Pickle Barrel People

In the olden days, back in the "wild west" before there were modern conveniences like motor cars, aeroplanes, electricity and indoor plumbing, back in the days of the Pony Express and wooden sidewalks, when it took months to cross America and the stagecoach or the covered wagon were the only ways to do so, back when there was no internet, no TV and no PS2, back then there were pickle barrel people. Namely the old men who sat in the General store (the one that sold a little of everything and not too much or more than one brand of anything) at the very back, or very front, pulled up on stools overlooking a chess board perched atop a big barrel of pickles, or pickled pork, or pickled beets, or pickled venison, or pickled whatever else one felt compelled to pickle. These old timers who were too old to work the land and too young to succumb to it. Back when women did the housework and once past your prime the only acceptable pastime was sitting at a pickle barrel in the general store playing checkers, or dice or cards or even (for the more sophisticated) chess.
I know that you are thinking it a shame that there had to be an end to pickle barrel people, but fear not for I have discovered the haunts of the modern day pickle barrel people and shall divulge them here:
The modern day pickle barrel people can be found at small coffee shops, the kind with small patio tables outside sitting talking with other old men, or in co-of cafeterias with other farmers, or in farm implement stores (some of which still have barrels, although they be not filled with pickles) talking with old friends. It would seem that the pickle barrel people have merely evolved into a new breed of men, the coffee shop people, not to be confused with the coffee shop junkies (who of course make up a completely different clientele.) These coffee shop people are the ones who go for the cheapest thing on the menu (namely the senior's discount small, black coffee) and milk it for the longest, making one small cup of coffee last the better part of the day. The people who leave home and there not-so-dependent wives to go for "a coffee" with the boys and come home hours later.
Yes the coffee people, modern day pickle barrel people, what would society be without you?