Taverns

Entering a Tavern, in South Buffalo N.Y., is an experience similar to walking into an old fashioned saloon on the Western Frontier of America, during the mid 1800’s. You look around the room carefully, to see who lined the bar or sat at a table. Yet, you do not make any undue or overly challenging eye contact with the patrons. A quick survey of this brotherhood of the befuddled could tell an experienced eye who was three sheets to the wind, who had the stiffened posture of one ready to fight or argue and those who were just plain mean and looking for trouble. No one these days wore colt revolvers on their hips, but you never knew what collection of brass knuckles, lead saps and other assorted man-harming paraphernalia lay concealed, waiting for use when needed.

Some few happy souls would simply be sitting, mellowed out from large doses of their amber narcotic, talking lazily of the latest sporting event that had captured everyone’s attention that day or weekend. Others listened idly, ready to jump into whoever’s conversation that was a handy means to express their considered opinion on whatever the topic of the hour was.

The usual trivia challenges arose. What is the capital of Kentucky? Who holds the highest lifetime batting average in baseball? In what year did Hollywood produce Gone with the wind? The answers were never certain. It depended upon who wanted to insist on his/her version of the answer and how many beers they had consumed in the past few hours. Some rose to the challenge, questioning a patron’s veracity, his intentions and sometimes even his intelligence or legitimacy. If a few punches did get thrown they were usually ineffectual and caused little harm. Beer muscles lacked the force necessary to injure anyone. The prospective combatants usually retired to different ends of the bar, muttering curses or oaths of retribution that were soon forgotten amidst the general dynamic of the conversations up and down the bar. Some few scuffles ended up “outside.” Minor injuries and cuts sometimes surfaced after a few punches were thrown. It was another way of blowing off the accumulated steam of survival in a working class community. Often the pressures of the day drove a man to seek the befuddled relief of the “creature” and the boozy companionship of others who toiled in the same difficult vineyards.

It was only later, in the wee hours of the morning, that the crowd winnowed out, slowly sending the participants homeward to uncertain receptions by their collective families. Usually the Mrs. would weigh in loudly about the amount of time wasted, the money squandered and her general dissatisfaction with the life and habits of the befuddled miscreant who crawled home after a hard night in the saloon.

Reactions could be unpredictable. Physical violence was not unknown in some relationships. Sometimes a black eye or a bloody lip marked the exchange. Usually, it was just one more loud and confrontational episode in a series of verbal jousting that marked a relationship of a working class family's struggling for survival. The next morning would bring forth sheepish apologies and professions of an abstemious future that both parties knew was more a hopeful wish than an expected reality.