Losin' Ain't an Option

As I headed south from the Black Hills of South Dakota, the driving was some of the most difficult I had ever encountered. It wasnt the snow or the ice on this lonely two-lane road that troubled me, it was the uncertainty of what was ahead and the regret of what I was leaving behind that was overcoming me with emotion and clouding my vision with the tears of fear I had made the wrong decision. I had just left behind my job, the woman I loved and everything I was accustomed to en route to take over a roadhouse in the Native Country of the southwest. Looking like a dust bowl refugee in my old Currier pick-up loaded with my tools, my Harley and 140-pound Shepherd dog named Chelsea. I had agreed with my father to go clean up this shit hole of a bar he had built back in the 60s. He had leased it out when we left Arizona. I was in about the 5th grade when we left and over the years it had become infamous. The current lessee had failed to pay the rent for the last couple of years and needed to be removed. Compounding that situation was the over three dozen police calls the local sheriff had received in just the last year. As I look back now those fears, though real, were slightly exaggerated. I was unaware at the time, that lifes experiences had groomed me for what was to come. It would be the best job I ever hated and the worst job I ever loved. Little was I to know, life in hell is hilarious.