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Stumpage Reports
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Monday, April 07, 2003 :::
The Neighborhood Bar and Roadside America
Down here in North Carolina, we're still a little ashamed of selling booze in public. It has not been that long ago that liquor was able to be sold by the drink and all bottle liquor is sold in state package stores that are hidden. There is the notable exception of moonshine but that at least had the veneer of illegality. Up north where I come from and I know you don't give a damn how we do it up there, there were lots of neighborhood bars on every corner. These bars had been there for years and years and lots of Joe-Six-Pack or Eddie-Punch-Clock guys would go there after work. You just don't see bars like that as much down south. So everytime I go up north I get a kick out of seeing these little bars and their goofy names.
I ran across this list of funny bar names from Wisconsin. I made a trip up there in the summer of 1999 and these names struck me enough so that I wrote them down in a little notebook I take on trips. I think they're funny.
Nutz Deep
Come Back Inn
Marsh Niapiros Nitty Gritty
The Bar Next Door
Justabar in Sanborn
Zars Mel-O-De Bar
Stumble Inn
and of course...
Sweeney's
That whole trip to through Wisconsin and northern Michigan turned into a real tour of roadside America. I love tacky shit by the side of the road, we saw a giant apple in Eagle River, WI. I have no idea who the lady in that picture is, i just found it on the web, but that is the apple. Also saw plenty o' Paul Bunyans, huge cheeses, and a giant fiberglass trout leaping into Lake Superior. But the highlight of the trip, if you are ever in Wisconsin, don't miss it, was Fred Smith's Concrete Park. The pictures on the web site cannot even begin to do it justice, I have to get my own web site and get some decent pictures up. This shot might give you a better idea what we were dealing with.
This entry turned out a lot longer than I planned. They usually do. Have fun with the links.
Quote of the Day:
If I could draw I would make a picture of a table at the café during a feria with banderillos sitting before lunch reading the papers, a boot-black at work, a waiter hurrying somewhere and two returning picadors, one a big brown-faced, dark-browed man usually very cheerful and a great joker, the other a gray-haired, neat, hawknosed, trim-waisted little man, both of them looking the absolute embodiment of gloom and despair.
--- Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, 1932.
::: posted by tom at 11:44 PM
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