Revision sample (step 3)

Dad seats us at the end of the bar. I struggle to climb onto a barstool. I like sitting here. I can turn easily and watch everything. Dad orders a Falstaff and a Pepsi from the woman bartender. Her frosted beehive hairdo, scarlet lips, black false eyelashes, and dusky blue eye shadow nods in agreement at Dad. Her long pink fingernails tap against the glasses of beer she draws from the tap and places on the old wooden bar. She passes one to an old man in blue overalls and another to my Dad. Dad sits quietly not wanting to be bothered while he seems to think so intently about some matter.

This tavern looked and smelled like the many others I've frequented. Dimly lit, country-western playing on the jukebox, cold air whirring from the window air-conditioner. A peculiar odor like damp peanuts past their expiration date permeated the establishment. Colored lamps hang from the ceiling like a checkerboard displaying what kinds of beer to buy. Some of them rotate like a merry-go-round at the fair. Signs on doors indicate "KINGS" and "QUEENS." Smells waft towards the bar when someone opens a door. A "NO BEER SOLD TO MINORS" sign hangs above the cash register. Other signs dot the dark-brown paneled wall. They seem to be jokes, sometimes using bad language. A sign showing a screw chasing nut took a long time for me to figure out.

An old black pay telephone sits inside its brown wooden booth. When I sit on the little corner seat and shut the door, a little light shines from above. Not on me. On the telephone. All sounds from the outside are muffled. I look out the windowed door and pretend I'm in a fancy hotel like I saw on TV once. Gilded ladies and men revolve through the front entrance. Long gowns, tuxedos, jeweled necks and top hats. Hotel hops carry their luggage and scurry after them. Others sit around a beautiful fountain with sitting swans, long cigarette holders perched at their mouth. Some man knocks at the door, he wants to make a call. I get out and go back to my place at the bar.

The old man in the overalls moves to the pool table and clanks quarters into the slot. He must be taking a day off from farming, I thought. Striped and solid balls released and rumbled down to the table's opening. Knotted hands gathered and deposited the balls on the emerald felt tabletop. After polishing the pool cue blue, the old man drinks half his beer, lights a cigarette, takes a few drags and lets it hang from his lips. He stares at the colored triangle of balls, lifts its rack, and steps back from the table. He takes aim and shoots his pool stick into those colored balls, the reverberation cracks the air and disperses a rainbow of spinning color throughout the table. Some plunk down the corners and roll to their home under the table. Under the pool table's light, layers of cigarette smoke hang in the air, with each new stream exhaled spread like a spider adding to its web.

Some men sit on bar stools, heads slumped to their chest, cigarettes still sitting between their fingers, half glasses of beer pushed to the side. Others at the bar, stare ahead at the paneled wall behind the bar like they're trying to find some hidden clue there. They look away only to get the barmaid's attention for another beer. Two men sit a table at the window on the other side of the pool table. Engaged in conversation, voices raising and then lowering indiscriminately. One opens the venetian blind, a bright sun pours in through its slats casting a spotlight throughout the bar. The sun reveals the cracks in the upholstery, dirt on the floor, smudges on the walls and ceiling, and lines in the barmaid's powdered face.