Fallout shelter

I didn't write this. This article appeared in the Memphis Flyer a few years back. I saved it because it spoke to me . It spoke of home. It spoke of something that I cannot find in California. It's funny how those 'boring nights' in Memphis have now become precious memories. Given all that, I thought I would share it. I promise to return to original programming tommorrow.

Terry was a regular in the bar where I slung beers and burgers throughout college. Day after day he would come in before lunch, five minutes before the bar even opened, take the same yellow, bar-grime-covered stool and sit for hours. He even called in one day to tell us that he was running late. Every day he came in with The New York Times tucked under one arm, spending afternoons expertly solving the crossword puzzles and occasionally speaking with me and the other waitresses. But mostly he'd just sit there quietly smoking a cigar and drinking a Coca-Cola. Terry had sworn off alcohol years before. He didn't come to the bar for the drinks or even the conversation, he just came for the bar.

I love bars. I have since high school and college when my close friends nicknamed me "Fletch" for the tall stack of fake IDs I always had on hand. Many of my fondest memories are loosely arranged around bars.

In the year and some change that Memphis has been my home I've discovered and rediscovered some of this city's finer and grungier oases. Living first in East Memphis, the Bottom Line was only a sometimes chilly walk away, and many a Sunday evening took my neighbors and me to T.J. Mulligan's on Quince for a drippy, sweet shooter known as a Banana Popsicle. A friend in Cordova introduced me to the Fox & the Hound and, admittedly, sometimes the Logan's Roadhouse at Wolfchase. Late afternoons at the Belmont Grill, wine and oysters at the Half Shell, late nights at the Tap House, and sporadic ventures into the Sports Pub -- contrary to some naysayers, there is fun to be had on the eastern edge of the loop.

Last fall, Robert Earl Keen's show at Newby's found me dancing with a Clint Black look-alike while my friends teased me over the cowboy's shoulder. And when I promised him I'd be waiting out front, I think I meant it, but instead found myself minutes later piled into a Pathfinder with a crowd of others, laughing and howling all the way into Mississippi. At 3 a.m. a gambling jaunt made all the sense in the world, and Tunica -- an entire county that awoke one dewy morning to discover that its shimmery lakes and sleepy pastures had morphed into a garishly lit giant of a bar -- was too close to ignore.

Bars are magnetic. We flock to them for what they are and for what they are not. Automatic Slim's on a Saturday night requires red lipstick and a push-up bra. Young Avenue Deli on a hot summer afternoon means a sundress and sandals -- at most. A burger at Alex's late at night calls for whatever you stagger in wearing.

But for every Friday night at Alfred's or Earnestine & Hazel's celebrating that the alarm clock will not erupt with dawn's early light, there's a quiet Tuesday when a Guinness Stout and some greasy bar food sound better than the network television sitcom lineup.

I love the oily sheen that glides across a martini, the icy crust that frames a perfectly shaken gimlet, and the sweaty condensation that trickles off a glass of Chardonnay in the summertime. Moving into an old Midtown apartment in the early summer's already blanching heat, I learned to love bars for their high-powered air conditioners. The Bayou, Memphis Pizza Café, and the Blue Monkey became places to lower my body's core temperature.

Bars permit you to linger. Restaurants have imaginary time limits -- order, eat, pay, leave. Greet 'em, feed 'em, and street 'em, I used to say when my livelihood relied on the number of times the tables under my watch would turn. But bars invite dawdling. One more round, one more conversation.

I met my first Bluff City friend at the P&H Café. He swaggered over, the personification of bravado in a wife-beater shirt and old jeans. I told him that I'd just made it to Memphis and wanted to go to a real blues joint, not some Beale Street, Disneyfied, commercial wallet-sucker. He bragged that he knew of such a place. Checking my good sense at Miss Wanda's door, I took off with the deep-voiced, intriguing stranger and we danced the night away at Wild Bill's.

Even Beale Street, despite my early prejudices against it, has provided me with many raucous evenings, often ending in the bathroom line at Raiford's. A friend's band playing at Murphy's and Kudzu's introduced me to those bars. Wine tastings at the Palm Court, wine drinking at Le Chardonnay, and cold beer at the new Boscos in Overton Square -- I'm sometimes amazed that my liver can keep up.

Huge margaritas at El Porton, bizarre nights at R.P. Tracks, all of the city's Huey's, Sleep Out Louie's, Highpoint in the Pinch, Sidestreet (where, despite a well-meaning bartender, I learned that hair spray will not get a red wine stain out of white pants). Backstreet and the truly misunderstood J. Wag's, these are the places that can make or break a city. Late one night, a good friend introduced me to the sullen hermit that is the Buccaneer. And then there's Zinnie's and its neighbor, the not-so-imaginatively-named Zinnie's East. Sushi and sake at Sekisui, cans of beer at the Lamplighter, Cosmopolitans at The Peabody -- don't let me hear you complaining that there's nothing to do in Memphis.

The point of all my drivel is simple: I love bars and they love me. The cool comfort of a drink, be it leaded or unleaded, in the company of friends or strangers, is sometimes entertainment enough. Toasts and cheers, shooters and shots, bellyaches, headaches, and morning-after regrets -- all are as much a part of bars as olive picks and beer caps.

And if years from now I'm sliding onto a grungy bar stool as predictably as Terry, then so be it. I'll order my gimlet, wine, or beer and talk to a new or old friend. Someone I may know for a lifetime or forget in seconds. Regardless, I'll be getting exactly what I want from that nicked stretch of wood and that short, sweaty glass: a few moments to enter humanity as a silent spectator or as an active participant. And most of the time, that's all I'm looking for anyway.