Hard to believe there are no comments on this classic Jones tear-jerker ... the meaning is obvious, but I love the metaphor of a bar as a prison; he's serving a life sentence in there (until he drinks himself to death) for the crime of cheating (and apparently it's two strikes and you're out in this judicial system). Well, it's actually 20 to life, which I suppose means he could get out on good behavior if he agrees to go to AA and sober up after doing 20 years in the Honky Tonk Prison.
Most of us don't think of being in a bar as incarceration, but most of us aren't alcoholics who cheated on their significant others multiple times. Anyway, an "ocean of liquor" is a perfect description for the quantity Jones has put through his liver in his 81 years. How he survived that long is beyond me.
Hard to believe there are no comments on this classic Jones tear-jerker ... the meaning is obvious, but I love the metaphor of a bar as a prison; he's serving a life sentence in there (until he drinks himself to death) for the crime of cheating (and apparently it's two strikes and you're out in this judicial system). Well, it's actually 20 to life, which I suppose means he could get out on good behavior if he agrees to go to AA and sober up after doing 20 years in the Honky Tonk Prison.
Most of us don't think of being in a bar as incarceration, but most of us aren't alcoholics who cheated on their significant others multiple times. Anyway, an "ocean of liquor" is a perfect description for the quantity Jones has put through his liver in his 81 years. How he survived that long is beyond me.