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To the Tavern Born"The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness." — Lao TzuIt was customary among Chicago Irish Catholics in the 1950s to use children as beer caddies. Take my wife, Bernadette: When her grandfather's love for storytelling left his throat dry, he sent her out for more beer. She'd step out her back door, walk down an alleyway to the local tavern, and show the bartender a note from her grandfather. That Bernadette was an eleven-year-old with pigtails didn't faze anyone in the slightest — the bartender simply handed her a couple of quarts of beer as if it was milk and sent her on her way.
Running out of beer was never a problem at my house — the fridge was always stocked with cans of Budweiser. "Run along, Bobby," my own grandfather would shout from his favorite chair, "and fetch me a beer."
"Bobby" wasn't the result of too much afternoon drinking — it was actually what people called me through most of my childhood. I was born George Robert Wendt III, which meant my father got to be the George in the family. I'd almost completely forgotten that my name was George until I heard a teacher calling it out on my first day of kindergarten. "I guess that's me," I finally replied. I like to think this kind of flexibility prepared me for later in life, when complete strangers started calling me "Norm."
After I'd retrieved the beer for my grandfather — and opened the can with a church key — I got my reward: a taste. I'll never forget the first time he let me try his beer, when I was maybe eight years old. Sincethen I've tossed back plenty of brews that are supposed to be better than Bud, but nothing's ever going to match that first sip. For some people, beer's an acquired taste. Not me. Right off the bat I thought I was drinking a little bit of heaven — no mystery as to how the church key got its name.
Nowadays our grandparents would probably be accused of enabling alcoholism. But I've always suspected that babies are born loving beer. Bernadette's grandfather taught her twin brothers to walk by holding out a beer can. Maybe it's a regional thing: French babies might love wine, while Russian rugrats enter the world with a taste for vodka. I wouldn't know — in Chicago, beer is pretty much synonymous with mother's milk.
There have been breweries in Chicago since the 1830s, when "Chicago" meant a few hundred settlers surrounded by corn and wigwams full of pissed-off Potawatomis. The settlement was eventually invaded, not by angry Native Americans but European immigrants, mostly German and Irish. The Germans brought lager and a drinking culture that stretched back centuries. The Irish brought their thirst. I'm either fortunate or cursed to have been born into both heritages.
My father's people were actually from Danzig, which is the same place that Poland calls Gdansk. It's been part of Poland for over a thousand years, except for the almost two hundred years it was part of Germany. So while my father's people called themselves Germans, I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I should be offended by Polish jokes.
Not that there was a lot of talk about the Old Country in my home — all four of my grandparents were born in Chicago, or County Cook, in the vernacular of the South Side Irish. As a kid, the only thing I knew about my mother's people was that they were from Ireland. Years later, while planning a visit to her ancestral land, I asked her exactly where.
"Oh," she said, "Mayo, God help us."
"Oh," I said. "You mean County Mayo?"
"Maybe," she admitted. "I've just never heard it said without the 'God help us.' "
A Proper PintThere are plenty of fine beers brewed in Ireland: Beamish, Harp, Kilkenny, Murphy's, and Smithwick's, to name a few. But when an Irishman (or woman) refers to "a proper pint," they're probably talking about Guinness. And the only way to appreciate a Guinness is to drink one pulled from the tap.
Unless you happen to live in Dublin, however, you're not going to find a proper pint. You may think you're drinking the real Guinness, but in the eyes of many Irish beer snobs, their sacred stout loses quality the farther away you get from the old brewery at St. James's Gate.
My first visit to Ireland was a short one — an overnight trip to Belfast for an appearance on a local chat show. I made only one request of the show's producers: I had to have a proper pint of Guinness. "No problem," they assured me. " We'll take you out after the show."
We wrapped around eleven P.M., which also happens to be closing time for most Irish pubs, but the producers promised me that they knew a place that was open. We entered a bar that didn't look anything like the Irish pub in my mind's eye — instead, a Liberace-clone played piano to screaming old ladies — but I wasn't about to let the aesthetics interfere with my single-minded goal. "A pint of Guinness, please."
The bartender raised his hands apologetically. "We don't carry Guinness here."
"All right," I conceded. "How about a Murphy's?" No. "Harp?" No. I worked my way through every Irish beer I knew. The bartender just shook his head each time. "So what do you have?" I finally asked.
"Bud, Bud Light, Coors, Coors Light..."
Now don't get me wrong, I'll happily drink any of those beers at an All-American picnic or a barbecue, preferably from a tub filled with ice. But not on my first trip to Ireland. Fortunately, a helpful waiter noticed my frustration. "I might be able to get you a Guinness," he volunteered, sprinting across the street to a closing pub and returning with a couple of freshly poured glasses of the good stuff.
It was delicious, so much so that I later bragged about the experience to some of my Irish friends. They weren't exactly impressed. "In Belfast, you say? That's not a proper pint."
