"Sir, seems you've been looking for me?" The voice came from over my left shoulder and he walked into my world.
I was sitting at the last booth across from a pool hall bar in my childhood hometown. It was a chilly, early fall day. The regulars were perched with their backs to me on the two dozen or so stools. They were eating their breakfasts and drinking their pre-dawn coffee and beginning the verbal activities and male 'dancing' that is a usual symptom of masculine consciousness when men of my native land congregate.
The young, female fry cook took it all in and threw a quip into the mix from time to time. My ears took in the chatter, clatter and tings of dishes and silverware, grill sizzle, and the country music coming from the wall mounted television. The smell was of oil soaked floor, grease, cigarette smoke, and the blend of breakfast fixings.
I was seriously occupied with the several folders of research notes that were to be my study this early hour. I'd eaten my breakfast and dutifully was attending my tasks. Then he showed up.
***
He was more out of place than I. I wore a black leather "writers" sport coat, blue jeans, worn tassel loafers and a white dress shirt-minus tie. The pool hall patrons, all male, were mostly in their late forties and fifties, and several were much older. They wore baseball caps of varied color and age with assorted designations: banks, NASCAR favorites, "UT", "Falcons", "Titans", "Braves", or woodland camouflage. Most wore faded blue jeans, though one or two pairs of khaki slacks were evident. Their shirts were casual and work-style dark plaids, solids, and stripes-no white ones. A few hearty individuals wore dark pocket type tee shirts and a windbreaker or two could be seen. Work boots were the footwear of choice, with a small sampling of sport sneakers and loafers.
There was only one older man who was a throwback to my childhood. He wore the old gallus overalls, a denim jumper, and a hat, not a cap. These twenty or so customers were about the tribal warrior rituals of ancient times: waiting for the sun, some preening, and some silently claiming their places, listening, but exercising their personhood within the group by their place along the bar.
No matter that the day's activities awaiting them in the twenty-first century were quite ordinary and unheroic, a millennium removed from the genetic patterns imprinted on their souls. They were ready for the captain's call and the unfurling of the banner. That ancient spirit is deep within the cultural wrap of time and accepted behavior...it but awaits the need, the summons, the raising of the banner to be called forth.