Why won’t anybody talk to me?

March 16, 2026

Dell Franklin,

By DELL FRANKLIN

Editor’s Note: The following series, “Life in Radically Gentrifying Cayucos by the Sea,” to be posted biweekly includes the notes, thoughts, and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin. 

Franklin’s memoir, “The ballplayer’s Son” and “Life on The Mississippi, 1969” are currently on Amazon.

I was sitting at the bar around 6 o’clock in the evening sipping a vodka rocks and watching a sunset start to form and realized that everybody situated on stools were looking into their phones. Nobody was talking.

A middle-aged couple studied separate phones. One guy was looking at his phone while eating. The guy beside me looked to be around 30, was tall and clean-shaven with short neatly combed hair and continually fiddled with his phone, a half-consumed pint of beer going flat before him.

The couple on my other side kept their fingers and thumbs going rapidly and I guess they were “texting.” I have friends and associates frustrated with me because I don’t text.

When they press me to text I claim I don’t know how. They then inform me it is simple. I explain to them that nothing on a cell phone is simple to me. They then want to see my flip phone and when I show it to them they explain that I can not only text on this phone if I set it up, but can also take photographs.

I always tell them I do not want to text or take photographs and that this phone was given to me by members of my family to carry at all times so they can keep track of me in case of emergencies and that all I want to do is dial a number, answer the weird ring, and talk on it.

Sometimes, somebody who knows me well enough will take the phone from me and start fiddle-fucking with it in an attempt to set it up to text and photograph, and I will bellow at them and demand the phone and threaten them if they don’t give it back, because the more they try to set up my phone the more complicated it will be for me to operate with too much going on at the same time and overwhelming me.

Always, they return the phone, and I calm down.

A few times, I have met strangers in this bar I go to and after a brief exchange of information, they will start showing me photos on their phone: children, grandkids (God save me!), possessions, pets, sunsets, vacation spots, a goddam fish they caught five years ago…. It’s like their entire lives are on a phone. Otherwise they have no life.

When people in a bar bring out their phones to show me something, I always make it a point to direct them to google “Life On The Mississippi, 1969,” by Dell Franklin, and “The Ball Player’s Son,” by Dell Franklin, in hope they’ll buy my books, and they always express interest and amazement when they find my books even though they’re not going to buy them because they don’t fucking read!

All they do is text and take photos and store bullshit on their phones and have lost the art of conversation.

Like the guy beside me, who finally finished his beer, ordered another, and then was served a meal. He didn’t take two bites before he picked up the phone and began, I guess, texting. Somehow, he ate and texted at the same time.

I was on my second vodka and getting a little peeved at this slug and was starting to feel offended that he’d been sitting beside me for close to an hour and not once glanced in my direction or showed any indication somebody was sitting beside him.

Why are you in a fucking bar?

Anyway, I was just about finished with my second vodka when the slug beside me finished his meal and almost looked my way, and I quickly said, “How’s it going?”

He was stunned. He shrugged, and muttered, “Okay,” then looked away and put a credit card on the bar.

Usually, when somebody asks me how I’m doing, like most people, I’ll say, “Fine, how are you doing?” But evidently this poor soul was so overwhelmed by the daunting complications of my overture, he was rendered speechless.

I thought to myself, I guess people text in a bar because it’s too loud with the roar of drunks to be heard on a phone, so they text, but why would they want to talk to somebody else so far away while in a bar when they can talk to me and listen to my bullshit, as I was a bartender for over 20 years and relished the bullshit involved with drunks and have even written about it for New Times decades ago.

Now, there is a movement in this country to take these miserable conversation-killing, mind-numbing, humanity-compromising phones from children while in school. I think these days people who go to bars should be ordered to check their phones in with the bartender and try and learn about bullshitting instead of texting to the same old bores and gazing at the same goddam photos and searching for meaningless nonsense.

Will the day come when people can no longer tell stories in bars?

The goof beside me stood after paying and walked out and had only opened his mouth to order a beer and a meal and ask for a check.