When I was little, I had two brothers; one was Billy and the other was Orville. By the time I was thirteen, they were Bill and Ringo. Bill got tired of the ‘little boy’ name, and Orville had been nicknamed by his friends (after the John Wayne character in the movie ‘Stagecoach)’. It could have had something to do with his fearlessness, his street fighting capabilities, or his ‘cowboy’ image, or, it could have been that amazing presence that he shared with men like John Wayne. He was a force to be reckoned with.
He was big, six foot three and over two-hundred pounds, with dusty blue eyes and ‘ash-brown’ hair. His features were even, but his face scared by acne. And he had that ‘something’ that women went wild over. And, along with Bill, he was one of the world’s all time best brothers.
The summer of 1955 was the first time I got to go into an ‘honest-to-god’ bar. And, who better to take me there than my big brother. He was home on a thirty day leave from the Paratroopers, and, when he wasn’t home, he was drinking and fighting his way through all the small towns within a fifty-mile radius.
One afternoon, he was working on my mom’s car and had to go pick up a starter at the local junkyard, and I begged to go along. To my surprise, he agreed. It was a blue-sky day and in the field below our house a meadowlark had been warbling his heart out, while I watched Ringo work; one of those golden times that stand out in your memory. As we walked to the pickup, I grabbed his hand and felt so important and, so grateful to have him home, if only for a little while. He looked down at me and gave me one of his sideways grins. Everything was perfect.
We went to the junkyard, located just outside Fort Collin, the nearest town of any size, and, when he got out of the pickup, I settled down to wait until he got the starter and paid for it. When he closed his door, he looked in the window and said, “Aren’t you comin’?”
I was so excited I thought my heart was going to pound its way right out of my chest. Whenever we were with my Dad, he would always say, “You wait in the car,” to whomever was with him. Now, Ringo was asking me to come into the mysterious world of the junkyard.
This was a ‘do-it-yourself’ source for used car parts. You looked around until you found a wreck that was the right make and model then, took the part out yourself. Ringo not only let me go along, he let me hand him tools, and, once, even asked me to hold some wires out of his way while he undid some bolts. Life didn’t get much better than this.
After he paid for the starter, we got loaded back up and he said, “Want to go get a cold drink?”
Did I want to keep breathing?
I said, “Yes”, and, instead of turning west, when we left the junkyard, he turned east and drove a couple of miles into town. I suppose I had thought we would go to Walgreens or a café, but, he turned at the first traffic light and drove into the “bad” area of town. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know why. It covered about four or five square blocks, located on the west end of town, just before you got to the “other side of the tracks”.
We passed the Linden Hotel that perched over a bar on the corner, and had a sign on the side door that said Whites Only. We drove past a couple of pawn shops and Ringo laughed and said, “I think I still have a pawn ticket from Pat’s Loans, but since it’s four years old, I guess I can figure it’s forfeit.”
He pulled up in front of a building with a dark green neon sign across the front that proclaimed this was “Buck’s Place”. My eyes must have been open so wide they looked like headlights. Ringo was taking me into a bar with him.
It wasn’t like I’d never been in a place that served beer. In the summer, I worked in a café that served beer and had a bar with eight bar stools in front of it. But, when Mom and us kids went to the Log Cabin (a restaurant with a bar attached), we never got to go into the bar, even though there was just an open archway between the two. Bars were off limits.
When we walked into the bar, it was everything I wanted it to be. It was dingy. In fact, until your eyes adjusted to the light, it was downright dark. It had a pungent, never-to-be-forgotten odor about it: beer and whiskey, and all the smells that accompany men who work, the smell of oil and gasoline from the mechanics, and the sharp smell of resin and pine from the men who worked in the timber. And, there was the unmistakable, but not unpleasant smell from men who worked on ranches and farms (the smell of horses and cattle, manure and sweat). To the right of the door, when we walked in, were two men playing the pinball machines; using body language and slapping at the sides of the machines to make those balls go where they wanted them to. They were, also, using the other kind of language until Ringo said, “I brought my little sis’ in for a Coke.” He didn’t have to say anything else; after all, this was the 50s.
We walked over to the bar and he waited until I had hoisted myself up onto a barstool, which I immediately spun around on, then he sat down and ordered a draft for him and a Coke for me. When my drink arrived, it had not one, but two maraschino cherries in it. I’d never had a drink with fruit in it.
I was suffering from sensory overload, so I missed most of the conversation Ringo was carrying on with the bartender until he got my attention and asked if I was hungry. It had been a long time since breakfast, but, even if I’d eaten five minutes before I left home, I’d have said, “Yes”. What amazing foods might be served in this male bastion? I wasn’t disappointed. When I asked what they had, Ringo pointed to the shelf in back of the bar where I could see the ‘menu’ for myself. They had pickled pig's feet, pickled eggs, beef jerky, hot sausages, potato chips, and pork rinds.
After I had looked for a couple of minutes, he said they also served hamburgers and he as going to have his special. I said, “I’ll have that, too.”
He had a devilish grin, “Are you sure?”
He was a great brother, but he could tease, so I asked him what his special was. He told me it was a raw hamburger with a thick slice of onion, salt, and a lot of pepper. He didn’t even look surprised when I said, “That’s alright with me.”
He ordered another beer and a Coke for me and the hamburgers were there in a couple of minutes, after all, they didn’t have to be cooked. They were delicious. We sat there for an hour or so, eating and talking. He had a couple more beers, I had another Coke, then he said, “Mom might get worried if we’re gone much longer.” So we headed home. As a kid, this was one of the all-time great days of my life.
To the day he died, Ringo remained a puzzle to most people who knew him. He didn’t let many get close. He was legendary as a hard-working, bike-riding, hard-drinking street brawler who feared absolutely nothing. But there wasn’t a woman in his life, and there were many, who didn’t know and love the tender, loving man, who did most of the cooking and his share of housework. He was absolutely original.
He never lost his sense of humor, especially about himself. About four months before he died, I spoke to him, on the phone, and asked him what he was doing.
He laughed and said, “Well, last night I stopped at a local bar and spent a couple of hours listening to some big, old, dirty biker tell me stories about myself.”
I asked why he didn’t tell the guy who he was, and he said, “Hell, he might have stopped talking and he was telling me stories I’ve never heard before.”
Kathy
