Birdie McInnes walks into a bar, but it’s not just any bar. It’s the Brightwood Tavern along the old Barlow Road on the north bank of the Sandy River, tucked away where the forest reclaims the past, but is somehow preserved in the shadows of tall firs and cedars. The town became an afterthought when U.S. Highway 26 relocated on the south side of the river.
The tavern is a low-slung fortress of heavy, hand-hewn logs, weathered to a deep charcoal gray, with small, squinting windows. Even at midday the interior of the dark, dank pub remains perpetual twilight. Inside, the air is thick with the permanent haze of cigarette smoke baked into the very grain of the logs and the sticky varnish of the bar top.
Birdie, en route to Timberline Lodge for a climb up Mt. Hood's south side, spots a jukebox and peruses his options. The selections are what you might expect in the backwoods of Oregon, mostly country-western, but with a couple of outliers by The Grateful Dead. The jukebox offers three plays for a dollar, and Birdie has seven dollars. He decides to select 21 plays of Casey Jones. Then, he orders his food to go and waits.
The first play of "Driving that train, high on cocaine," raises a few eyebrows in the joint. After the third play, one of the patrons announces: "That song is longer than I remember it." On the song's seventh play, another guy who looks like he had just been paroled for domestic violence, says: "Goddammit!"
But on the eighth play, Birdie, being the clevel lad he is, had chosen the B side of the disc: Sugar Magnolia. But on the eighth play, it was back to "Driving that train, high on cocaine...." The disgrunted patron grabs a pool cue, likely to use as a weapon, while Birdie quietly exits out the front door with his food as the bartender walks over and unplugs the jukebox.
