The Last of the Hard Men

               I needed out of the city. I needed to get away from that urban lifestyle which seemed obsessed with cool clothes, hip hairdos, stylish staches, multi-flavored macchiatos, soymilk smoothies, yuppie yoga, or whatever else was trendy at the time. I longed for proof that hard men still existed. The kind I had seen in the movies when I was a kid. The kind filled with courage, honor, nerve, and grit.

            So I headed away from the city, through the suburbs, past the small towns, deep into the wilderness, until I found a random tavern, a one-room shack whose sign simply said: BAR. I parked my bike, walked inside, ordered a beer, and waited.

            It didn’t take long before he walked in. He was everything I dreamed he would be. I studied him carefully. He was tall and muscular, with a jaw line right out of a John Wayne movie. He wore an old cowboy hat, flannel shirt, leather jacket, ripped jeans, and work boots, all of it filthy. His eyes were cold, his beard thick, and his face tanned like a catcher’s mitt. He had a scar running across his brow, a couple chipped teeth, and fingers missing from both hands. When he ordered his drink, he only needed to growl one word: WHISKEY.

            There he was, right in front of my eyes, close enough that I could smell pine tar on his hands and the tobacco in his lip. I wanted to touch him, to make sure he was real, but the bowie knife that hung from his belt and the pistol hugging his ankle were clear signs not to get too close.

            So I just stared, carefully examining the proof that sat next to me. The proof that courage, honor, nerve, and grit were not virtues of the past! The proof that there was at least one last hard man left on Earth…and then he pulled out a Smartphone and started playing Candy Crush.