The Tender Bar: A Memoir

by J. R. Moehringer

  I let the envelope go. I’d never rebuffed Sidney before. No one had ever rebuffed Sidney before. I knew that when she received her own letter and photo—return to sender, no comment—she’d never contact me again. I walked back inside Publicans, asked Uncle Charlie for another scotch and told him what I’d done. He pointed at my chest and we drank a toast. To me. To the Mets. On October 25, 1986, after I’d lost the great love of my life, Uncle Charlie declared to the bar—no one was listening, but it was nice to hear him declare it—that his nephew was a winner.

  thirty | MR. SALTY

  Being a copyboy wasn’t much more complicated than being a clerk in Home Fashions. A copygirl explained the whole job to me in five minutes. I was responsible for “fetching sandwiches” and “separating carbons.” Since the editors didn’t have time to get their own meals, she said, I’d go around the newsroom throughout the day, taking orders, and then run across the street to Al’s All-Night Deli. The rest of my time I’d spend gathering and sorting paper from the wire room. The Times had computers, but the editors, especially the older editors, refused to use them. Thus, paper still flooded the newsroom. Articles, essays, bulletins, wires, memos, stories, and summaries of stories being offered for tomorrow’s front page—it all came spluttering and chattering off big printers, in thick sets of twelve carbon copies, which had to be pulled apart, folded a certain way, and distributed—fast. Many editors wouldn’t know about a breaking news event until they saw the bulletin land in their wire baskets, so copykids were a disproportionately critical link in the chain of information. Even more critical: Top editors got top copies, on which the ink was most legible, and bottom editors got bottom copies, which were faintest, and in some cases illegible. “It’s a status thing,” the copygirl said. “You’ll get yelled at if a bottom editor gets a top copy—but God help you if a top editor gets a bottom copy.”

  She rolled her eyes and expected me to roll mine. I was so glad for the job, however, so awed by the Times, that I couldn’t wipe the look of exuberant joy off my face. You mean it’s my responsibility to feed all these talented journalists? And to let these famous editors know what’s going on in the world? “Sounds great!” I said.

  From then on the copygirl avoided me, and I overheard her talking with another copygirl, referring to me as “that twit from Long Island.”

  Friendlier copykids explained the big picture of the training program. It was, they said, a series of small indignities followed by exponentially larger rewards. You fetched sandwiches, you separated carbons, you worked nights, holidays, weekends, until an editor noticed you. Maybe he’d like the way you always remembered that he wanted spicy mustard on his pastrami. Maybe he’d appreciate the tight fold you gave his carbons. Suddenly you were his protégé, and whenever possible he’d pass you an author interview for the book review, or a roundup for the real estate section. If you handled these assignments reasonably well he’d give you better ones. A shooting, a train derailment, a gas leak in the Bronx. One of these would be your big chance, the story that would make or break your newsroom reputation. If you made the most of your big chance you’d get a tryout on the city desk. Thirty days straight, no time off, writing, writing, a test of endurance as much as talent. The tryout was the grail. The tryout was the whole point of being a copykid. If you survived the tryout, physically and mentally, without any mistakes—above all, without causing the newspaper to run a dreaded correction—then a secret committee would convene and decide once and for all if you were Times material. If so, you’d be promoted to full-time reporter and given a desk and a living wage. If not, you could stick around as long as you liked, fetching sandwiches and separating carbons until you turned sixty-five, but you’d always be a copykid, a drone, a newsroom nonperson.

  Given these conditions, and the cutthroat competition, it was to be expected that the two dozen copykids in the training program scuttled around the newsroom like rats in a maze. And yet we were calm compared to the editors, several of whom seemed moments away from a full-on psychotic episode. Some drank beer while they worked. Others ran to a bar across the street between editions for a blast of something stronger. And everyone smoked. Smoking was not only permitted but required, and most days the newsroom was more fogbound than Manhasset Bay. One notorious editor started his day with a pipe, switched to cigars as the afternoon wore on, then chain-smoked unfiltered Camels in the hour before deadline. He looked 150 years old and snacked on the entrails of copykids. His nickname was Smoky the Bastard, and several copykids warned me to stay as far from him as possible.

