So Anyway

While still in Denver a man with a Slavic accent asked where he could find a 'good beer bar." I wasn't quite sure and after pointing to some arbitrary joint down the road he invited me to join with the cost on him. It was a decent place, middlebrow with the standard bar default of ESPN on the TV's.

I made out rather little of what he said. He said he was from Russia or so I thought I heard and when I tried to speak back I found his English to be at a third grade level maybe though he said that he came to the US some ten years beforehand with his brother. He said he had a wife back home and showed me a picture that someone real anyway had made a Facebook account for and I am in inclined to believe him on this point. He seemed to express disapproval of the olde Western Materialism though again I could not quite make out his words. He asked me why I wasn't married and when I shrugged he said "freedom right?" and slapped me on the back. "Family man. family is the cool thing" he said.

After three gins a veteran of the Bosnia campaign from way back came in and we started talking. It happened that my Russian friend was actually a Serbian who had shot at Americans in this affair and perhaps successfully ended a few. The bartender needed to jump in to prevent a fight and I was compelled to leave my fourth drink behind. I never leave a drink behind and I had liked this guy much better when I thought he was a KGB spy using me to get the skinny on the US underground. But I suppose that "wisdom comes from disillusionment" and all that.