Buddy Clarke's revisited

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If you grew up in my section of Dunmore, Buddy Clarke's was your bar.

The place where everybody really did know your name.

It was passed down. Because it was my Father's bar too. The place was an institution before anybody realized it was an institution.

As kids we'd walk past its darkened screen door...the kind that squeaked and shuttered shut with a bang like a cabin in the woods. (Next door on the left was the salon where my Mom got her hair done). We'd hear the laughter and the clinking bottles and the legs of the stools sliding across the wooden floor. We wanted in. But it was the type of place that made you wait. It played by the rules. Not everybody did back then. The bar across the street from the Dunmore police station did a roaring business catering to high school seniors, for instance. It looked like a cast party for “Hoosiers” in there on the weekends.

Clarke’s was legit. It had been there since before the moon landing, so it had to be. It was the type of place that both created small town legends, and never forgot them.

I can still remember. My 21st birthday. It was 1987. Walking in there with friends who had turned before me. Adjusting my eyes to the dim lights, and proudly flashing my ID. "Long Cool Woman In a Black Dress" was playing on the jukebox. I'll have a Rolling Rock bottle please. It was $1.

To this day "Long Cool Woman In a Black Dress" reminds me of Buddy Clarke's.

What a glorious time it was.

Buddy had recently sold the bar. But it stayed in the Dunmore family. A guy named Dennis McAndrew bought it. He grew up on the same street as me. A block away from the bar. It remained "Buddy Clarke's", which is the best compliment I can give Dennis. Like Buddy, he made everybody feel welcome. He treated everybody who gave respect with respect. And he treated his regulars best of all. It was my first experience with having the Rolling Rock (and later Yuengling) put down in front of me without asking for it. My first experience with getting my drink first, despite the 3 deep crowd in front of me. My first experience with greetings and handshakes coming from to and fro. My first experience with knowing the secret knock that would get you into the place on a Sunday to watch Football. My first experience being welcomed into a club I always wanted to join.

Regulars always sat in the same place. It was understood. If I happened to be on his stool and he came in, I'd get up without thinking and hand it over. It wasn't any grand gesture. It was just local bar etiquette.

I knew what everybody drank. This guy was strictly rum and coke, and he'd pile up the straws next to him as he polished them off. This guy would put a $20 on the bar and drink it up. Miller Lite bottles at $1 each. You do the math. Another was the classic shot and beer type, Bud long necks with a chaser, his large Irish face growing more and more beet-red as the night went on. This guy over here drank nothing but Genesee, and as a result his farts could clear the place out faster than a fire. Regulars could pay now, or run a tab that was tallied on a piece of paper. Everybody was generous. Everybody bought drinks for everybody else. You might have 3 or 4 upside down shot glasses in front of you. Some nights it would have been rude to leave.

There was one TV with ragged reception. A pay phone on the wall. A manual dart board. The aforementioned juke box. A single Joker-Poker machine (it paid out if you were a regular and knew enough to alert the bartender surreptitiously, otherwise you’d be pointed to the “this game is just for fun” sticker. The machine would mysteriously vanish when an LCB visit was tipped, and then be returned the next day). It had a back room where our Dad’s used to play cards. And a single octagon shaped window with a curtain in the front.

The place was filled with saints and sinners and rascals and rogues and whenever the phone rang Dennis would yell out "who's not here?" and half the guys in the place would raise their hands. There was rarely trouble. The only true fight I saw there was between 2 brothers who lived up the street, and one tossed the other through the ladies room door, which retained the scar for years. Most of the bar didn’t even look up. Routine. An Irish-Catholic Dunmore family handling their business. It certainly wasn’t any of our affair.

I remember the guy who was sent to the store by his wife to get some frozen steaks on payday. He stopped in on his way home "for one", got engrossed in Bud bottles and the Joker-Poker machine, and pretty soon he’d blown his paycheck, and his steaks were bleeding all over the bar.

There was a clock on the wall, but I'm not sure anybody ever looked at it.

It was a different time back then. The 2am closing time thing teetered on thin wire. Last call would result in the entire place madly ordering multiple nightcaps. It was filled with Olympian drinkers in no particular hurry to get home. When I moved a few miles away into Scranton, I'd be smart enough to leave my car and walk home on such nights, and the next morning, until the fog lifted, I would find myself looking out my apartment window wondering where my car was. Cops were a little more forgiving in the 80s. One of the guys fell asleep as his car idled at the STOP sign on the corner, and a cop merely knocked on his window to wake him up. That was it. Everybody in Dunmore knew everybody else in Dunmore. The two probably went to grade school together.

If you had a problem, you could always find somebody to unload it on. I probably shared secrets in that place I've never spoken of since. You could tell some of these guys were wounded. Some of them had seen things they never wanted to see. They wanted to dull their own pain, but that didn't mean they couldn't ease some of yours. In that way these were some of the most generous people I've ever known.

When everything in your life was turning to shit, you could walk in Buddy Clarke's and buy yourself a few hours. It didn't mean you wouldn't get hit in the face with the same shit when you walked out, but the shit wouldn't dare come inside with you. It wasn't welcome.

Eventually I moved out of Dunmore. Dennis sold the bar. And it was sold again. And then again. It always stayed local though. Over the last 25 years I returned one time. In the 2000s, when my Dad was sick. I was on my way home from the nursing home he was in and needed something familiar. It was a new crowd. Mostly young. The gang was long gone, but that's to be expected. We don't live forever. I ordered a pint and sat at a small table, taking it all in. The vibe and the layout was the same. Everybody was welcomed. Even old dudes sitting by themselves. The bartender smiled and nodded when I left. The ladies room door was fixed. That made me a bit sad. But then progress sometimes does.

Buddy Clarke's was closed for a time. But it has new owners now. Locals I'm told. The place was given a facelift, and what looks to be an expansion. It looks wonderful. But as my niece said to me, "I hope they didn't fix it up TOO much." I know what she means. The place didn't need elegance to have charm. Busted ladies room door and all, it was splendid.

I can't wait to get there again and see what kind of memories I can re-conjure up. Maybe the place has one of those smart-phone operated jukeboxes and I can fire up the Hollies.

I’ll be sure to not take the seat of a regular.

Cheers.

In a bit…

—tf