  Though the Times reminded me of Yale—too many smart people in a confined space—I didn’t feel intimidated. I felt right at home, and I thought the reason must be the junky furniture and the stained orange carpet and the backed-up toilets. My years at Grandpa’s house had been ideal preparation. But of course the real reason for my relative calm was Publicans. No matter what happened in the newsroom during the day, I knew that the barroom was waiting for me at night. I could always count on the men at Publicans to give me a pep talk, and the women to give me fashion tips. All Timesmen wore smart suspenders, matching neckties, and cap-toed shoes as big and seamlessly constructed as canoes, and though I didn’t have money for such things, my former coworkers from Lord & Taylor sat with me at Publicans and gave me pointers on augmenting my wardrobe. They taught me to “borrow” things from department stores. Suspenders and neckties, they said, could be “tried out,” then returned. And I could always “smell successful,” they said, by stopping into a store on my way to work and giving myself a few squirts from the testers.

  I was madly happy. I put in long hours in the newsroom and volunteered to work overtime. I even dropped by the newspaper on days off, acting as if I belonged, pretending to be busy. If I couldn’t find anything else to do, I would hang out in the morgue, where the Times archived every article dating back to the Civil War. I would read byline folders of star reporters, studying their style. On a whim one day I asked the woman who ran the morgue if she had a file on my father. She did indeed. The file was thin, but fascinating. I brought it out to the newsroom and sat reading it as though it were the Pentagon Papers. One article, just after the Beatles had appeared on Ed Sullivan, quoted my father as an expert on rock ’n’ roll. While reading I started to whistle “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

  “Who the fuck is—whistling!” Smoky the Bastard shrieked.

  Scores of reporters and editors stopped and turned.

  “Me?” I said.

  “Whistling in a newsroom is bad luck—asshole!”

  Everyone was staring. I couldn’t think of anything to say. When everyone turned back to their work, smirking, I checked the clock on the wall. Five-thirty. If I left right then I could make happy hour at Publicans.

  Hangdog, walking down to Penn Station, I came upon a commotion outside the Penta Hotel. Fire engines. Cops. Swarms of onlookers. “What’s going on?” I asked a woman.

  “Hotel’s on fire.”

  My big chance. I ducked into a phone booth and dialed the city desk. An editor answered. “Hi, this is JR Moehringer!” I said. “I’m down here at the Penta and it looks like the hotel is going up in flames!”

  “Who is this?”

  “JR Moehringer. New copyboy. I can smell the smoke.”

  “The Penta is—on fire? You smell smoke?”

  “Yes sir. Burning my nose. Thick.”

  “Jesus H. Christ. Okay, let me patch you to rewrite. Tell him what you see. Give him some color. Then go find someone in charge out there. Bob, can you take dictation from someone named Guillermo Winger?”

  I’m being patched to rewrite. What a break for me that the Penta was burning to the ground. My days of fetching sandwiches and separating carbons were numbered. The editors would arrange my tryout immediately. I couldn’t wait to tell Uncle Charlie and Steve about my coup, my scoop, my personal “Penta Gone” Papers—that would get a big laugh in the barroom. Knowing that the men at the bar would want to hear all
about the fire, in full detail, I turned to watch. The firefighters seemed remarkably calm. They were standing around, laughing, chatting. The cops too. Nobody seemed all that concerned. I looked at the hotel. No flames. No broken windows. No smoke. But I still smelled the smoke. I turned again. On the other side of the phone booth was a pretzel cart. The vendor was gabbing with the firefighters and forgetting about his pretzels, which were turning black and giving off sulfurous clouds of smoke that blew directly into my face. Uh-oh. I hung up the phone and sprinted toward the firefighter wearing the biggest hat. He had such a boiled ham of a face that he could have been the mayor of Manhasset. “What’s the story here, Chief?” I said. “I mean, Officer? I mean, what gives? I’m JR Moehringer. From the Times.”

  “Relax, kid, relax. Everything is okeydokey. It’s a drill. We do this once a month.”

  “The hotel’s not on fire?”

  “Nah.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Hearing the disappointment in my voice the firefighter inclined toward me, to see if I were an aspiring arsonist. I walked dejectedly back to the pay phone and dialed the city desk. The same editor answered. “Winger!” he said. “Sorry I lost you. Must have cut you off when I tried to transfer the call. Hold on now, the next voice you hear will be Bob. He’s going to take your feed.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “What?”

