Location: Jasper, Indiana

“If the sky was flavors of ice cream, which flavor would today be?”

The head chef said as her fingers held onto the last cigarette for the night. The tips of her fingers wedged the tobacco filled cylinder so strongly it was like she needed something in her life to hold onto.

The red lights outside PJ’s Lucky Strike beamed into the Indiana night sky like lipstick on a chalkboard.

PJ’s Lucky Strike is the only place in Jasper that has any lights on past 2AM.

I could never tell if that means it’s an inviting place or a place that just forgot to turn its lights off. Either way, I feel like it’s a good metaphor for Indiana. The people are inviting, but I can’t help but get the feeling that most of them think it might be nice to live somewhere else.

When you leave the lights on though, you can never leave, because you always have an excuse for why you need to go back home to turn them off.

PJ’s is a place where unlucky people come to test their luck by throwing heavy round circles into pins. A place where a pitcher of Miller Lite on a Tuesday night in Indiana does more magic than the rest of their lives have ever done so far.

Mike, the barkeep in the car, said nothing, but his smile filled up the passenger side window so bright that the reflection of the moon looked like it had teeth.

"It would be chicken tender flavored ice cream, because you make some damn good chicken tenders Susie. You have been for thirty years, ain’t no one better!"

He said as his car got swallowed up by the Indiana night like a bowling ball hitting the last pin and vanishing off to wherever bowling balls go when their work is done.