The Last Barstool at the VFW

Mostly True Stories | Part 1: The Visit

This isn’t every veteran’s story, but it’s mine.

I didn’t plan to write about this, but here we are. I just wanted to understand why a place that was supposed to feel like home didn’t. The VFW, the Legion, VVA, the halls where flags still hang, they were meant to be gathering spots for people who’d served something larger than themselves. But somewhere along the way, the conversation changed.

What follows isn’t a condemnation. It’s an observation, a version of what happens when belonging starts to curdle into bitterness.

The smell hit first, that mix of beer, fryer grease, and old varnish that never really leaves a place like this. A muted TV murmured over the bar, half baseball game, half static. Flags lined the walls, their colors dulled by time and nicotine. Framed photos hung crooked. The bar top was scarred, in places sticky, in others, polished by decades of elbows.

A handful of men sat scattered along the counter, all of them familiar in the way strangers can be when you know the uniform they once wore. Same haircut, same posture, same stories told a little louder each time. One empty stool at the far end waited like a half-hearted invitation. I took it.

For a minute, it felt right. The jukebox hummed something slow and quiet, and I thought maybe this was it, the place where the noise would finally quiet down. A spot to swap stories, laugh about the things that used to scare us, remember the good parts of what we did.

Then the talk started.

It wasn’t about service or sacrifice. It was about “those people,” about the border, about some other group who ruined America…this week. The volume rose with each beer. The laughter got sharper, meaner. Someone told a joke that used to be just crude but now landed with a different edge, the kind that tells you who’s welcome and who isn’t. The room didn’t fall silent; it just sagged under the weight of its own noise.

I glanced up at the TV. The flag on the screen fluttered in the corner of a newscast. The men turned toward it instinctively, not to salute, just to nod, as if it belonged to them more than anyone else. Maybe once it did.

I finished my beer and left a few bills under the glass. As I walked past the line of plaques and framed medals, I wondered what those men, the ones in the pictures, the ones who built this place would think of what it’s become. Probably they’d say it’s just how things are now. Maybe they’d even join in.

Outside, the evening air smelled like rain and exhaust. The parking lot was quiet, a few pickup trucks under the flicker of a weak street light. I looked back through the window. Same flag, same bar, same stool waiting for whoever came next.

Maybe that’s the hardest part, realizing the uniform connected us once, but it can’t save what’s left.

That night I started thinking less about where I’d served and more about what I thought I’d find when it was over. That’s where the real divide began, not between veterans and civilians, but between what we remember and what we’ve become.

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