The Bullet that’s Coming

I never acquired a taste for alcohol.  By the end of this day, however, I’ll wish I  had.  In less than an hour I will know the exact fate of my brother.  I don’t think the news I’m going to get will be good.   My prayer is that God will help me get through it.  I fight the hate that threatens to overtake
any good sense I have.  Because I don’t  drink there is no way I can drown my sorrows in a good bottle of wine.  I’ll just have to learn to live with the bullet that hits my heart today and pray that the wound will heal completely in time or just kill me altogether.  If only  for a very important now I’d like to be back in the Old West.  Western settlers and nomadic cowhands could  always be assured of one thing when they traveled over the plains; a supply of  liquor was never far away.  Alcoholism was  an epidemic in the Old West.  On the frontier, the indispensable fixture of a town was the saloon, where drunken brawls and gunfights were far more savage than in Eastern cities.  Notable among our Western heroes was an alcoholic and not-so-good-guy, Doc Holliday.   He was hired to help clean up Tombstone, Arizona by Wyatt Earp, himself a former bar bouncer.  The importance of alcohol on the frontier may be gauged by the number of “whiskey towns” that grew around liquor stores.  Often located close to Indian reservations, where alcohol was outlawed, these towns flourished, as in the case of Lexington, Oklahoma, around a single
trade-drinking.  Even the Western farmer, often pictured as the very model of virtue and temperance, was subject to heavy drinking, the victim of his own mash.   With corn and rye in abundance and markets far removed, he found it considerably cheaper to convert the grain into liquor-at a cost of 20 cents a barrel- and transport it in reduced bulk.   His temptation to imbibe was sharpened by a lonely, hostile environment
and, in the brutal winters, to have an attractive confederate against the  cold.  Everyone indulged: “men, women and  children, preachers and church members as well as the ungodly.”  Besides Scripture, liquor was a source of inspiration for some Baptist ministers, whose sermons often were nothing but alcoholic tirades.  Doctors used alcohol to help them in their work too.  Whoever heard of removing a bullet without taking a few stiff drinks first?  Well, on to the bad news.  I just hope the lawyer is merciful and aims high.  Drink or no drink, this bullet to the heart is going to sting.