Barroom ( Images | Introduction | Print Sales )

I grew up in my father's barroom in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I learned to read by matching empty beer bottles to their cases. A child watching men drink. The powerful effects of alcohol, of getting drunk.

These pictures are about an incredible loneliness and desperation. I identify with that. I'm cultivating a habit.

SONNY'S TAP

Father ran a bar, "Sonny's Tap", on the south side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the German, Polish, working-class part of town. The horseshoe shaped bar sat forty or more. There were 12 bowling alleys in the back. Father was also a professional bowler.

When he was very young, mother would prepare father's lunch, and he would carry it the four blocks to the barroom. The smell of the place was different than home, or mother, or grandmother, or church. Tobacco smoke, beer, whisky and bowling alley wax.

He remembers liking the smell very much. He would crawl up onto a bar stool and give father the brown paper bag lunch. Father would give him a glass of orange soda water. "Boys, this is my son, Jerry." Sometimes the men would talk to him. Ask him questions he didn't know the meaning of, and laugh. Sometimes father would tell them to shut up. Tell them they had enough. That they would be cut off. Sometimes they would be good to him and give him a nickel or a dime. Tell him to be a good boy. Once the man next to him at the bar showed him a pistol and let him hold it.

Sometimes father gave him money too, so he could go to the juke box and play songs. "Push A7, D4, and F9, Jerry." It was magical. A big box with coloured lightsand bubbles running around in tubes. Beautiful. Loud. Polka music. Sad music. Some of the songs he learned to sing. "Beer Barrel Polka." The men would ask him to sing. Then they would laugh and tell father things he didn't understand.

Once father had gone into the basement of the bar for something. It seemed like a long time. One of the men sat down at the bar next to him. The man told him he was going to pick him up and put his head in the bowling ball polishing machine, and that it would make him bald. The man picked him up. ' The man was very big. The man had white hair. He stared fighting and screaming and kicking the man. Everyone was laughing. The more he screamed and kicked the more they all laughed. The man was carrying him to the machine, upside down. All the blood was going to his head. He was crying and screaming and kicking. The man's foot stepped on the switch. He could hear the machine going. The man was putting his head into it. He was upside down, screaming Father! Father! Everyone was laughing. He remembers father laughing too. The man put him down. Father said, "Whitey was only fooling." Funny how he can remember the name even today. He remembers never talking to or taking money from the man again. This also made the men laugh.

Sometimes father would take him into the basement of the bar and put him to work. In a small room in the big dark basement were empty cases of beer, and the bottle chute. He was supposed to take an empty beer bottle out of the bottle chute and look at the label; B-L-A-T-Z, or M-l-L-L-E-R, or S-C-H-L-I-T-Z and then find the case which had the same name. He swears this is where he learned to read. A-B-C-D-E-F-G, all made useful by a real job involving letters. He loved it down there. He knew father was upstairs, dropping bottles down the chute to him. Down a tube they would come, rattling, banging, then hit the first rack, roll left, hit the second rack, roll right, this time a little slower, then the third rack, the fourth, fifth, sixth, making noise all the way, and finally stop. F-O-X-H-E-A-D-4-0-0. In all the bars he's been in since then, he's never seen another bottle chute.

Copyright late 1960 - 70s.