11/29/2021
Bar Tales from Neverland
by Kristi Thisselle
I tell my customers, "Behind the bar is my stage, and I can be as entertaining as I want." However, I’m their audience, watching their life stories unfold with plots sometimes as bizarre as fiction.
A rainy day in 1997 slowed down our remodel job. The crew started drinking coffee and playing pool in the morning. As a customer ate breakfast, he observed us goofing off. We were just doing the usual things people in their forties do—--throw food at each other, write on each other with magic markers, sing and dance to the jukebox.
The customer said, "What are you doing hanging out with these guys?" After a moment’s reflection, I replied, "Don’t you know? This is Neverland. Larry is Peter Pan. These are the lost boys and I’m Wendy. We’ll never grow up."
We did grow older and slowed down a little. The shenanigans are shorter or no longer include some of us. We still have our memories of fun times and good people.
We could have written the lyrics to the song, "I Love This Bar." Places like this aren’t just bars and people like us have always gathered at places like this.
People like Steve. He was caring and giving, sometimes annoying. I learned a little patience from years of listening to "Bailey-isms."
"You never liked me, even as a child," whenever I told him to get a life. "Are you sure we weren’t married before?" when I told him what to do. "Would you like to be my next ex-wife?" is what he said to a lot of women.
Steve was one of our joke tellers. He loved exchanging jokes with June and alwyas begged her to marry him, even though he was 35 years younger. He knew a lot of words to old coffeeshop songs, since he used to play guitar or banjo and sing in them back East.
As a meteorologist, he was the butt of all our weather jokes.
When we said, "What a beautiful day," he always said, "Thank you."
When the weather was bad, we blamed him. He had many "Baileyisms" about that too. He was thorough. He’d call me in Alberton, then down the line until he found out how far the fog crept.
Steve always offered people in need a place to stay. He put up with one roommate’s bad habits for so long we called him a saint. He was my hero whenever he gave an obnoxious regular a ride home and didn’t bring him back.
He was another good guy who died unexpectedly. We in Neverland know he never grew up, even though he was in his fifties. Memories and stories of Steve can remind us to help one another, make people laugh, and try to bring sunshine.
Steve, we know today’s bad weather really is not your fault.
---Clark Fork Chronicle, 2005