  “The Penta doesn’t actually seem to be—on fire. Per se.”

  “What?”

  “It’s just a drill.”

  “A what?”

  “A drill.”

  “Winger, for chrissakes, you said you smelled smoke.”

  “Right. When I spoke to you—it’s a funny thing, actually—I was standing next to a pretzel cart. And the pretzels were burning.”

  I heard the editor wheezing, as if maybe he’d breathed in some pretzel smoke too. He caught his breath and yelled at Bob to stand down. “False alarm,” I heard him say. “Some copyboy . . . pay phone outside the Penta . . . burning pretzels . . .” I couldn’t hear what Bob said, but his tone didn’t sound pleasant. The editor came back on the phone. “Thanks for calling,” he said. “Thanks for making me go into the Page One meeting, like a schmuck, with a false alarm. Why don’t you knock off for the day. Go get yourself a pretzel, okay, Mr. Salty?”

  Dial tone.

  Mr. Salty? I hoped that nickname wasn’t going to stick. Even Guillermo Winger would have been better than Mr. Salty.

  The train to Manhasset broke down in the freight yards just outside Penn Station. The lights died and we didn’t move again for two hours. Sitting in the dark I replayed my day over and over. Whistling in a newsroom is bad luck—asshole! Go get yourself a pretzel, okay, Mr. Salty? When the train finally got under way, when I reached the front door to Publicans, it was about eight-thirty, and I didn’t walk through the door—I dove.

  Joey D’s cousin Michael was tending bar, and I was glad. Michael was the right man for the job, the perfect bartender for my mood. I needed distraction, new topics to fill my head, and Michael was a wholesale supplier of new topics. As the only sober person in Publicans—he’d been off booze for years—Michael was always lucid and bursting with interesting facts and ideas he’d culled from his reading. He was also famously cranky, and I craved his crankiness too. He looked like a recently commissioned Ulysses Grant: fearsome, bearded, bristle-headed, dying for a cigar. Now more than ever I needed to sit with General Grant, to commiserate about the whole bloody campaign. Before I was all the way onto the stool, General Grant was out of the blocks like a shot, talking about Donald Trump and Caspar Weinberger and Babe Ruth and Marla Hanson and John Gotti and Carlo Gambino and the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Achille Lauro and gridlock and quarks and ozone depletion and what the W. B. stood for in Yeats’s name. The acrid odor of burned pretzels began to subside.

  Working the other end of the bar was Joey D. I waved to him, but he looked right through me, as if hypnotized. He was talking, though no one was within two feet of him. A full-on conversation with his pet mouse, only this time it looked as if his mouse were talking back. I asked General Grant what the hell was wrong with his cousin. “There’s been a Josie sighting,” he said, wiping the bar with a rag.

  “Oh no,” I said. “She’s here? Tonight?”

  He gave an annoyed nod.

  Joey D and Josie had recently divorced, and since their parting was not amicable the scheduler took pains to make sure they never worked together. Some nights, however, due to illness or vacations, it couldn’t be helped—Josie and Joey D were forced to work side by side. On those nights Joey D would look more like an undertaker than a bartender. Watching Josie as she moved among the tables, he’d tell customers under his breath how she’d done him wrong. One memorably uncomfortable Josie Night, the men dubbed Joey D’s end of the bar the Beer-muda Triangle. People wandered down for a drink and were never heard from again—sucked into the vortex of Joey D’s sad tale of woe.

  Uncle Charlie blamed himself. It was he and Pat who’d originally brought Joey D and Josie together. Worst bet of my life, Uncle Charlie said whenever Joey D was mooning and whining about Josie. Other bartenders rolled their eyes behind Joey D’s back and joked about “Josie and the Pussy-Whipped.” Even Steve, who loved Joey D, lost patience now and then. At least once he’d summoned Joey D to the basement and told him to grow up. “You can’t be acting this way in a barroom,” Steve said. “It depresses people. Time to be a man, Joey D. Be a man.” When I heard about Steve calling Joey D on the carpet, I shuddered. I’d rather be put on the rack, I thought, than summoned to the basement by Steve and lectured on manhood.

