Free Buried Memories by Irene Pence Page B

an overhead wooden rack. Four pool tables sat to the left of the bar, and several dart boards were bolted on walls to the right.
    By the time people stepped onto the charcoal-color tile floors, no one sensed they were drinking in the middle of the day. Nor in the early morning for that matter. Like other bars in Seven Points, it opened early for business and Happy Hour ran from seven to eleven in the morning. For some, drinking their breakfast was a way of life.
    The selection of men varied. Hard-working cowboys breathed the same smoky air as retired oldsters, and having a full set of teeth was not a customer requirement. But every now and then someone attractive with a decent job dropped by. Betty kept her antennae up for them. Her caustic wit and salty tongue fit in perfectly with the bar crowd, and the majority of patrons loved her.
    Tonight she dressed in a conservative gray blouse tucked into a gathered gray-and-coral print skirt. The hem of her skirt flared out as she spun away from the bar with a tray of four draft Coors, taking them to a table where one of her customers had just sneezed. “Whew, I’ve got a cold,” the man drawled in his slow colloquial twang.
    “No shit. Now we all have a cold,” Betty said, not looking up as she placed a beer in front of each patron.
    “I covered my mouth with my hand,” her customer protested.
    “That’s a hell of a big job for one hand,” Betty said, and turned on her heel.
    Waves of laughter erupted behind her, but she ignored those people when she caught the eye of a handsome new customer. He sat watching her, and also laughed. She stepped over to his table, and said, “What would you like, sir?”
    “You,” he said. “Why don’t you come sit down here?” He patted the Naugahyde seat of the chair next to him.
    “As much as I’d like to, I’m afraid fraternizing is against the rules. Besides, you look like you wouldn’t have any trouble finding company,” she said with a wink.
    “This place has rules?” he asked, sincerely surprised.
    “What’s your name?”
    “My friends call me Jimmy Don.”
    “Nice to meet you, Mr. Don.”
    He smiled. “Do you have an answer for everything?”
    “I wish.”
    “When do you get off work?”
    “Late. Those big brown eyes of yours would be pretty sleepy if you waited for me. I go home sometime between one-thirty and two.”
    “That’s past my bedtime. I’ll need to catch you when I don’t have an early shift the next day.”
    “Shift?”
    “I’m with the Dallas Fire Department.”
    “What did you do before that?”
    “I was in the army during the Korean War.”
    “Korean War? That was a hundred years ago,” Betty said.
    “I’ve been with the fire department for twenty-six years. Four more and I get to retire.”
    “Lucky you. Then what are you going to do, sit on your dock and fish?”
    “Or in my boat.”
    “I wish they’d give barmaids retirement benefits. I wouldn’t mind doing some fishing myself.” Betty gave him a long, lingering smile.
     
     
    A native Texan, Jimmy Don Beets had one child, James Donald Beets III, born on December 24, 1957, who went by the nickname Jamie. That Christmas Eve was the only time that Jimmy Don ever missed a shift at the fire department. He had rushed his pregnant wife, Charlene, to the hospital only an hour before the baby’s birth. Three years after that, another son came along, but lived just five heartbreaking hours. Two years later, a daughter was stillborn. The deaths of their children left both parents depressed. Jimmy Don sought solace in alcohol. Charlene understandably objected to all the time he spent drinking after work. She didn’t like the taverns he visited nor his absence from the family. His new lifestyle proved to be the dismantling of their marriage, and he and Charlene divorced after Jamie turned nine. The divorce devastated the young child, who somehow felt responsible. He went to live with his mother until his twelfth birthday. By then