Is having a bar in the home a thing of the past? Growing up I remember a lot of people had bars in their homes. It was the "Mad Men" era and drinking excessively to the point of inebriation wasn't really frowned upon during that time. So maybe Don Draper and Roger Sterling drank a little too much---an occupational hazard---but the culture of out-of-control drinking was a reality, if not a pose leading to sexually promiscuous behavior.
Most of the family bars were located in finished basements---a kind of swinging party room with a felt turn table record player, a little floor space for dancing, and plastic guitars and saxophones tacked to the painted cinder block walls or murky paneling. We had an unfinished basement in my house, so the bar, an upright, heavily lacquered wood model, was situated in a corner of the den. The den was paneled in knotty pine, with a big color TV, two faux leather recliner chairs, a fish tank and a gun rack.
When my father worked graveyard shift at the paper mill, he would often arrive home at about 7:30 or 8:00, and as I watched Captain Kangaroo and dressed for school, he would stand at this bar in the den and mix himself a Manhattan, or maybe Scotch on the rocks (J.B. or Dewars). It felt a little strange to see him drinking so early in the day, but I realized it was the end of his day and he needed to unwind. After a few drinks, and a few Marlboro cigarettes, my father would sit down to eat a hybrid breakfast-dinner of steak and eggs, and then head off to bed where hopefully he'd be able to sleep undisturbed until 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon. But at any time of the day, this bar was always a presence. My father would pour himself drinks at the bar every evening, and on holidays he and his brothers would stand at the bar and consume ridiculous amounts of alcohol, so that by the time everyone else sat down to enjoy the holiday meal, my father and uncles would stagger to the dinner table, and often manage to quickly insult someone, usually my grandmother, their mother.
The green bottles and brown bottles and clear bottles, the big red "7" on the Seagrams bottle, the clink of glass or ice tumbling into a glass, the shicka-shicka-shicka of a chrome shaker. There was an ice bucket. Scotch, bourbon, blended whiskey, gin, later vodka. There was always beer from the fridge in pilsner glasses. Martinis, Old Fashions, and Whiskey Sours, Screwdrivers---yes, the bar was a busy place, a place to make drinks, pour drinks, and enjoy the mildly pleasant chemistry of it. And yet a simple glass of Scotch or a Shaeffers with a whiskey chaser was usually the drink of choice . . . and as time passed and the bar looked weathered and cheap from countless spills, there would be more Vodka included, because Vodka was easier to hide.
Years later, after my father had quit drinking alcohol and joined A.A., he may have kept the bar around for a short time, possibly for entertaining guests, possibly as a test of will power, the amber and green bottles like sirens to his Odysseus lashed to the spar. Although I no longer lived at home, I do recall at one point the bar was gone, because my mother didn't drink, and most of the guests they were entertaining were also affiliated with A.A., and it didn't seem to make sense to leave the bar standing unused. Within a few more years the habit of drinking, and especially the habit of drinking too much, would undergo serious examination, forcing new laws and changes in our behavior: D.U.I. , blood alcohol limits, M.A.D.D. and the designated driver program would raise public awareness about alcohol abuse. I don't need to wonder where all those old, tacky bars ended up.
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