One snowy December night in the late 80s in the college town of Carbondale, Illinois The Club burned to the ground. We stood and watched the flames and smoke mingling furiously with our own misty, damp breath, huddling together in cashmere greatcoats, afraid. I stood next to Ralph, who had lived a comfortable college-stud bachelor existence upstairs until approximately one hour before. He cradled his calm beagle pup, Stella, in his arms and smoked and steamed, the flames reflected in his eyes.

“You can stay with us,” I said, looking straight into the flames, breathing the vapor of red vinyl barstools, oak, asbestos, musician stories.

“It was Bob, wasn’t it,” said Ralph. It was not a question. The Treasury Department would do an investigation, but we all knew Bob, the owner, had gone through a costly divorce. He needed the insurance money. We all loved him.

My girlfriends Laura, Rochelle, and I worked together as bartenders, and foolishly lived together as well. I say foolishly because when your place of employment goes up in smoke, all are thrown out of work  en masse, creating a hardship for collective bill paying. We had heretofore relied on one another, but none of us were trust fund babies. After the fire, the government milk and cheese program provided us with enormous, wobbly blocks of viscous yellow matter and label-less gallons of bluish milk. It is the only time I received government assistance, and it taught me that those who dole out noblesse oblige purposely begrudged its recipient any semblance of taste or refinement.

The next night, Laura and I, in parkas and under cover of snow and darkness, made a midnight foray into the burnt-out cooler pulling a Kroger shopping cart. Our keys to the back door of The Club still worked.  The door, black, brittle and enormous, still opened. The place reeked of burnt, wet wood and fetid smoke. The interior had been completely gutted – ceiling beams collapsed onto the bar, tables smashed to bits, someone’s bass drum collapsed  like a marshmallow. However, the storage room, lined with bottles, had been protected like Fort Knox. Flames had  only licked and teased the stolid bottles, turning each charcoal black, some with psychedelic designs. However, the liquor itself, upon our expert inspection, was still good. That weekend we hosted a Burn Baby Burn Party to raise money for rent using the salvaged liquor from the Club. Even with labels burnt off, brands were easily identifiable – Tanqueray’s squarish tilt, Gray Goose’s distinctive neck, and Jack Daniel’s masculine thrust were all familiar shapes to us. The well-attended benefit soireee earned us enough to keep us flush in our two-story frame house until the end of the semester.

Southern Illinois University in Carbondale was a college town better known for its Halloween parties, which had been emceed by an edgy David Letterman, than academics. The Club was a popular watering hole for bikers, punks, and art students.  The other bartenders and I split our time between the bar and campus, pedaling our beach cruisers along the streets inhabited by actual townies punctuated only occasionally by a lawn couch, a college neighborhood staple. I was an anachronistic choice for bartender, as I am neither flirtatious nor especially outgoing. My favorite conversation topics lean toward literature, philosophy, and ethics, not sports, cars, and drama. I guess I had the look that The Club was going for, though (retro chic/punk) and the assertive nature to break up bar fights with little ado. Bartending pays relatively well, considering the short hours and negligible cost to one’s physical or mental well-being. The owner who hired me never even asked my age, and I began tending bar long before I myself was legally able to drink. This did not strike me as unusual as I waltzed in each night, a bold 19 year old weaving through a long line of students being carded by our enormous, laconic bouncer.

The Club was where the scene kids went to be seen, draping themselves over the bar with nonchalant affectation, eyes and lips heavily outlined in black. It was too hip for its own good, and the kids who thought that because I tended bar there that I must be automatically off the richter scale hip would have been disappointed if they knew just how much I read. At 9:00 pm the bands came in to set up their equipment near a stuffy little corner stage by the walk-in cooler. Some of these bands drew enormous crowds at big regional venues, and some were even national acts. Tall Paul, Michael Stipe, and some of the musicians from Depeche Mode would stop in to jam.  Rockabilly, punk, blues, metal. I was often too busy pouring drinks to even notice when a big name was playing. I knew by the reverent reaction of the crowd at the bar when someone of note had stepped onto the stage.  All of the musicians seemed unusually lank and tall, strolling heavily through the back door in their leather boots, carrying black cases, amps, guitars, soundboards. The cases were often thick with stickers from what to me seemed exotic venues where Lightening Hopkins or Joey Stripes had played.  The name of the band was usually emblazoned on the drum kit at the very least, and engraved on the heavy black cases if they had been together a while. I came to know the drinking habits of many musicians, and was told which kind of booze and how much to serve some so that they could be relied upon to play well or at all. Their groupies were a fascinating lot: spiky bleached hair to go with pleather bustiers, wafting into The Club in a mist of pot smoke and patchouli. I never got involved in their drama, although I provided a captive audience for many twitchy-faced rockers who felt compelled to tell me about their latest escapades in what should have been embarrassing detail.  To this day, old rockers make me sad. It’s as though they never emerged from a quagmire that strangled the dreams of many bar patrons before my eyes.

