Imannuel Ishtar
2016
Jake's Diner Saturday, July 13, 2024 Even though it was only 8:15, the intense Minnesota morning sun dumped waves of shimmering heat upon the thirsty wilted corn...unquenched by expensive center-pivot irrigation systems. A loosely-organized row of aggressive-looking pickup trucks--drearily-colored, indeterminate in age, manfully backed into position, and universally-equipped with locking tool boxes giving purpose to otherwise empty beds--had formed a defensive line on the torrid gravel in front of Jake's. By day a respectable diner and by night a bar that promised totally exotic dancing--whatever that meant, since no local dared investigate--Jake's was the social epicenter of Blue Earth...an ever-diminishing farming town that might as well have been located in Iowa for all the difference the unrelentingly-flat, hot, and wind-ravaged prairie landscape made. Although it had been decades since smoking had been banned in public places--with the exception of those wastefully-expensive new mobile home parks--the lingering smell of tobacco still clung to the tables, chairs, and walls…adding to Jake's unfinished-plywood, grease-encrusted character. With its luridly-pink Masonite siding, hand lettered signage, mysterious 'adults-only' back room behind a beaded curtain, long-abandoned gas pumps, and a short-order menu scribbled on a chalkboard, Jake's had a Lake Wobegon vibe that could only be called Fly-over Gothic. James Abbott Whistler, himself, couldn't have asked for a more rustic cast of characters to paint. Grizzled, weather-worn men sat hunched around a long row of four-place tables pulled together on the west side of the main dining area to form the Men's Lodge. Properly-segregated on the opposite side of the room, plain-looking and muscular Minnesota women--worn dour by the rigors of moral living--sat primly-upright around a second row of tables that constituted the Women's Lodge. In the middle of the room, three minor Chinese government officials--smartly-dressed i
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