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VOLUME 5
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NUMBER. >JQ
J A M im
W 7
O m R U T T CQtoT PRODUCTIONS-PO 60X11U COMMON BENCH OR T7IIO • 503~436~Z7JS
From Beasties and Grumplies
and Things that go Bump
in the Night,
Dear Lord Protect Us.
"Wayside tavern window light
Beckons unto me.
’Tarry by the liearthside bright
And seek good company*.
I stepped in to join tlie din
So carefree and so loud
Just to lose Old Mr. Blues
And mingle with the crowd."
*Peter Rowan
As titular mayor of Bill’s Tavern and its
longest constant, extant patron, tire duty and
moral obligation devolves on me to eulogize
its passing and reflect, in brief, on its
memory. In announcing its demise to the
public, I feel like a military officer charged
with tlie responsibility o f notifying a mother
or young wife o f the death of a beloved son,
father, or husband Bill’s served long and
valorously and will not soon be forgotten
In its seventy-odd years as tlie Imperial
Cafe and Bill’s Tavern, the public house has
opened its humble doors to as scattered an
assemblage o f paupers and kings as any
venue on earth. Mayors, congressmen,
starlets, poets, loggers, fishermen, trappers,
sages, and fools have dangled on its
barstools and spilled tlieir joys and agony
into the cracks on tlie bar. Billy Hults calls
tlie window in tlie front door o f Bill’s, "tlie
Window o f a Thousand Wonders," and tlie
appellation is fit. Like a kaleidoscope, this
portal lias admitted a shifting melange o f
diameters that unsettles the imagination: a
giant with a dwarf on liis shoulders, Gypsy
people, a Welsh choir, Olympic medalists, a
Russian general in a cape, a mayor that
whooped
A scant, and dwindling, register of
taverns share its lineage and a time-
burnished patina of saltiness and good
fellow-ship: The Goose Hollow Inn.
Maxie’s, Tlie Desdemona, Tlie TownTaverri
in Port Townsend, The Marshall Tavern on
Tomales Bay, and San Francisco's Buena
Vista.
Cast your eyes around tlie interior. The
northeast ceiling remains charred from a '30s
fire. The oil-sealed, clear- fir flooring tears
tlie pocks and stipples of countless caulk
boots back in the days of rough and tumble.
Bill’s was a harder place then, a place we
children were counselled to avoid.
Beargrease hung out there, a swarthy man
fresh out o f prison, who ran off with the
Baptist minister's 16-year old daughter. The
red-haired Olson Brothers downed a
schooner or two from time to tim e-B ud
Olson's Harley motorcycle h a d " killed eight
people..." we were told. A shingle-weaver
called Preach frequently screwed up lus
courage over dime beers at tlie bar. He
specialized in courting recently bereaved
widows, and tlie beer salved liis troubled
conscience. The air was deliciously thick
with smoke and stories.
Glance at tlie old photograph that still
hangs near the front door. Tlie '47
Plymouth coupe in tlie plioto belonged to a
squat, tubercular man, an afternoon regular.
He called the car "Honey Pot." In die early
Fifties, he would exit Bill's at dinnertime and
yell to passersby to help him find liis lost
car, die car lie parked every day in die same
spot one finds it in the photo-right at the
tavern door.
In the last twenty years, die old place lias
been civilized and gentrified. Hamburgers
and shrimp sandwiches have replaced die jar
o f hard-boiled eggs soaked in Polish sausage
brine. Nike executives, fraternity boys, and
snooty attorneys elbow die bar and nng die
pool table. I doubt diey hear die murmurs I
liear, diose spirit voices from a time gone by.
On a quiet night in late January, when the
wind and rain "come in over die Rock," if I
close my eyes and rest quiedy on the first
stool, I can see the shade o f Kathy
Henricksen perched across from me, sipping
beer from her old coffee cup. Tlie ghost o f
Happy Moore, an earlier owner, bellows out
to her patrons from her impregnable position
beliind the bar.
A wake will lie held before the tavern’s
final passing. On die day the pincers dig
into die shingled flanks o f the old structure,
the wailing and keening o f die lads will near
rend your heart We sliall not know its like
again. To Ken Campbell and die new Bill’s,
my very best in the coming years.
Gentlemen, 1 propose a round on die
house.
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BASEBALL
Though the dark winds and rains are still with ns
here on the edge, soon in Honda and Arizona, the
pitchers and catchers will start showing up tor Spring
Training. And the cycle continues.
Baseball has reached an agreement on labor issues
mid inter league play Baseball is still exempt from
the Taft-Hartley Act Baseball still has no
commissioner. We think baseball Ians should write
to their representatives in Congress and demand that
baseball either find a |K*nnancn( commissioner, or
give up the exemption. We find the tactics ol the
owners of the Mariners outrageous, the White Sox
ownership duplicitous, and the Reds owner's
behavior, well, pathetic This alone cries for
someone to take control of these spoiled children with
millions But more importantly for the sake ol the
game and those who love it .uni still respect it as a
special part of what is truly \menca. and for those
ow ners w ho still have the res|rect lor anil the res|K‘cl
of the players and the Ians
CIO Cl BBlIiSI! fins is next year!!
UEfTK IEH EbGÌ 3M1VARV
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