beneath the be-bop moon

I've got stars in my beard and I feel real wierd.....coming off a twelve hour shift at nine on a Thursday morning, I wait in my Jeep for the bar to open at ten. I can see the alley door from here in the public parking lot off Second.....Pat has already been in and out a couple of times with trash or whatever, and Dan with the Bud truck has come and gone.....Pat sticks his head out the door about five minutes 'til, and waves me on in. It is blessfully dim in the Down Lounge, after the bright morning sunshine outside.....a pint of Coors with a can of Snappy Tom in it starts things off....Lucia comes in from the taco shop next door, and me and Pat both ask for huevos rancheros, with corn tortillas.....a couple more reprobates wander in.....Cowboy Bill puts some dollars in the jukebox, and starts playing Patsy Cline.....the kid from next door brings us our styrofoam breakfast boxes, with plastic forks and paper napkins.....Pat and I chow down, as Cowboy Bill negotiates with the kid in spanglish, trying for that kind of breakfast steak they do, fixed his own peculiar Texas way......the food gone, I graduate to a Bloody Mary, which, at this time of day, comes with a pickled egg .....fine with me, more protein.....