The Captain’s Guide to Choosing a Tavern

From the shabby but cozy confines of Dickens’s Publick Houses to the earthy establishments of Tolkien, houses of drink have lured, coddled, cudgeled and fed the souls and bloodstreams of simple folk the world over who search for warmth, fellowship and an opportunity to pun and get (to use a pastoral term) ploughed. The birthplace of The Captain, that wondrous metropolis of Torrington, CT, could in my childhood boast the greatest number of taverns per capita in the state. In a way, my childhood was but a living experiment to test the veracity of this claim. Alas, I never made it past 17 bars on any given evening, but anecdotally, I can share without hesitation that I doubt not the truth of the boast!

My parents taught me to use my gifts, so like a good son I now will share with you my loyal myrmidon, sober and drunk alike, the accrued wisdom of my tender youth spent walking, stumbling and crawling the streets of the good city Torrington. Put another way, here comes The Captain’s Guide to Choosing a Tavern in which to get shit faced!

* Remember when you brazenly told your Geometry teacher that Geometry was useless bullshit? Well, I don’t remember a lot but I do remember that. And I have eaten my words. So in answer to the question: which bar should you go to first? The Captain responds: “Plot a straight line between yourself and the nearest Tavern and follow that line straight to that bar!” OK. I’m not really sure if that’s Geometry or Algebra or Geography or some other stupid subject I never studied, but you get the point (time to go back to Bad Punners Anonymous, I think).

* Visit a location with “local flavor.” Did you know that The Captain grew up across the street from Barella’s Tavern? Here are a just a few examples of local flavor courtesy of the corner of Culvert Street and Washington Avenue.

Stepping out my front door on the way to school, hopping over the passed out parent of school companions lying on my front lawn in a puddle of blood. You don’t want to be downwind of that!

Watching from my playpen, I witnessed a drunk dude who leaves his car idling in front of the bar while he goes in to wet his whistle and it slips into gear and crashes into the front wall of the bar. Mr. Barella was pissed and proceeded to spew profanities in two languages – highly educational! Had he been Geppetto, his hand gestures would have transformed Pinocchio into a puppet pornstar for sure!

Neighborhood waifs (myself included) playing chicken with the cars of drunks as they drove home from their busy day of unemployment.

Before the WWE, there were bar fights. There’s something universally comical about watching a couple of blind drunk losers stumble out the bar and swing and miss and trip their way up the street and through neighbors yards until they inevitably wrestle each other to the ground, never on the soft grass, mind you, but on the rough, glass shard strewn pavement. And all this right outside my bedroom window!

Old obnoxious Arnie was a regular at Barellas. Not only did all of the patrons at Barellas know Arnie by name, but they also were on a first name basis with Arnie’s bookie (Louie – no kidding) and his parole officer (Stan the Man) who would show up from time to time looking for Arnie to discuss divers business and legal matters. Some of my first memories on this earth are of Arnie disturbing my slumber from across the street on sticky summer evenings with one of his patented drunken rants (he had only three: his good-for-nothing wife whose major offense was, as far as we knew, holding down a steady job and supporting the family; nosy cops who always seemed to show up whenever Arnie was committing a petty crime; and Snowball, a pure white neighborhood tabby that Arnie feared more than anything in the world, believing her to be a Hellcat dispensed by Satan to haunt his living days. Imagine, if you will, a tall, burly, bitter Scandinavian brut running like a skittish school girl from a pretty little white kitty. We neighborhood kids would regularly leave a bowl of milk for Snowball just outside the Tavern door.

* If you seek a cheap, over the bar, medicinal remedy to some severely depressing life circumstances, look for a Tavern with the faded Pabst Blue Ribbon decal on the dusty window. I have no idea who would award a Blue Ribbon for this gosh awful cheap brew, but you can bet your precious last six-pack that the dude was a cash-strapped lush. Acceptable alternatives are: establishments that serve Schlitz, Schmidts, Piels or, my personal favorite, the beer with the best ever jingle, Schaefer – the one beer to have when you’re having more than one!!

* If you seek a classy Publick House, you will need to ask directions from someone who’s actually been in one.

* Unless you want to go to jail, NEVER drink in the Tavern your 13 year old sister frequents, as all of her teenybopper Lolita girlfriends will be there as well.

* Avoid Taverns without neon signage; they’re like high priced hookers – they might look nicer on the outside than their less expensive peers but are way overpriced and just as dirty on the inside.

* Tavern Etiquette:

It is impolite to drink beer from a glass, not to mention unsafe.
Sex on the pool table is acceptable, but only if you cover it first (the table, that is).
Smoking is a form of ambience.
Tavern food is to be eaten with your hands. Any silverware you see is there for the benefit of the Health Inspector.

* Taverns are for Men

Don’t let the label fool you…Ladies night is for men. This is, however, one night when women are allowed to drink.
Mens night? Also for men…or so I’ve been told.
Sunday, Monday and Thursday night football? C’mon.
World Figure Skating Championships? Just checking to see if you’re still awake.
Jello Wrestling Tournament? Another event where the female participants are permitted to drink.
Every other night? A man’s home may be his castle, but his Tavern is his “safe place.”

* If you have a death wish, go to a neighborhood dive and order the following:
A wine cooler
A Strawberry Daiquiri
Pinot Grigio (here comes Pinocchio again!)
Brie with mango and apple with a fresh sprig of parsley (if you’re lucky, the barkeep will think you are a legal immigrant speaking a foreign language and just pour you a Schlitz)
A Cosmo

So Believe The Captain when he says: taverns , booze and teenage girls are a dangerous brew!!

Yours singing the Schaefer song,

The Captain