Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (Callahan's Place Trilogy, #1)

by Spider Robinson

for one's own sorrow may be bearable by its familiarity and yet staggering to a stranger.

"Well now..." I paused. "We only know two songs, and that was one of them, so we're real glad you liked it." I stopped again. "What do you think we ought to play now, Eddie?" He sat awhile in thought. "How 'bout de udder one?" he asked at last.

There was, for instance, the guy of an ethnic extraction I can't specify without getting a lot of Italians mad at me,

When they passed out necks he thought they said "sex" and asked for lots and lots. His chin and his Adam's apple looked like twin brothers in bunk beds, his nose appeared to be on sideways, and his eyes were different sizes. His ears were so prominent that from the front he looked like a taxicab coming down the street with the doors open, and his hair resembled a lawn with persistent crabgrass. The longest strands issued from his nostrils. As he reached the bar, the clock over the cash-box stopped, and I couldn't blame it a bit.

I forgot about my bladder and gulped the drink I'd been nursing. The Doc saw my face, swiveled his massive bulk around to look, and damn near dropped his Scotch; you have to understand that the Doc firmly believes in the Irish legend that on Judgment Day you will be suspended head-down in a barrel containing all the liquor you've ever spilled, and if you drown, to Hell with you. Even Callahan shuddered.

there were enough necks being craned to make a chiropractor dizzy with glee.

Certainly, all of us at Callahan's were heir to the tradition of the B-movie—and the A-movie for that matter—that any female who enters your life in a dramatic manner must be your fated love.

Fine healthy boy, eight pounds and some, sucking like a bilge pump the last I saw him.