The bar is in a good place, on a quiet cobblestone street where there isn't much traffic and a funeral home across the street. There's also a hotel overhead, in the same building. You'd be surprised how many people attend a funeral, and then walk slowly to the bar to get drunk. The funeral home is definitely great for business, there's no shortage of stiffs out there, or people about to become a corpse. And the hotel also helps, of course, lots of traveling salespeople come down in their shirtsleeves and they trade business war stories and future plans. The business war stories and future plans all sound the same, all over the country, in every pub attached to a hotel next to a funeral home. Sometimes I almost interject, and tell the talkers this, but I hold back. Meanwhile, the mourners circulate between various tables where folks are dressed in somber colors, the tables loaded with baskets of popcorn, beers, and deep fried fish. They're laughing, or smiling, eventually, getting into high spirits all the while there's a body they know, a few hundred feet away, in a box.
Poor Phil's
Oak Park, IL
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