ALAN writes:

Apropos your discussion of city life (here and here), I vote in favor of neighborhood taverns—the old-fashioned kind that Mike Royko wrote about, not the silly, pretentious “sports bars” now favored by trendies.

In the 1940s-‘50s, every neighborhood in St. Louis had a dozen or more corner taverns. My grandfather would testify to that, since he worked in one and was a regular patron at others.

On Friday nights in the 1950s, he, my mother, aunts and uncles and I walked over to the Golden Oak Bar, a typical south St. Louis corner tavern in a red-brick building with a long bar on one side, tables, and a jukebox.  People walked from blocks around.  The men talked about beer, baseball, or the Friday night fights on black-and-white television.  My mother or aunts made sure I had a bottle of 7-Up or Squirt and a package of crackers to keep me occupied while they talked.  At ages 5-7, I sat there at a table with them, absorbing the ambience, the sounds of the pinball and shuffleboard games, the clinking of beer and soda bottles, the conversations that floated on the cigarette smoke, and the ever-changing colored lights on the front of the jukebox.

I attribute my love of great music to those nights at the Golden Oak Bar, for it was there that I learned to appreciate musical gems like “Rag Mop,” “How Much is That Doggie in the Window?”, and “The Flying Saucer (Parts 1 and 2).”

The Golden Oak Bar lived for 36 years. It was part of a rock-solid, all white, working-class neighborhood of brick houses and flats and small shops and businesses. Most such taverns closed or were demolished years ago or stand boarded-up today.  At some such places you can still see ghost signs on the exterior walls advertising brands of beer once known throughout St. Louis, like Lemp, A-B-C, Falstaff, Schlitz, Alpen Brau, Hyde Park, Stag, Busch Bavarian, and Griesedieck Brothers…..relics from a bygone civilization.

Those taverns were done in by five factors:  The increased availability of automobiles, television, air-conditioning, the worship of youth, and feminism.  The disappearance of such neighborhood taverns is but one chapter in the long and disgusting chronicle of how American men surrendered their masculine authority and the moral fabric of neighborhoods, towns, and cities that depended on that authority.

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