  I couldn’t tell Steve or any of the men that Joey D had my full sympathy and support. If I’d been forced to work with Sidney I’d have behaved no better. Besides, I couldn’t think ill of Joey D, no matter what he did. I’d always feel grateful to him for being kind to me and McGraw when we were boys, for teaching me to bodysurf and scanning the waves for McGraw’s head. Also, I knew that Joey D continued to watch Uncle Charlie, making sure his head didn’t go under. Joey D considered himself Uncle Charlie’s lifeguard, bodyguard and rear guard. He fretted over Uncle Charlie’s gambling. He defended Uncle Charlie in every barroom brawl. And after Uncle Charlie had put in a night behind the bar, Joey D would sponge up his stains and spills. “Fucking Chas,” Joey D would say, rubbing. “When will he realize—a clean bar is a happy bar.” Then Joey D would take a wire brush and buff out the indents in the wood where Uncle Charlie had slammed bottles in anger or enthusiasm. For my money, that was love.

  Subconsciously I also liked, and slightly envied, the way Joey D worked out his rage. If he felt brokenhearted, he broke a few heads. He unapologetically took out his frustrations about Josie on drunks who made trouble at Publicans, and he did it with style. The barroom brawl was Joey D’s art form. He was to bar fighting what Hemingway was to bullfighting—a practitioner, a connoisseur, an apologist. I once asked Joey D how many fights he’d been in over the years and he counted slowly, rapturously, like Casanova recalling how many women he’d had. “At least three hundred,” he said. “And I only lost one.” He paused, reflected. “Actually,” he said, “never mind, that one was a draw.”

  Joey D believed that his finest hour came about when some hardass, after being thrown out of Publicans, ripped a post from the back fence and began swinging it at the crowd. Joey D caught the fencepost in midair, snatched it away and broke it over his knee, then knocked the guy cold. “I’m not bragging—don’t get me wrong—but that was the coolest fucking thing I ever did.” CoolestfuckingthingIeverdid.

  The secret to fighting, Joey D told me, was relaxing. To kick the ass of another, you must unclench your own ass. Soft fist, he said, hard punch. It was all very Zen, and hard to believe from a meat-and-potatoes palooka like Joey D. But it was true. The most relaxed look I’d ever seen on his Muppet face was while saving me from the beating of a lifetime. It happened when a loudmouth got into a beef with
Uncle Charlie. There was a long list of names no one was allowed to call Uncle Charlie—Baldy, Kojak, Egg Head, Penis Top, Chrome Dome, Mr. Clean—and the loudmouth used them all in one shocking taboo diatribe. I stepped forward to defend my uncle and the loudmouth grabbed my shirt and cocked his fist. I was a half second from a busted nose and a flight through the front window when Joey D bounded over the bar like the winner of the U.S. Open hurdling the net. I’ll never forget his face—that same serene expression he wore while floating on his back at Gilgo—as he served the loudmouth down the length of the barroom floor, an ace worthy of McEnroe.

  I left General Grant and took my drink to Joey D’s end. I sat with him while he watched Josie and complained to his mouse. Soon we were interrupted by the Publicans softball team tromping through the back door. They had beaten Kilmeade’s behind the sterling play of Cager. Though his visor was pulled low I saw the victorious grin on Cager’s dirt-streaked face. He looked as if he were just back from a successful mission. Something in me, more than in Cager, always made me see his visor as a netted helmet, and the softball bat he carried over his shoulder as an M60. I shook his hand and felt a bolt of testosterone shoot up my arm. “Buy you a beer?” I said.

  “That what you Ivy Leaguers call a rhetorical question?” he said.

  He asked how I was doing at the new job, and I heard myself telling him about phoning in the pretzel fire. I didn’t know why I was telling him. Maybe I wanted sympathy. I should have known Cager wasn’t in the sympathy business. “Guillermo Winger?” he shouted, laughing, rapping his bat on the ground. “Mr. Salty? Oh that’s rich! Oh that’s fucking priceless!” He laughed so hard that I thought he would have an asthma attack. “Oh you must have been—tied in knots—about that pretzel fire!” I started laughing too. So I phoned in a pretzel fire! So what? It wasn’t a total loss if it could provide a prince of a guy like Cager with such a belly laugh. Now we were both stooped over, laughing, smacking the bar, smacking each other, and when I smacked Cager’s back it was no different than smacking the bar. Solid oak. No give.