Musicians were allowed to drink free as part of their pay, and some abused this privilege more than others.  The owner told me who to cut off and when, and I made every effort to do this quietly like a teacher dishing out hall discipline so that the musicians were not embarrassed. Some were obviously beyond alcohol in their addictions;  other destructive preferences included  heroin, cocaine, and college girls, all of which tied up the tiny bathrooms for hours. I was the voice of reason for many of these guys, and felt uncomfortable running into them outside of my job.  My friends envied me, especially the musician-addicted girls who went weak-kneed during guitar solos.  I did not understand their idol worship, as I knew how most of the rockers, even the successful ones, lived.

The crowd varied greatly from day to night. On weekends I sometimes worked during the day. The daytime regulars included Aaron, a thirtyish Chicago expatriate who was as thin and pale as Edgar Winter who harbored vague and dismally failed ambitions. Aaron needed to drink, and would often be my first patron as soon as I unlocked the door, his hands shaking as he sipped his first beer. We sometimes played chess, me leaning across the beer cooler to move a piece, Aaron with his elbows on the polished wooden bar. He would study the board intently as I served up cold pitchers to lunchtime drinkers and bikers in heavy, pungent leather jackets and  sweat-stiffened doo-rags. Aaron would look neither left nor right as businessmen in suits ordered from me on either side of him. I think they reminded him of his position in life as a perma student, a stunted son who would never graduate and was not wanted back home in Chicago. I always noticed the hope in his eyes as a young girl walked in oblivious to this, one who would perhaps be vulnerable to his intelligence and charm and not smell his failure.

Clusters of bikers came in loudly around happy hour, sunburned and windblown. Many of them were decent people, although every bartender in the place knew which ones to keep an eye on as the booze swelled their macho. Some became violent, others verbally abusive. Some wore “colors” which were banned- Hell’s Angels, Satan’s Slaves, Vigilantes. One of my favorites was a huge, bear-like man named Ted. I had heard that he had been in an accident and was hospitalized, but was unprepared when he came in on crutches, missing his left leg above the knee. I tried not to register my shock as I drew him a beer from the tap. He sat on his usual barstool and looked at me. He told me at great length about the accident; he had been going too fast around a curve. “Yeah, when I landed my leg was backward.  They tried to save it but it got infected,” he said, drinking gratefully, adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

“Wow, I’m sorry Ted. Are you okay?” I asked, wiping the bar in front of him.

“There’s nothing I can do about it. Do you want to see me move my leg?” he asked. Before I could think about an answer, he sat his stump on the barstool next to him. It’s hard to take one’s eyes off of something like that.  The stump fluttered when he “moved” his ghost of a leg. I could see little nerves dancing at the end of the thick stump.  By this time he had attracted a crowd for which I was grateful, as I could not laugh or guffaw in amazement as they were doing. I was silent, racked with pity for him. I had occasionally taken rides with several friends on bikes, but after that I stopped.

By last call, the heavy rubber mats behind the bar were soaking in beer. I felt as if I were walking on a raft in the middle of a frothy ocean. The bar itself was sticky with booze and the patrons became loud and prophetic. My arms were hot and red from washing glasses and I returned steaming stacks of them to their places along the back wall. Roger, a nearly-toothless black man who could’ve been 30 or 60, cleaned the place each night. He came in at last call. I drew him his beer and he set about wiping the tables and putting up the chairs. I am not sure, but I think that Bob paid him only in beer.  I avoided standing directly in front of him as he spit when he talked because he was missing his front teeth. He had one eye that turned inward. I appreciated that Bob kept him “employed.” I knew he had a wife and children. I wondered at the sort of love they shared.  It was hard to imagine how and where they lived, so I didn’t even try.

After we restocked the coolers and locked the doors, it was our time to play. We often drove out to a roadhouse in the country called Midlands which was open until 4:00 am. Sitting on the “right” side of the bar felt liberating. I have been on the right side ever since.