Friday Nights at Boca Chica

Every Friday night the marina bar and grill has a special dinner and live music. We walk up for Mongolian BBQ. Hank and Bridget, who have a boat 2 slips down, join us. Zack Seamiller is the entertainment. He's a skinny late 30 something who pretends all night that he has a three piece band backing him up. Rick and Hank, an ex-marine, exchange Viet-Nam era stories and Bridget, who is new to boating, tells me in her lilting southern accent about her difficulty with nautical terms. "Hank told me it's not my living room, it's a salon. 'No way,' I said, 'a salon is where I get my hair done.'" Zach sings Bruce Springstien and strikes dramatic poses. We chuckle appreciatively at his antics. By 6:30 the place is rocking, filled with old sailors and impossibly young jet pilots. We switch from single beers to pitchers and I am on my third glass of wine. We hoot and holler and applaud Zack. We applaud his imaginary band. A drunken old salt, with a walrus mustache and a Key West tan, dances across the floor carrying 3 beers and a plastic glass of rum and coke. We applaud him too. Zach is singing an original song called, "I'm not Jimmy Buffet, but I like to get drunk and screw." We are laughing at everything. Zach does a great Bob Dylan and Elvis, and a fair Santana. We switch to tequilla shots with lime and salt. Zach tells stories about growing up poor in the bayous of Pittsburgh, eating collard greens. We're howling at his jokes with our new best friends, Hank and Bridget. We shout and sing along to Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." We check the time and it is only 8:45 and the room is spinning. We manage to hang in there until the bar closes at 10:00 and the music stops. The whole evening has been such fun that we make plans to listen to Zach again, the next day, at "Sloppy Joes", the bar Hemingway made famous in Key West. This is a picture of us at Sloppy Joes. Thank God no one had a camera at the Boca Chica bar and grill where we were 20 again last night.