The Bar That’s Like Family
Even after it changed hands
“If you loved Uncle Bobby you’ll drink out of his shoe.”
My cousin Kelli was holding up one of my father’s duck boots, luckily brand new. She opened the Busch tap and filled it, then her sister, Erin, presented the shoe to each person in the bar.
My father’s lawyer was also behind the bar, collecting payment for services rendered with a case of mixed liquor of his choosing. I was 18 and drunk and sad and I think there was a point where I held my arms up and exclaimed, “This is my bar.”
But it wasn’t.
The night before my father’s funeral was the last time the bar was open to the public and operated by anyone in the family, over 25 years ago. My cousins bartended; they had been keeping it open so we could get enough cash together for the gravediggers at the cemetery on the other side of town. They only took cash, or maybe they knew to only take it in this instance. If memory serves me right, it cost $1,500 to dig a grave in 1991.
The next day, the pallbearers, including that lawyer, struggled to carry the coffin and Erin wondered if anyone would notice if she needed to vomit in her purse during the funeral. The wake ended at the bar, again, with my mother refusing to drink beer out of the shoe and John Wayne, the local street…
