https://openchoke.blogs.com/oilpatchdiners/2006/11/dives.html
Click up top to see the current compendium. We need mo' nominations!
We are distinctly missing Oklahoma and East Texas dives... need more Louisiana dives... Colorado dives.
Of course, I'll never turn down South or West Texas nominations... Maybe some Bakken nominees?
I participated in a well near Wabek, North Dakota a while back. While we were leasing, long before the Bakken came rippin' through, I happened in to a little bar in Wabek on a Sunday around 11:00 a.m. The church had shut down a few years earlier, but the bar was still going. The husband/wife team who owned it had her sister and her dad working hung over on that Sunday morning, and she would cook up a pretty tasty burger for you to help wash down the Pabst Blue Ribbon beer for 65 cents a can. The bar was interestinly stocked... beer and flavored vodkas. The other folks hanging around that morning were old, grizzly farmers from the area.
In any case, I was talking to the proprietoress about the economic doldrums that seemed to hang over Wabek in those days. I suggested that she should raise her prices to 3 bucks per can of Pabst and 3 bucks a shot for Vodka, because she was the only game for 45 miles. This got the attention of the old timers, who began grumbling about the "goddamn Texans". I asked her "what are these fellas going to do about it? Nothing! They will just drop more coin for their booze. They were clearly addicted, so going cold turkey wasn't gonna happen."
She smiled as the old timers began to get vicious... trying to fumble out an old pen knife from their dungarees and wave it vaguely towards where I sat. I told them that they would always be welcome when I did my big rollup of rural dive bars, but they would need to bring more cash.
That area is hot as hell now, and those ol' boys are probably drinking Dom Perignon, so long as it comes in a can.
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