Rocco is the piano man and the bar is on a street so seedy that those with nice new cars park down the way so acquaintances passing by won’t guess they’re iin the area.
The same folks show up every Friday or Saturday, sometimes both. In no time, they’re droppin’ their g’s and runnin’ their sentences together. Stop to take a breath or finish a word and someone else takes over. Not only that, everyone is talking about their own thing. You’d better finish fast or you won’t get finished at all.
A few people trickle in, sit at stools at the bar. The old folks stay near the piano man, comfy in worn leather booths or plain wooden chairs. Four or five to a wiggly table.
And what a piano, keys broken or out of tune. Rocco makes up for the missing ones with a small electric keyboard balanced on top. Not to miss a note he jumps from one to the next.
It doesn’t matter. Everyone is talking or singing or sipping beer. Some of the crowd plays along, violins, clarinets, trombones, a washboard band.
And everyone is buying Rocco beer as he guzzles and sings and pounds out tunes. If you stop to listen, he probably knows eight, nice, ten chords. A lot of his melodies are hidden in arpeggios and frills. Yet he knows all the old stuff, the tragic melodies with June and moon.
Now some of the original crowd has passed on. It doesn’t matter. Their stories are told like they’re still living. You’d think that after all the years, let’s see, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, maybe more, maybe less, someone would bring in a new tune. Yet, it doesn’t happen. “Aren’t you going to sing, ‘Down By the Old Mill Stream’ someone pleads.” So the songs and stories go on.