“Light or Dark?”

As I’ve said in previous posts there is a longer span between my trips these days.  Because of that, there could be weeks in between posts.  I have decided to write some of my past experiences in the mean time.  The following occurred in first few days of 2009.

McSorely’s Old Ale House

There I was sitting in a classroom, my first week with the airline, on the day when we would be given our assignments. All of us were nervous, we had heard nightmares about being based in New York City and now we prayed that chance would give us an alternative domicile. The man that would hand out our bases walked into the room full of newbie airline pilots. One of my classmates and soon to be life long friend asked quietly, “any spots open in Cincinnati?” The man laughed and said, “I want you to practice a phrase you’ll be using a lot, ‘ha you dewin’. With that our fates had all been sealed. As I mulled on this fact for the following months of training I decided to make the most of it and compose a list of things that I wanted to do or see while “living” in New York City.

In the first few weeks of what was to be 2 years of temporary residence in New York City I flew with a captain who happened to be a native New Yorker. I handed him my list of extra curricular goals. As he read through it some of the items made him smile while others made him roll his eyes. After a few minutes he took out his pen and wrote something on the paper. He scribble the words, McSorely’s Old Ale House above all of the other items. I took the paper back from him as he said, “you forgot the most important one.”

For the better part of two years I had tried and failed to get “the guys” together to find this legendary place. In the mean time I started to read up on the ale house. Opened in 1854 Mcsorely’s is to this day one of the oldest continuously open establishments in New York. It stayed open through civil war, WWI, WWII, and prohibition. It wasn’t until 1978 that women were allowed in as the result of protests. In typical New York fashion the owner in an affront to the woman’s movement maintained one bathroom to be used by both sexes. Mcsorely’s inspiring atmosphere facilitated the creativity of people such as Abraham Lincoln and John Lennon.  In 1925 E.E. Cummings wrote the famous poem sitting in McSorely’s and in 1928 John Sloan painted “McSorely’s Saturday Night.” All of these facts plus a touch of rumor made me want to have my own McSorely’s experience.

As a result of a hurting economy and airline cutbacks my time in New York City was coming to a close. I sat in my apartment in New York in my final days there with my list in hand. Most all of the items had a check mark followed by a date. I had gone to Katz deli and eaten a pastrami sandwich. I had gone to Coney Island and eaten a Nathan’s hot dog after riding the cyclone as Charles Lindbergh had done in the days before his famous trip across the Atlantic. I had met a celebrity on the street (Conan O’brien) and had seen time square after midnight. But there still remained one item scribbled on the paper in handwriting that wasn’t my own: McSorely’s Old Ale House. I thought out loud to my friends, also preparing for their final week, “well, we never made it to McSorely’s.” I folded the paper and stepped outside to make a phone call.

As I was finishing my phone call my friend Dave walked out and said, ” lets go for a walk.” I followed him for 4 blocks before I finally asked, “Dave where the hell are we going it’s 9PM.” As we walked on he said, “Lou we only have 3 days left here and who knows if we’ll ever come back or if you and I will ever get to hang out again. Lets find McSorely’s and send ourselves off!” I could have cried.

As directed by the captain almost 2 years previous to the day we took the subway to the village. As we emerged onto the street we found the nearest police officer and said, “hey, you know where we can find McSorely’s?” As the captain had promised the cop walked us the 4 blocks to a modest black door, above which hung a green sign that read, “McSorely’s Old Ale House this is our 154th year.  I crossed the threshold and was overwhelmed. We stood there barely inside in awe. Everyone was shoulder to shoulder in the small, dusty tavern. There was no jukebox, the only music was a group of people at a large table singing and slamming their beers on the surface. My eyes labored to focus, the decor had evolved with the ages. The walls were covered with hand written poems by famous authors, sketches of the tavern signed by famous artists, and priceless memorabilia that had never been purchased at any antique store.

We finally fought our way to the bar where the wood top was covered in loose one dollar bills, the bar keep’s tips for the night. When we were finally able to make eye contact the bar tender yelled, “DARK OR LIGHT.” In 154 years of operation McSorely’s had only served two beverages; McSorely’s light or McSorely’s dark. No apple martini’s here! Me wanting to live out the experience to the fullest and at the right price of $1.25 I got two of each. As we waited for our beers to arrive I looked up and found the one thing I absolutely had to see at McSorely’s. In 1911 the United States had decided to get involved in WWI. McSorely’s generously threw a going away party for all of the neighborhood boys who were leaving to fight in Europe. As the story goes the Old Ale House cooked up a flock of turkeys with all of the fixin’s. As the party began to wind down and the realization that the boys would be leaving soon, someone grabbed a handful of the wishbones and made an impromptu speech to the effect of, “Here are the wishbones. Lets give them to the bar tender to hold and we’ll all come back after the war and break them!” To this day directly over the bar hanging on an old out of use light fixture are 19 wishbones belonging to the boys that never made it back. If I had not known where to look I would have passed the dust covered fixture off as a result of bad cleaning. But instead I stood there, emotional, knowing what I was seeing, a promise that we will never forget.

The Wish Bones

With beers in hand and several sips out of each brew we turned and looked for a place to nest and take in this historic place. We found two seats at the end of a long table and sat down among the many other patrons. The table tops had trenches rubbed out where centuries of elbows had rested. As the night went on the empty glasses began to pile up. We sang with the crowd and were taken in by a group of locals. The only beers we had actually purchased were the first round when we had initially arrived. Our new friends were taking turns buying us rounds and refused reciprocation. (We would end up eating at a diner at 5am with these people, their names erased by the effects of beer.)

We closed McSorely’s Old Ale House out that night. I had accomplished my goal and we had “sent ourselves off.” The city had truly given me a farewell gift.

In the cab back to our place the sun beginning to rise, Dave turned to me and said, “Well Graham was it all you wanted it to be?” I sat and thought with a smile then said, “Dave, if Heaven is what we want it to be, when I die, I’ll see ya at McSorely’s.”