When I was a kid, or rather a tween/teenager, I played a lot of pool. My favorite was nine ball, but a regular game was just as good. We didn’t have a table at home, and neither did anyone else. Nobody really needed one. There were(are) five bars (and no churches) in that town. Each establishment complete with a pool table. It’s a small town, where the rules are as few and far between as the paved roads. Things were pretty relaxed about where we kids could hang out. Quite often, on our lunch hour, we would walk down the street from the high school, order a basket of fries and set up the table. As long as we weren’t jumping the balls off the table, and keeping our food and drinks off to the side, we were allowed to play (50 cents if the cue ball hit the floor, 25 if the bartender caught you setting your soda cup on the green).
 Then there was the regular night out for dinner. At least every other week or so, my mom and step dad would load all four of us kids into the Silver Bullet (Dodge Caravan) so we could have dinner at one of the two restaurants in town. Its been well over 25 years, but I still crave the food from Jalisco’s. My step brother and I would order chili verde (and have a “hot” eatting contest, seeing who could put back more verde before needing a gulp of milk) and munch on homemade tortilla chips and salsa. Joe “Jalisco” would pour a mean margarita for my parents as we waited for our food.  My step brother and I would feed the jukebox full of quarters and push the 50 cents into the side of the pool table, (can you just hear that click and rush of balls releasing down to the mouth at the head of the table?). Many a game of “slop” was played to “Delta Dawn” and “Bad Moon Rising“.
These days, I don’t play much pool. To be honest I don’t get out very often to an spots where there would be a pool table. The rules are much more strict when you don’t live in rural Nevada. Which is probably a good thing when it comes to underage people in a bar. But, when my mom is visiting town, she graciously takes the kids for my husband and I. Precious, kid free date nights. This past Friday was one of those nights. We sat outside on the patio soaking in the beautiful sunshine for a long time, but decided to move inside after a while. I was glad I had stuffed my camera into my pack that morning. As we sipped our beers and talked,  the setting sunlight danced among the other April Fool’s day patrons. And the sound of the balls being racked up took me right back to being a kid again.

Keep chasing that light, Vanessa