The Cortese Bar

The Bar at Cortese's

A few months ago, a cousin I used to work with in the family restaurant told me that my brother was remodeling the bar room there.  She hadn't been in the place in twenty years; like me, she had done her time in the family business, and moved on.  "They gutted the whole room" she told me.  "The red Naugahyde walls, the chestnut paneling, the whole room--gone."  She paused, obviously weighing the import of her next bit of intelligence.  "They got rid of the bar.  They cut it in half and carried it out the front door in two pieces."

I loved that bar.

I treasure barrooms--taverns, tap rooms, neighborhood joints, pubs, bar & grills--you name 'em, I love 'em.  I think of Kevin Kline's character in Silverado, a gunslinger and gambler, after a long dusty ride: "I love the smell of a good saloon.  It's my favorite place in the world."  When I remember that line--and his inflection, and the wistful expression--I think of the bar room at Cortese's.  Every time.

When I was a kid, the bar was a forbidding castle with no drawbridge; the bartenders were great and mysterious wizards.  The chairs were too tall for me to climb.  Adults, tall enough to mount the dizzying heights of the barstools, would sit, rapt, for hours.  I could sense their community, and their isolation, at the same confused time, and I wanted to understand.

My brothers and I would raid the fruit from stainless steel bowls, and pour Coke and 7up from the soda gun.  We kept hoping to get yelled at.

After awhile, I noticed that some people's behavior changed after they had been sitting at the bar for a couple of hours.  The wizards must have worked their magic on them.  Some of the magic was wondrous; some was dark.  Uncle Jimmy told outrageously funny stories--the one about how to get across the desert on the camel (you gotta BRICK 'im, he'd say) was legendary.  Reserved Eileen loosened up to the point where her cigarette-and-Manhattan breath got...icky.  Art listened and made literate, acerbic comments.  There were the two Jims: best friends Weaver giggled and Daugherty guffawed.  Cliff rambled on ad infinitum.  Raylene got pornographic; she clearly didn't belong at such a high-class restaurant bar.  And Roscoe curled up into himself a little more, after each J&B.

But they were the cast of my Cheers.  I knew them; could predict them; drew comfort from their eccentricities.

At eighteen, I had my first legal drink at the Cortese bar.  It made my highlight film.  I got my first job on the floor--finally escaping the kitchen--as a busboy.  Tony and Steve were the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis of Binghamton's bar scene.  The bar room was jammed at midnight, and just as full at one.  They'd flip the lights on at last call, shouting "Everybody take a look at what you got!"  When people didn't get that hint, Steve would bellow "RELEASE THE HOUNDS!" and all four of us "busbies" would howl, bark, bay and woof at the top of our lungs.  The bar was the focus of the celebration of Weekend.

My dad fired Steve.  He was married to my cousin Terry, who ran the office during the day.  I remember a brief, snappy exchange as Steve was knocking excess head off a draft Schlitz.  Dad cautioned him that the foam was "liquid gold."  Steve shot back a retort that hit the mark WAY too well.  Suddenly, Dad was standing at the front door of the house ordering me to go tend bar in Steve's--the Jerry Lewis of our bar tandem--stead.  I was scared shitless; he was God; Dad was, well, Dad.  I went.

I became an adult behind the Cortese bar.  I had to learn to produce under pressure, with grace, with efficiency, with humor, without letting them see me sweat.  I had to befriend adults: attorneys, architects, alcoholics, adulterers, assholes.  I found I was good at it.  My favorite times were opening up--everything fresh, stocked, optimistic, clean, and sweet; the dinner rush--balls to the wall, peak efficiency, synchronized harmony on good nights.  Fridays after all the high school basketball games, when the refs crowded in, tripping over their own thirsts and egos--and I found that matching their fundamental rudeness with biting sarcasm got better tips.

But the best times behind the bar at Cortese's were when Bobby and the Droids came in.  Bob was a counselor.  I never heard of any advanced degree; I think he decided to charge for his service after befriending bar people and listening to their troubles for a decade or so.  The Cortese bar room was his office suite.  I went to the movies one night to see "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and saw the Droids--Bob's patients--in the denizens of the Ward.  Their illicit fishing trip--when Randle Patrick McMurphy (aka Bob) "borrowed" the big boat--happened every Thursday night at Cortese's bar.

Before I knew it, there I was at the front door with Dad again.  This time, I was being ordered to replace Dad's partner Uncle Joe, who had split town with his bimbo.  I got out from behind the bar, but it was still central to my life.

There were two rooms at Cortese's: the bar and the dining room.  The dining room was where all the starched old men, blue-haired ladies, and whining babies were fed.  I went in there because I had to.  The bar room was my element.  All the cool people came there to eat, drink, and be merry.  Laughter, stories, and good-natured insults abounded.  Practical jokery reached new levels of sophistication there (NEVER set up a sponge-cake-steel-pot-and-CO2 ambush in the dining room!).

Sunday mornings, I'd set up the bar for the day shift.  I'd bring my 6-month old daughter Jessica and her Sassy Seat (remember them?  They clip onto the edge of a table?).  I'd set Jess up from behind the bar while I cut fruit, stocked beer and ice, and generally got the bar ready to roll.  I cherish the double-takes from the early bird, fresh from Mass at St. Paul's, as they'd pass by the bar--and the baby playing with rubber duckies and orange slices.

After really busy nights, I'd tell the crew--the best people I've ever worked with--that "the drinking lamp is lit."  So we got to enjoy the bar at Cortese's the way good people are supposed to enjoy it.  Once, after we shattered the record for a single night's business, there was a conga line, and it ended up atop the bar, waitresses and the Golden Gloves saute cook high-kicking to Motown R&B.  The bar had achieved its highest and best use.

When I gave Dad my two years' notice and went back to school, he banned me from Cortese's for a couple of years. He told me I needed to stay out of my younger brother's way so he could truly take over.  The hardest part was being separated from the bar and its circle of fellow dwellers.  It was my touchstone, the locus of my support system.  My happy moment, when the embargo was lifted, was sitting down at the Cortese bar and ordering a beer.  It felt like my 18th birthday all over again.

I'd visit the restaurant every few months; the new regime--my younger brother--was threatened by my presence, and I by theirs.  But always the bar welcomed me.  Maybe it's the inherent nature of a bar: it never holds a grudge, never remembers that you acted too much the fool or blowhard.  It always welcomes you back.

With this in mind, I decided to make the drive to Cortese's and see what my brother had done with the bar room after taking out my bar.  It wasn't easy.  I was hoping that the inherent nature, maybe the karma, of the bar room would be enough to cushion the loss.  I went inside.

My bar was there.  It had indeed been cut into two pieces, but only to accomodate...more beer taps.  And it was beautiful.

More importantly, it was now my brother's bar.  He had designed the remodeling job, and beamed the glow of one truly satisfied when I complimented the room.  So now it was OUR bar--an oasis we could share together, and love for our own reasons.

The bar at Cortese's wouldn't have it any other way.