The 4 pm Bar Crowd

The four p.m. bar crowd are tired folks, mostly men, hiding in a dark tavern from wives, long-term girlfriends, and employers they've told they were sick.
They drink flat tap beer from clear plastic cups and ignore the old woman who painstakingly makes her way down the bar, leaning heavily on her thumping cane, begging money for the jukebox. I give her a dollar and am rewarded with a mix of old country twang and Dave Matthews classics.
The four p.m. bar crowd keeps to themselves, greet strangers like me with side-eye glances, and overtip the mostly bored bartender.