcher of draft. I filled my mug then slid the pitcher on over, it lightly bumped into his half full mug as the crack of the cue ball breaking the rack exploded from the pool table right over Mike’s left shoulder. Bobby said that was cool, he chuckled in that funny way that he does.

So Mike had his name up on the chalk board. Mike likes to shoot pool, he’s pretty good at it too. Bobby was feeding the juke box like always, he got up to stuff a fresh five dollar bill in the music machine. You get three songs for a dollar, twenty songs for five. Everybody at Murphy’s Tavern likes what Bobby plays. All the younger women check him out as he walks across the bar towards the juke box. We have all heard them talk, they all think he’s cute. They really like his slow and deliberate way of speaking, and his manners. Bobby says yes sir and thank you mam, that sort of thing. Mike is on the table, he’s got a game going with old Hank Orcheck. Hank works for the county, got a good job with the road department. Bobby got himself tangled up with some college girls, he smiled at me from across the room. He motioned to me that they were going outside for a minute. I knew what they were doing, smoking half a joint in Bobby’s van is what they were going to do. He asked me with his eyes, asked me if I wanted to join them. I smiled and passed on the offer. I’m getting too old for that shit. Besides, I don’t know those two girls and they seem a little too young for my company. I don’t care what Bobby does, it’s Saturday night and we ain’t working on Sunday.


Mike has a game, Bobby’s getting stoned and trying to score. I’m alone at our favorite table when Pepper strolls up and sits down. Her given name is Helga, after her mother but nobody ever calls her that. She’s been Pepper since her auburn hair started coming in when she was just a baby. Pepper, it fits her personality too. She’s kind of hot and spicy, not bad looking either. Me and Pepper go way back, known each other since grade school. My father and her father have been friends since we were kids. Everybody wonders, not if but when Pepper and me are going to get together. Everyone says we’d make a good couple. We both wonder too. Sometimes we joke around about it, guess we sort of flirt with each other sometimes. It’s fun, flirting with Pepper. She tells me that she passed Bobby and the two college girls on her way in. She laughs and says we should take a walk outside in about ten minutes, see if that big van of his is rocking in the parking lot. She knows how to make me blush, gets me every time. I look at her smile, the laugh lines around her pretty hazel eyes, she starts to blush some too. Yeah, me and Pepper, we go way back. I never said the words, but she always knew I liked her. We only kissed once, that was in seventh grade at the Halloween Dance. Somehow we just kept missing each other. She’s so pretty, she was always so popular I never had the guts to ask her out. Pepper and me, we both ended up marrying our teenage flames like you sometimes do. We both got burned by those flames.

I was in the army when I married a dancer down in Columbus Georgia. She was cheating on me from the outset. She came back here to Pennsylvania with me when I finished my four year enlistment. It was over six months later. We never had children, she went back down south and I never heard from her again. Pepper married a guy she met at college, he was from Boston. She was nineteen when their son was born in 1981. Just a few months later her husband punched her in the mouth. Her father made him go away. He went back to Boston and she never heard from him again. I still don’t know why, but that night at Murphy’s I had a feeling. As soon as I saw Pepper walk out of the kitchen and straight towards me, I had a feeling. We were staring at each other, we were both blushing. I remember my ears felt hot. All the Saturday night sounds of the busy tavern seemed to fade away and she dropped a bomb in my lap. She asked me to marry her, just like that.

I said yes. We both stood up. We kissed long and hugged real hard. Before either of us knew what was happening Mike let out a yell informing the whole bar that Jake and Pepper were finally getting together. Old Jinks came around from behind the bar. He hugged his daughter with tears in his eyes. Jinks had his arms around both of us when he announced that drinks were on the house. He said it's not often that his only daughter gets engaged. They said you could hear that cheer all the way down to the bridge. Nobody has heard a cheer like that since the Steelers won the Super Bowl, five times.

Murphy's

And Everything Else.
EastCoastSquarehead © 2006

Murphy’s is the place. Two pool tables and a great jukebox. It’s been the tavern where we all hang out for as long as I can remember. No one knows why Jinks decided to call it
Murphy’s. Over the years there’s been lots of speculation, even a few bets laid down. Jinks ain’t talking. Ask him once and he smiles, shakes his head and walks away. Ask him a second time, Jinks sort of growls. Nobody has ever asked a third time. If you knew Jinks you’d know what I mean.

It’s a red brick building, heavy old rafters run the length of the twelve foot ceiling front to back of what was once a garage until Jinks bought it back in 1971. Jinks lives out back in the one story two bedroom house that came with place. The first thing you notice when you walk into Murphy’s Tavern is the floor. Sixteen inch solid red oak planks, no stain, just natural. The planks are clear coated with a satin finish. You can just about see yourself in that floor, especially at closing time when the lights get turned all the way up. Everybody loves that floor. Must have cost a fortune for all that oak.

