"The Old Man Who Paid For His Drink, The Young Lieutenant Who Demanded His Seat, And The Three Gold Stars That Snapped To Attention. The air in The Rusty Anchor was thick, heavy, and smelled like a thousand nights of regret and spilled Coors. It was precisely what I wanted. Dive bars are honest. They don’t pretend to be anything they’re not, and the darkness is a great place to let the outside world fade. I had found my spot—the last booth, nestled against a wall that hadn’t seen a fresh coat of