Act Your Age

In which we consider acting our age...someday.

ALL ABOARD?

My old football coach in high school used to yell at us a lot. One of his favorite rants was, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” And a corollary: “The best defense is a good offense.”

He’s long gone, now; even granite-hard football coaches have an expiration date. I can only guess what he would have thought of his two oft-repeated rants being held up as justification for a pub crawl.

Give me a minute to explain in my usual, roundabout way.

Let’s face it, the going has been tough lately. And we’ve been playing a lot of defense in a world that bombards us with ugliness. I try not to stoop to the level of politics here at Talk of the Townie, but the limbo bar goes lower and lower as Trump, et al., continue their scorched earth campaign against decency and civility while the firefighters can’t find their way out of the firehouse.

I am fortunate to be the good news guy at the “World’s Best Hometown Newspaper,” the East Aurora Advertiser.

I do my best to keep that stuff out of my work for the world’s best hometown newspaper, highlighting the plentiful supply of good people doing good work in our midst. And not just me. The East Aurora Advertiser, in my anything-but-humble opinion, has the most eclectic, most talented cohort of columnists, correspondents and letter writers of any local paper in the region.*

If you want to feel a little better about the world, take in a Unified Club event at your high school. If they don’t have a Unified Club, suggest that they start one.

The rest of the world, though, is still out there, wanting us to breathe in its toxic vapors of disunity. Antidotes to this threat exist. Some folks use meditation, others long walks in the woods, noise-canceling devices, Grateful Dead “Space” solos, bikram yoga, binge-watching of “Everyone Loves Raymond” to drown out the din of a world gone mad.

I get it, but for some reason, I found myself suggesting that if the tough were truly going to get going, the best offense would be a pub crawl. My suggestion met with general approval among my pals of 40-plus years.

On February 18, eight of us—average age, 70.3 years—boarded a 12-seater Ford van—christened the Bourbon Bus Bars de Buffalo Tour—in the care of driver Dick Farwell—a AAA driving instructor, no less—bound for the big city. The City of Light, Buffalo. Once the eighth most populous in the country, now coming in much farther down the list, Buffalo is our “big city,” considering we are townies from third-ring suburb East Aurora, population around 13K. We don’t hold Buffalo’s decline against it; it’s just the right size, still big enough to qualify for a road trip to see what the rest of the world is up to and small enough to be welcoming. A city with a small town feel that, despite its travails, we call ours.

As navigator and treasurer, I had a list of two dozen possible watering holes to visit, all but a couple new ones for me and most of the gang.

Some readers, I suspect, are wondering why 70.3-year-old, post-adolescents don’t simply meet at a place closer to home, a “Cheers” kind of place, for conversation and few fermented beverages.

Others, I hope, understand the allure of a new bar, especially a neighborhood bar, one of a kind. We’re not talking TGIF here.

We’re talking about opening the door and getting that immediate sensory wash. There’s the visual—dark or light, long and narrow or wide open, been there a while or brand new, busy or empty? There’s the aural—loud, quiet, animated, subdued? There’s even an aroma unique to each place. We neighborhood bar aficionados can tell the vibe immediately—a bonded community of like-minded patrons—a Gemeinschaft if you want to sound fancy—or an assortment of individuals. Are they welcoming or wary of strangers? When you enter with eight senior citizens, all wearing that shit-eating grin as if we’d skipped school and hoped out parents wouldn’t find out, you get an entirely different response. We become, however briefly, the center of attention.

Curt, the owner of Hopper’s Rush Inn (tall bald guy), the first stop on our Bourbon Bus Bar de Buffalo Tour, enjoyed our company so much he insisted we have a round on him.

Hopper’s Rush Inn, our first stop, was the classic neighborhood bar in South Buffalo, where the workingman’s Irish heritage still dominates. Photos of Irish personalities and sports figures covered the walls. With St. Patty’s looming, references to the Snake Whisperer’s holiday were prominent. Immediately, the regulars along the bar engaged us in conversation and good-natured ribbing.

“Ooh, East Aurora. What brings you all the way in here from the fancy suburbs?”

We had Guinnesses all around, left a significant tip and took a genuine interest in the place, its history, its fortunes as traditional neighborhoods of post-industrial Buffalo waxed and waned. The owner, Curt (or Kurt, we didn’t get that far), who happened to be holding down a bar stool that afternoon welcomed us to the “Cultural Epicenter of South Buffalo,” as he called it. He discovered a friend he had in common with one of our group and they had a grand old time taking selfies and texting pals. We hadn’t been there very long when Curt (or Kurt) was so touched by our enthusiasm for his place that he bought a round of drinks. So much the only-one-drink-at-each-place idea. But, as a starting place, score one for the navigator. I had been driving past the place for years and was curious to see what lurked behind the sturdy front door and the sign framed in shamrocks. We’ll be back.

I won’t bore you with a description of each place we graced with our presence, except to say we made friends at every stop. The bartenders, each with unique personalities, treated us well, and I, as treasurer, tipped ever more generously as the adventure wore on. Each place had its own raison d’être, its own ambience, its own plan to persevere in an uncertain economic landscape. The only thing they had in common was the Olympics on the flat screens. And no one talked politics. We were too busy getting to know each other.

If you’re still with me 900 words after I launched this episode of “Talk of the Townie,” rest assured that I don’t suggest the pub crawl as a template for everyone’s respite from a troubled world. After all, we made seven stops, ranging from saloon to neighborhood watering hole with upscale food to roadhouse to brew pub to metrosexual tavern to lounge to whiskey bar, a hard day’s work.

Truth be told, though, six or maybe five stops would have sufficed. Someday, we’ll act our age. Someday.

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