a Nostalgic Rememberance...

As a young child I would revel in the days where I didn’t have to attend school. I like most children would rather be out playing games of cops and robbers, or walking to the store with my grandfather to buy candy. Unlike most small children I would also look forward to going to the bar with my grandfather after the playground.

You see where and when I was a child growing up this was not something unusual. At least for my family it wasn’t. My grandfather, Jerome Patrick McGloin (or Patrick Andrew McGloin as he was named at birth) was an honest man. He was six foot four inches tall and had the longest lankiest fingers I had ever seen up until I saw the movie E.T. for the first time. He was a kind and gentle man, furiously protective of his family and heritage. He was the stereotype of his generation, blue collar laborer, who worked as a master pipe fitter at General Motors for the better part of his adult life.

His big lanky hands were strong, calloused and rough. I can still to this day remember the feel of them as he held my hand and walked me through the streets of South Buffalo. His glossy polished black shoes, his ferociously creased Levi Strauss blue jeans, his Notre Dame button up sweater and his Magee of Donegal tweed had were all meticulously cared for. He was a strong hearted man who was fiercely intelligent. He read the news paper everyday from front to back, reading every story in between. He was active in the local UAW and had more friends than one could care to imagine.

My grandfather was also trapped, like so many of our family before and after him in the oppressive dusk of addiction. But at the ripe old age of four I was too young to realize that I didn’t belong in a bar with a highly intoxicated family member. Being young and impressionable, hearing the stories and laughter of my grandfather and all of the other old men in the bar at eleven in the morning, I fell in love with these places. The dilapidated smell of cigarette stained ceiling tiles and the stale odor of warm, flat, draft beer which permeated out of the drain were beautiful things to me.

When I was with Popsi (which is what we called my grandfather, due to his insistence that he was too young to be a grandfather) I had full reign of the place. I could have all of the pop and chips I wanted, play darts, pool (both off of a chair I had to pull over so I could see of course) and the juke box as much as I wanted. My grandfather would sit me on his knee and show everyone how smart I was. He would pull out his wallet and pocket change and would have me name every president on every note and coin.

We would take our pilgrimages all over and whenever we could. Stankey’s on Dash and Abbott, Hopper’s Rush Inn on Seneca and Kamper and my grandfather’s favorite, The Melrose on Seneca and Melrose.

My grandfather, with the fresh smell of Old Grandad and OV Splits on his breath, would dress me and get me ready for our day. We’d eat breakfast and take a walk up to the corner store. From there it was the playground on Mineral Springs and after that off to whatever tavern he could take me. I enjoyed these days and relished in these moments. But like all good things, it had to come to an end.

In 1991 my Grandfather finally had succumb to a life of hard drinking. Looking back on it now, and being as young as I was, I don’t think I ever really was able to really grieve his loss. I also never was able to fully comprehend the unhealthy side of something that seemed so innocent to me at the time.

My family had a tradition which was far older than my self. My grandfather would take his six children, himself and his wife to meet the rest of his family Ray Flynn’s on Main Street and Virginia Street for the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. To give you an idea of how long ago my family started this tradition, the Saint Patrick’s Day parade route was moved off of Main Street in 1981 so the route could accommodate a larger number of spectators.

Ray Flynn’s was known for almost fifty years as a “newspaper bar." Much of their business and many of their regulars came from the Morning Courier-Express, a Buffalo news paper which ran from 1926 until 1982. Ray Flynn’s stayed in business (much to the chagrin and amazement of his Main Street competitors) for another eighteen years, becoming quickly adopted by the theatre crowd.

As a child and through to my early teens I relished in the yearly adventure to Ray Flynn’s. I can picture the bar in my head as if it were right in front of me. It's giant hand laid brick facade, with its fading hand painted Coca Cola advertisement on the outisde wall. Only the "YN" in the neon sign which at one point illuminated Ray Flynn's in neon red still functioned. The inside showed the wear and tear of a bar which had spanned three generations of Buffalonians and was in desperate need of a few coats of paint.

