It is the hour before midnight, on the harsh, gray flat asphalt road along the banks of one of the Great Lakes . A truck races by like a shadow, the moon glowing behind a small house. The car swiftly goes on by, the dim light from the fogy night: --moon penetrating through the fog onto the tuck and house, where a man is standing by the road; -- music is heard coming from the car, Rock & Roll, as this stranger standing by the road, a man in a red plaid shirt, he stands erect, as if he was Paul Bunion; standing in-between the road and the house as a truck races by. Again they slow down, then stop, look about, they hear the water slapping the bank from the Great Lake again, but can not see it. The breeze from the lake is picking up, as the window is rolled down they can feel the breeze, there is a chill to it, so they roll it up a bit more. Trees are swaying.

He stutters a bit and is silent as his truck slows down to ten miles per hour. Amery hands a knife to Skip, who puts it next to his groin area. The car stops, they both are thinking, looking at one another, their eyes are not blinking, you can see the hairs of their eyebrows as if the eye is attached to it, the lower lip of the eyelid is almost stuck to the eyebrow from staring, --they're listening to the waves, for that is the only sound now that is optional, except the humming of the truck motor, the waves of the of the Great Lake Superior seem to be upon them . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napco_Four_Wheel_Drive_Vehicles Considering cost of living in her area in the seventies, her income was suitable. A new home could be purchased for $25,000. A postage stamp rose from $0.06 in 1970 to $0.15 in 1979. I asked my mother if she could recall some prices of the decade. She remembered bread being $0.29, gas $0.74 a gallon, candy bars $0.05, soft drinks $0.10-0.15 a bottle in the early seventies and in the late seventies prices started to rise. She remembered cigarettes costing $1.00 a pack, cracker $0.29, milk $1.00 and most canned goods $0.10. As my eyeballs came back into focus, I watched him unfold the same pocket knife and as he bent to retrieve another chile from the plant, I prayed it wasn't for me. Realizing it wasn't I thanked the great capsicum god in the Hatch volcano and considered crying. I had just started on another beer when someone dropped a few coins in the juke box. The music was bad country. To my utter disgust the first song that played was that "I want to stick a boot up your butt" super-patriotic, ultra-jingoist thing by the guy in the buy kodiak truck commercials. The people around me began to sing along loudly. My experiences at the Shadow Bar occurred more than forty years ago, but I still wonder if I should have reported the incident when I returned to Engineers Hill. I resumed my mission and approached the Shadow Bar. Shadow Bar is an unusual name that had nothing to do with the building itself. The walls were bright, white stucco with the front of the one-story building evenly divided by a massive black door with a small glass window centered about five feet up from the sidewalk. The few windows in the building were covered with shades and draperies that allowed no glimpse of what was happening inside. Visit the NTX web site to learn of classic auto shows and swap meets that are held periodically in the parking lot. Reservations are now being taken for the first annual New Year's Eve party to happen December 31, 2009.