Pictured above are Spencer “Lot” Garcia, bartender extraordinaire at Chases on the Beach in New Smyrna Beach, and I on one of my non-abstinence days.
I used to say that I made more money tending bar my first couple of years at St. Lawrence than I did in my many hours of sports information work. Eventually I phased out the bartending and slid into the patron role, one I have maintained to this day.
I enjoy spending time in bars, talking to friends, making new friends and just plain enjoying myself. I try to pace myself and not over consume, but I do have a high tolerance level for alcohol and there have been a couple of epic sessions. One when I went into the Century Lounge about 3 p.m. to help with a beer line problem and left at about 1 a.m. after consuming the better part of a bottle of Johnny Walker Black. The other was a CoSIDA convention in Dallas when I went into the bar for lunch and never left until closing. A passle of friends stopped by over the course of the marathon and the conversations were fun and varied. I never got really tipsy as I had about one drink per hour, and the bar tab wasn’t too silly as various and sundry folks bought rounds as we went along. Our waitress team did very well in tips, however.
At one time or another I was behind the bar at the Hoot Owl, Tick Tock, St. Lawrence Inn and the Best Western University Inn. Danny Fay owned the Hoot and was a great friend who helped me out a lot in Canton. I was part of a bartending staff in the early 1970s which included Jimmy Frank, Larry Frank, Rich Struzzi and John Shapazian. “Shapes” was an economics professor at Canton College and he, like I, bartended mostly for fun and a little cash. I remember one night when Shapes refilled the ice bins late. We then proceeded to try to drain them after we closed…having several beverages “because Danny would want it that way.” We left at dawn and played nine holes of golf before heading home to crash. We didn’t get a lot of fancy drink requests at the Hoot, beer and Lime Rickeys were the big sellers, but I do remember someone asking for a martini one day and Shapes handing him a beer, saying “here, fake it.”
Former SLU basketball coach Rick Cassara, who recruited some great players to St. Lawrence who contributed to the University’s first NCAA appearances, ran the Tick Tock and recruited me to be a fill-in bartender. Like the Hoot, the Tick Tock was a go-to place for St. Lawrence students and I saw a lot of kids who played on various sports teams in a more social situation and did my best to keep them from overindulging.
My good friend Scott Chisholm owned Journey’s End in Canton where I was a frequent patron. I would help out every once in a while, but I spent most of my time there on the customer side of the bar. Decker, who is an outstanding golfer, took over the St. Lawrence Inn and I did do some bartending there. Shelba Whiteford, who was behind the bar when I patronized the Best Western County Seat Inn, joined the staff at the St. Lawrence Inn and we worked together on New Year’s Eve for several years. I am not a big NYE person, and tending bar with Shelba was a lot of fun. Billy Lemieux, another good North Country friend, walked up to the bar one New Year’s and asked for a Fuzzy Navel. I said he would have to see Shelba for that one as I only do the “ands”. Scotch and soda, gin and tonic, etc. Shelba could make ‘em all and made up a few of her own. She was also adept at making the Long Island Iced Tea, a hot drink with students in those days and enlisted my help one Sunday afternoon when a school bus full of partying SLU students pulled up and ordered more than a few Iced Teas. To this day I don’t know how any of them walked out of there to say nothing of continuing their booze tour. I became Decker’s assistant commissioner of the St. Lawrence Inn Monday Night Golf League and then took over its operation when Decker sold the Inn and went to work for Customs and Immigration. I was Decker’s partner for a number of years, and he loves telling the story of the day that I told him I wasn’t going to drink beer during the round because it was messing up my golf game. About the fourth hole he handed me a beer, saying that abstinence wasn’t doing me any good.
Larry “Lorenzo” Frank, who I worked with at the Hoot Owl became the bar and restaurant manager of the Best Western and called on me to help out when he needed someone to fill a shift or cater a party. His eventual wife Laura also tended bar at the Best Western and she and I would team up at a trestle table bar at various SLU fraternity and sorority parties. We did really well in tips because Laura was a very good bartender, and I knew a lot of the kids from athletics and they gravitated to our table. Dar Lapointe and Ellen Newman were two of among the other mixologist at the Best Western that I enjoyed spending time with. I also became friends with Morgan, who was a bartender, bar manager, catering manager and a whole bunch of other things at the BW who I was able to provide hockey tickets for her and her kids on her nights off.
In my travels I have befriended a large number of bartenders from the days at the Rusty Scuffer and Old Board in Burlington to recent travels with bartender friends in Cape Coral, Fort Myers and most recently New Smyrna. The bar crew at Off the Hook, the Garlic and Chase’s on the Beach have all become good friends in my two years here, and Lot, aka Spencer Garcia (pictured above) was a Facebook friend before my Facebook account spoofed. Lot, Katy, Billy, Rachel (who is from Burlington originally) and the rest of the gang provide great service and great libations. Chase’s was only a block from my condo last year, and while it is somewhat farther away this year, I still make the trip to visit on a frequent basis.
I have a tipping system which I had to explain to Betsy and the gang at the Champlain Country Club. Regardless of the amount of my tab (unless it is a hefty one, in which case the amount goes up), I leave a $20 bill on the bar. Half is intended as a drink for the barkeep after work and the other half is meant as a tip. If they want to keep the whole thing as a tip, fine by me…I appreciate their service. Betsy, Katie, Tina and Meghan, she of the perpetual high, are the ones I see the most and I really appreciate both their friendship and their service.
As a bar patron, I would have three or four drinks a day…spread out over a long enough period of time that it didn’t impact my ability to get home. When the leukemia diagnosis came about, the doc said “quit” because while my liver was in okay shape, the drugs I was about to take would tax the liver. I went the better part of a month without any alcohol at all, sometimes pouring my iced tea into a rocks glass to simulate a scotch. I’m not sure why, but it worked. I did have a couple of scotches on my birthday and one or two between Christmas and New Years as one of the residents during my hospital stay said she had seen my liver numbers and that one or two in moderation wouldn’t hurt. In New Smyrna I am kind of alternating between dry days when I drink Heineken Zero, a non-alcoholic beer which tastes a lot like the real Heineken and G and T days when I have a couple of Boodles Gin and Tonics. The goal is to limit the “hard alcohol” intake while still enjoying a quality of life which fits with what I have done in the past.
I do tell the nurses that my biggest concern is too much blood in my alcohol system!