It's 8 p.m. and the main thoroughfare in town is almost empty. A neon sign flickers “BEER” over the door of the bar on Main Street. The establishment’s name is painted on the window: “Friendly Tavern.”

The place doesn’t look friendly at first. The dimly lit bar is tiny, but with enough room for several arcade games, a jukebox and a dart board. Stools are pushed up against the bar stretching across the north wall.

Judy Back finishes pouring her coffee behind the bar and then looks up to greet the new arrivals.

“How’d you end up here?” she asks, with a little bit of Oklahoma in her voice. She’s the owner and sole employee at the Friendly, 120 S. Main St. in Noble.

There’s no one else in the bar Thursday evening. Back says some of her regulars are staying in because of the weather — they’ve worked outside in the cold weather all day so they just want to stay at home.

Three young men come in through the back door.

“Hey, Judy,” they say to the bartender with neatly styled silver hair. She knows what beer to pull out for each, except this night they’re throwing her for a loop and switching from Busch to Bud.

“You boys are confusing me,” Back says.

Back has been at the Friendly since the late 1980s, she said as she admitted she’s fuzzy on dates. The tavern has been around since the late ’40s or early ’50s.

“This little bar was here long before you went to a convenience store and bought beer, so everybody came here and socialized,” Back said.

Back’s mother, Joyce Bennett, started working there in the late ’60s and bought it a few years later. Back took over after her mother died in 1995.

“It’s basically the same way it was when Mom was here,” Back said.

Back knows most everyone who comes in. They come for a beer, or a soda, but mostly just to see a friendly face, she said.

“Most people who come here don’t come to get drunk," she said. "They come to socialize.”

And that’s good, because it’s hard to get drunk at the Friendly. Back said she can’t get a liquor license because state law says she’s too close to the Baptist church. So she serves soda and coffee and 3-point-2 beer. The cash-only bar sells beers for $2, draft beer for $1.50 and pitchers for $5.