The red brick walls are painted white on the inside, covered with old pictures and beer signs. Outside it still looks the same. Jinks re-pointed all the joints, replaced the windows and doors but left the rest alone. The old sign painted right on the brick, white lettering over a black background still reads Bickle’s Auto and Truck Repair. A small wooden sign hangs over the front door that says Murphy’s Tavern in six inch letters. Yeah, it’s a cool old building. You can’t park on the street there. Jinks has ample paved parking to the right as you face the tavern. Over the years he purchased the houses on either side, tore them down and planted trees. Murphy’s is right in the middle of town but it feels like you’re out in the country.

Maybe I should tell you a little something about Jinks. His given name is Ben, well it’s Benjamin to be exact. Benjamin Robert Bell. He’s been Jinks since he was a baby. It seems that his grandmother had a thing for bells, all kinds of bells. Kind of makes sense when you think about it, being that their last name was Bell. When Jinks was just a baby he loved to play with a set of sleigh bells that his grandma had hanging on the kitchen wall. Jingle Bell is what they started calling him. As he grew up it just sort of shortened itself to Jinks. Seems natural enough I guess.

Jinks grew up out in the woods up in Potter County, he grew up hunting and fishing. He grew up fast and he grew up hard. Life was just like that back then. He turned eighteen in 1959. Jinks didn’t want to work at the sawmill with his father and he didn’t want to go down into the mines like so many others did. Jinks joined the army. He planned on staying there for twenty years. Vietnam changed all that.

Jinks never talked too much about his past, or his days in the service. Pepper told me about most of it, my father filled in the blanks. One thing old Jinks was always willing to share about his past was the time he spent in Germany. That’s where he met Helga. Germany is also where Jinks met The King.

An old black and white photograph hangs on the wall just above the cash register behind the bar at Murphy’s Tavern. Jinks and Sergeant Presley, arms around each others shoulders, cigarettes dangling from opposite corners of their mouths. Jinks is on the left
as you look at the photo. The two soldiers are leaning against a Jeep, mountains fill up the background. Jinks is proud of that picture and there are plenty of Elvis tunes in the juke box at Murphy's Tavern. Like I said, Jinks met Helga in Germany, they were married just two months after they met. Pepper was born in Germany.

In 1963, at the end of his four year enlistment, Jinks and Helga returned to the States with their brand new baby girl. Jinks re-enlisted and volunteered for airborne training. A promotion to Sergeant E-5 followed his assignment to the famed 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. It was there at Fort Bragg that Jinks met the Green Berets. The Special Forces were a brand new unit at the time, Jinks volunteered for the Special Forces. He successfully completed the training. He survived the rigorous “Q” course and was sent to Vietnam as an advisor. Jinks spent two years over there, returning to the States in late 1966. He served for another year in Vietnam, 1968 through ‘69. He left the army after that. Pepper says she remembers her father’s return from his second tour. Pepper says he was real quiet for a long time.

Jinks moved his family back to Pennsylvania where his wife died less than one year later. Helga died from a heart attack. She was only twenty-nine years old. It seems that some type of infection set in, and she may have had a bad ticker to start with. If that had occurred now she probably would have survived. It’s just damn sad. Pepper says her mother was beautiful, says her mom was lots of fun. Pepper misses her mom. Jinks misses his wife. She was his one true love. Cherry blossoms almost always bring a tear to his eye. Helga loved cherry blossoms, she loved spring. He called her Blue, short for the German word bluhen, or blossom. His German was never that good.

When Jinks first moved his family back to Pennsylvania he did go to work in the mines, despite his misgivings about going farther underground than you’ve been out of town. He got a good job in one of the big union mines in Indiana County. The money was too good to pass up, he had a family to support. When Helga died he left the mines. He did not want to risk leaving Pepper all alone. Working in the mines can be dangerous. That’s an obvious understatement but miners are a tough breed, say any more than that and it sounds like your whining. Coal miners don’t like whiners.

So Jinks left the mines and decided to buy the old Bickle garage, convert it into a tavern. No one knows where he got the money, no one really gave it much thought. He was new to the area. No one really knew much about him at all.

Here We Go!

Okay people. It all starts right here, right now...........

Welcome to Fiction Squared. The following posts will contain the fictional ramblings of your favorite unknown blogger. That beer swillin', sausage grillin', sharp cheese lovin' half-an-old biker who's lucky to still be alive.

Having spent over a decade serving as a uniformed patrol officer in my native North Jersey I have come to realize that at some point in my life I made a right turn. Had I not negotiated that turn safely, I'm quite sure I'd be dead by now. I probably would have crashed and burned on some open stretch of midnight highway riding my old shovel between go-go bars. Not gentleman's clubs but real old school shot and beer joint, warped pool cue, Skynyrd on the juke box type go-go bars.

(None of this fictional by the way. I have yet to "go fictional" on this here Fiction Squared)

So now I think I can write. Well, what the hell and why the hell not. I'm going to tell you the story of Jake and Pepper. It's a real Romeo and Juliet kind of a blue collar fuckin' love story, and shit.

So if you care to read further, and I hope you do, just follow the bouncing ball. I know, I know, that makes almost no sense on any level. I'm not about editing here. What I write is what you get. This will be the first, last and only non-fictional type of entry here on Fiction Squared. If you want to read "the real stuff" you will have to go to EastCoastSquareHead.Blogspot.com........

Tommy.....Hey Tommmmy!......Stand in the door!