The walls and ceiling tiles were stained an off yellow from years of billowing cigarette smoke. The restrooms were crude at best. Cast iron toilets which had probably been there since it opened in 1933 were firmly bolted to the cement floor and peeling paint which probably contained lethal ammounts of lead peeled from the walls, falling like snowfloakes to the floor.

To me, it was a palace and probably would be to this day; had It lived long enough for me to enjoy as an adult.

“Our” spot in the bar was right in front of the glass block window along Main Street.

I remember having piles of candy and popcorn, pitchers of soda and more importantly my birthday gifts from my family heaped around our table. The juke box was full of Celtic Ballads and big band music, and my family and I would spend hours monopolizing the pinball machine and the shuffleboard bowling machine. I remember Tommy Flynn, the owner of the establishment being there through much of my youth.

My grandfather grew up with Tommy Flynn, they had seen presidents, mayors, wars and recessions come and go. They had been life long friends.

In 1999 when they announced that Flynn's would be closing, we spent our final Saint Patrick’s Day at Ray Flynn’s Golden Dollar Bar. It was an upsetting and happily nostalgic experience all at once. I realized that at this point in my life that things would irrepairably change forever.

Having moved out of South Buffalo as a child, I had seen the playground I spent many a day enjoying with my grandfather leveled and rebuilt. The legendary Melrose razed to the ground only to have a Rite Aid built in it’s stead, I knew that the last tangible elements I had which would bring up happier times and evoke nostalgic memories of my earlier and far simpler life, were gone.

Any physical connection to my grandfather were now nothing more than a over glorified image in my mind. All that I was left with were photographs and distant memories.

Trips to the Saint Patrick’s Day parade continued, and I have only missed one in the 22 years of my life. Braving cold, snow storms and rain I have stood in front of the old Knights of Columbus on Delaware and Virginia, with my family and friends. Graduating from pitchers of soda to coolers of beer has been like a right of passage.

We met years after at Buffalo's oldest bar, Ulrich’s Tavern on Ellicott and Virginia a few short blocks away from where Ray flynns once stood.

Ray Flynn’s, which shortly after it closed, was turned into a parking lot for the Buffalo Catholic Diocese.

Walking down Virginia Street every year I stop and gaze in awestruck amazement that a seemingly important time of my life was destroyed and paved over. I ponder how such a piece of history, a former speakeasy during prohibition with such a long and rich history that spanned sixty-six years could disappear just like that.

Although my family still partakes in the parade every year it just doesn’t seem the same. In the years after Flynn’s demise we bounced from Ulrich’s to D’Arcy McGee’s to McCarthy’s Bar and Grill on Pearl street. Finally settling upon not having any of us meet at any set place but our collective corner from which we gaze admirably at the people who walk the parade rout every year. Out of town family who would come home religiously seemed to have moved on, coming more sporadically now as their lives become busier and more hectic.

Something that would be an all day event starting at ten in the morning Sunday and ending in the early hours of Monday has seemingly disappeared. As my aunts and uncles have children and jobs to worry about the next morning. Becoming too old to really party as they had in their more lively days. I have become victim to that plague as well, usually taking a time when I would party and whoop it up with the best, now usually resigned to my place behind the bar once the parade has ended.

I’m reminded of a lyric in the Bob Dylan song “Restless Farewell” based on a traditional Irish Ballad called “The Parting Glass” that seems to sum up my life and that of the friends, family and places closest to me.

“…But the bottles are done, we’ve killed each one and the tables full and overflowed, and the corner sign, says it closing time, so I’ll bid farewell and be down the road…”

Maybe with time and for the benefit my quickly growing niece I can begin to rebuild those traditions and memories. But until I can I will reflect softly in those quiet moments, on a time in my life before the pressure of bills and the worries of the life I lead. Until that time, I will pray that I can be half the man my grandfather was. And finally, until that time, ensure I treat every day with the reverence and respect it deserves, because you never know when it will drastically and radically change forever.

Until next time my friends… Don’t drink anything I wouldn’t…

Mac the Bartender