It wouldn't have mattered if I was in Kilkenny, Limerick, or Cork — I had to be in Dublin to drink a real Guinness. I wouldn't find a reason to visit Dublin for several years, but when I did, I went straight for the teat, pulling a draft off a keg inside the brewery's company store. I also bought a postcard for my Irish friends, inscribing it with the words "This proper enough for you?"
I got drunk for the first time when I was sixteen, at the 1965 World's Fair in New York City, where I was visiting my sister, a hostess at the Illinois pavilion. During the day, the Fair was a testament to "Man's Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe" and included the premiere of an animatronic Disney show called "It's a Small World." After midnight, once the mostly teenage staff was rid of the guests, the Fair became an international kegger. Party at the French pavilion! Party at the Japanese pavilion! I remember making a fool out of myself trying (unsuccessfully) to vault a hitching post at the Texas pavilion. Fortunately, my idiotic behavior escaped the notice of one of the other hostesses at the Illinois pavilion — my future wife, Bernadette. Small world, indeed.
I brought my taste for beer back home with me. But for Catholic teenagers in 1960s Chicago like me, with zero interest in politics or activism, there weren't exactly a lot of opportunities to get wild and crazy. I spent the rest of the summer hanging out at Janson's, a drive-in at 99th and Western. It was a lot like American Graffiti, except instead of souped-up hot rods, the kids drove their parents' Plymouths.
One day my friend Terry Thulis and I got restless and wandered up the block to 100th Street, where we stumbled across a bar called Littleton's. It was your standard neighborhood "old man" bar, dark and musty. Neither of us looked like old men: I was your typical sixteen-year-old kid, while Terry, a late bloomer, couldn't have looked older than nine. But that didn't stop us from dreaming. "Maybe they'll serve us," I said.
We poked our heads inside. It was dark. Very dark. Bizarrely dark. As our eyes adjusted, we saw that the place was nearly empty except for a couple of grizzled drunks at the bar. I nudged Terry. "Should we?"
We tried to look casual as we strode to the bar. The bartender was an older guy, maybe seventy, with white hair and eyes set so deep that you could hardly see them. He hummed a happy tune as he stacked some glasses, and he greeted us warmly when he noticed we were there. "Oh, hello!"
"We'd like a couple of drafts," I said, hoping my voice wouldn't crack.
"Coming right up!"
A few seconds later, he deposited a pair of beers in front of us. I looked at Terry in stunned disbelief. We emptied our glasses as fast as we could...and asked for two more.
"Sure thing!" the bartender replied. Chipper fellow. But there was something weird about his eyes....
"George," Terry said, nudging me under the bar. "I think he's blind." He waved his hand toward the bartender. No reaction. I did the same. Still no reaction.
"I think you're right!" I said. I looked over at the two drunks at the bar, who clearly weren't blind. They were shaking their heads in disgust, universal sign language for "you little motherfuckers."
"So wait a minute," Terry whispered. "We have just found a bar, one block away from Janson's, with a blind bartender who will serve us beer?"
"We can't tell anyone," I whispered back. "Not a word!" We quickly made a pact to keep our newfound oasis a secret.
Our "secret" lasted about fifteen minutes. By the following week, Littleton's was overflowing with what used to be the Janson's crowd: dozens of bicycles parked in front, a hundred rowdy teenagers inside. My guess is that the two old drunks tipped off the cops, who showed up that weekend to bust up the party.
Loudmouth SoupEveryone knows that beer is a social lubricant, but even scientists have trouble explaining why. The most popular theory is that alcohol affects the amygdala — the brain's pleasure center — producing extra gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA, which makes us feel happy and reduces stress. So now you know: It's GABA that creates the gift of gab.
While the loss of Littleton's was definitely a bummer, Terry and I weren't going to let it get in the way of our quest for beer. We heard a story about a neighborhood bar in South Shore that might be amenable to serving the age-impaired, so we hopped on a bus and headed on over. Jackpot! Not only did the old men inside ignore our peach fuzz, but the drafts were just fifteen cents a pop. At that price we could drink like kings. Which we did.
Unlike kings, we had no royal coach to take us home. By the time the bar closed the buses had stopped running for the night, and we'd drank away our cab fare hours before. And since we were engaging in illegal behavior, we couldn't exactly call our parents to come pick us up.
Fortunately, we had a time-honored tradition at our disposal: fare ditching. We called a cab, and while we waited for it to arrive, we concocted a plan. There was a stop sign at 91st and Leavitt. When the cab came to a halt, we'd jump out of the back and escape down some nearby alleyways. As long as we remained inconspicuous until the last possible minute, the driver wouldn't suspect a thing.
We got into the cab and gave the driver a fake address, one that would take us through 91st and Leavitt. When we stopped at the intersection, Terry leapt out and sprinted for the alleyways. He was well on his way to freedom when he realized that he didn't hear my footsteps behind him.
I'd passed out drunk in the back of the cab.
By the time Terry came back to look for me, the driver was shaking me against the side of the car. I was too terrified to do anything except blurt out my real address. I'll never forget the way my mother shook her head at me as she settled our fare. Thank God she never told my father.
Copyright ©2009 by Padre Productions, Inc.
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