There used to be a bar called Toomey's on the corner of Degraw and Court Street that was around the corner from where we lived on Tompkins Place. It was an old school local saloon. A bucket of blood where the Irish guys in the neighborhood used to go to get their load on. You could go and get a growler of tap beer for about three dollars. That was basicly a pot with a lid on it or a bottle if you were a hotiy toity lace curtain mick that they would fill from the bar and you would bring home for the men to have with dinner. Or maybe just while they were watching the game. When I was kid you could go in and pick it up for your Da and no one would think anything of it. You would bring in the pot, get it filled, the bartender would put it on the tab and you would bring it home. And you would pick up a couple of packs of Lucky Strike while you were at it. Nobody thought twice about it.
It was a different world.
5 comments:
I'll believe you really lived this shit when you tell a story about someone getting an Irish head butt in the schnozz.
All good Irish I know open their fights with the surprise head butt in the schnozz. Most times the fight ends with the head butt. Lots of blood and cracked cartilage, you know.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if your Micks don't head butt they ain't really Micks.
Love the Irish, hate the English.
My grandmother used to talk of her aunts sitting on the porch drinking growlers in Boston. Cool to read about what that is here.
My uncle, 82, grew up in New Orleans. His dad would send him to the bar with a beer pail. If you were big enough to put the pail on the bar, you were big enough to carry the beer. Uncle Ray was tall enough at age 3. He would have trouble bringing it home though, as the pail was full of Dixie.
Trey
May Dad would tell the same story. His Pop and hie Uncles would be sitting on the stoop and send dad to teh bar for a bucket-a-beer and some cheese & crackers.
Back during the War; late '30's/early '40's. dad would have been 8-maybe 12 or 13.
Dad used to ask me to do beer runs for him when I was 16-17 years old. we lived in the country at the time & it was a couple of miles to the bar. No crouching on the stoop with the bar around the corner. He'd give me a couple of bucks and a note to the bartender so he would let me have a 12 pack.
I never had the heart to let Dad know I could go into the same bar and get a 12-pack on my own.
Then again, maybe he knew, and didn't want me to know he knew.
After WWII my father used his GI bill to go to Med school at LSU. Part of the training involved community outreach. On one such visit out in the country my father was talking to a woman notorious for being the biggest hypochondriac for several counties.
The docs to be were sent to her to learn about dealing with that type of patient as well as just to haze them. It was a hot day as dad told the story, and he noticed the bucket and dipper on the front porch. He asked for a drink, only to be refused by the hypocondriacal granny.
"Let me get you some fresh from the well" she demured. Fearing for his safety if this half crazy women got him some water out of sight, dad insisted and pulled a big draw from the dipper.
The bucket was full of moonshine.
Dad spent the rest of the day worried he would go blind. Empathy is a wonderful thing, don't you think?
Trey
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