Drunk Watching
Another fun game we played was "Drunk Watching". Guess what that involved?
Sticky-hot summer nights were best for drunk watching. We'd watch them go into the bar at around 7 o' clock, and if, by 8:30 there had been a fistfight, we knew it would be a good night for drunk watching. The sun would be low on the horizon, the sky would be a nice purple-blue. The white streetlights would cast our porch in shadows, and the bar across the street would erupt in sound.
The door to the bar bursts open, and out come a pair of men, grunting and struggling with each other. They were usually followed by one or more moaning women. The men would punch and shove, bang heads on concrete, and kick until one lies retching in the little strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street.
To the victor go the spoils, and the man still mostly on his feet would grab his woman and re-enter the bar. The loser would be helped up by his woman, their drink-fest over for the night. They would stagger off together, supporting one another in their despair over life's harsh gifts, and the street would be quiet again. For a while.
Eventually, the cops would arrive, and people would come out of the bar claiming that there had been no fight there that night. Everyone would pretend like the guy with the burst blood vessels in his eye had not a mark on him, and the cops would go away. Later on, the noise from the bar would escalate once again. Most weekends saw 2 or 3 fights a night, but sometimes the whole tavern would empty itself out into the street in a violent expression of pent-up rage. Those were good nights, because the police would arrive with paddy wagons and our street would be quiet for a week.