McSlorey's Old Ale House, New York City.

So anyway, I’m in a saloon in New York, not far from the East River but my thoughts have just zoomed back home to the Riverina and Deniliquin on the Edward.

Maybe ten years ago I was down at Denny speaking with a great gentleman who’s sadly since passed away. Bill Mulham was the lifeblood of the local historical society and we spoke for a couple of hours about the history of the area.

At the end he asked if I knew about the shear tree to the north of the town. Seems that in 1914 a young shearer signed up for the War to end all Wars and stuck his shears into a tree at Pretty Pine, saying he’d get ‘em when he got back.

He never returned and the shears are still embedded in the tree, only by now they’re about 5 metres up. I was comfortable enough with Bill to tell him that one of the few things I remembered from high school science was that trees grow from the top, only grasses grow from the bottom and so the shears simply couldn't rise up as the tree grows.

Old Bill smiled and just said, “Well that’s the story and it was in the Pastoral Times when he did it.”

So that remained unresolved and it’s come back to me as I sit in a bar on the lower east side of Manhattan, half a world away. It’s lunchtime on a sunny Spring day and things are looking up after yesterday’d been wasted searching for a good pub.

I’d started of at Pete’s Tavern over on East 18^th. This place shouts loud that it has the longest continuous service in New York City, uninterrupted since 1864 so it promised to be an interesting mix of hallowed history and lower east side attitude.

It’s a quiet midweek afternoon and the workers have headed back to their variable height desks. The barman has little to do but it’s still too much to answer any questions about the heritage of the house, and I get the strong sense he’s disconnected from everything other than the knot of regulars at the far end.

Beneath the beautiful pressed tin ceiling, I grab a larger and a seat away from the bar. On the wall beside I’m hoping to see some images of the history, the story of the place, that the barman’s incapable of sharing.

But there’s bugger all. The place seems to be owned by Gary and John. Any images of the pub’s

story have seemingly long been replaced by tacky self indulgent

wanking shots of Johnny with Brad and Angelina, or Gary with Tom Hanks or with Martin Scorsese or any number of other people who are famous for something, or for nothing other than being famous.

Quick backtrack:

A brace of books was pivotal in my early impressions of the USA and New York.

The second one I read in 2001.

Back in 1969 I raced through “The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test” about Ken Kesey, author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and his adventures with a gang that called itself the Merry Pranksters in a bus whose destination board simply said, ‘Furthur’!

Crammed full of crossovers with the beat generation of Kerouac and Ginzberg and especially Neal Cassidy and entangling the Hells Angels and the Grateful Dead, whose song Truckin’ remains the best ever road song, It was written by Tom Wolfe.

He went on to write “The Right Stuff” about the early USA space programme, a book whose style can truly make you breathless as you read it, and in 2001 he delivered to the world, “The Bonfire of the Vanities”. The book features very highly on any list of Great Books turned into Terrible Movies, and its most remembered quote is just two words:

Bullshit reigns at Pete's Bar NYNY

“Bullshit reigns”.

Yep, as I head out of Pete’s after just a single drink, this quote comes to mind but also a second bit from the same book torpedoes my brain:

“ …. in my house, when a turd appears, we throw it out. We dispose of it. We flush it away. We don't put it on the table and call it caviar.”

No sturgeon of any type, let alone a virgin one has any legacy at this place so I headed further south to Fraunces Tavern on Pearl St. This place was built in 1719 making it arguably NY’s oldest building and served as Washington’s HQ. Sadly most references to its amazing history have been removed to the museum upstairs (Entry $5.00) and the pub is part garish neon and part dimly light alcove bar room with the atmosphere of Pluto.

Wasted day - tomorrow has to be better!

And so it is and, after walking straight past, seeking directions from a bemused local and U-turning, I’m in McSlorey’s Old Ale House on East 7^th Street.

I slide up to the bar on the sawdust covered floor and a beaming, welcoming Theresa asks what I’d like.

“What ya got?”

“We’ve got light and dark.”

Light ale and dark ale: That's all they sell and it’s all they ever sold. No wine, no spirits, no larger, no pilsener no stout, just ale:  light ale and dark ale.

Oh and you can’t have just a single glass. The stuff only ever comes in pairs. Five bucks fifty’ll get you a pair of glasses: a couple of lights, a couple of darks or if you’re feeling risky, one of each.

I go for a mixed brace as a taster, settle into a tableside chair and relax into true flaneur mode and that’s when Deniliquin comes to mind.

Above the bar is a pair of lights joined by a brass beam maybe a yard long.  

Notice the lights in this 1912 painting and in my photo below.

I’d seen these lights in a 1912 painting of the bar by John French Sloan.  But not long after the painting had been done, additions to the fitting were made. Straddling the beam are nineteen turkey and chicken wishbones, covered in years of dust.

“In 2010 the Health Dept came by and told us to dust them off – they hadn’t been touched since 1917 or 18 when they were stuck up there.”

The story is that when the USA joined WW1 and the locals, mainly Irish lads, joined up, they’d spend their last day in town having a drink and a meal at McSloreys with the men of their family and then, before leaving the bar for the last time before and heading for the front, they’d hang the bird’s wishbone over the rail for luck.

The rite would be completed when the soldier returned home and retrieved his lucky wishbone.

Nineteen circles were never completed and those wishbones have remained untouched, save for a single dusting, for the last century. Like the shears at Denny and at Pretty Pine, their true stories will never be told.

When the regular middayers head out and things quieten a bit, Theresa has time to share her story and that of the alehouse.

I came here because McSorleys was the last bar in New York to admit women which it was forced to do in 1970. Until that time its motto, inscribed into its drinking mugs was, “Good Ale, Raw Onions, No Ladies” but I soon understand there’s a hell of a lot more to this place than a single claim to (in)fame.

Theresa’s been running the place for the last 23 years when her father who began working here in 1964 before buying it in 1977, invited her to move from washing dishes for university pocket money, and into the front bar.

Her dad had bought the place from the widow of a retired Irish cop who’d purchased it from the last of the McSorleys in 1936. On my side of the bar is Richard,

Theresa’s cousin who’s worked here for 45 years, just like Pepe who was just knocking off when I came by.

As Theresa gets distracted by the light and dark requests of other customers, Richard just slides seamlessly into the story that’s being told. Both know the tales, the histories and the place’s story is woven with their own stories.

It’s no surprise that the original name for the place was “Old House at Home”.  The ambition is to stay true to the 163 year old aim of the founder to have a haven, a sanctuary away from the outside rush.

In 1970 when the doors were opened to women, McSlorey’s dropped its single motto and replaced it with two. The first is writ large above the bar: “Be good or be gone” and the other, more spoken than written, but understood by all is simply the wry observation: “We’re older than you.”

I know it’s hard to believe but I actually do a bit of research before I hit these places and not long before I got to NY I read a review in Harpers Weekly which described McSorleys as, “ (a)n ancient landmark, a relic of one phase of American life that has passed. It is this type of saloon that is passing away …. Entering the saloon one seems to leave present day New York and to find oneself in a quieter and more aesthetic place. No-one can sit quietly and not feel there is a personality there, a personality respected and cherished by (the owners).”

Good praise about a place trying to keep true to its own ideals don't you think? Well what more do you think when I tell you that was written in 1913?

I look up at the portrait of the founder on the wall and I think of the other book which molded my early thoughts of America.  It too was written by Tom Wolfe but, amazingly another unrelated Tom Wolfe!

In 1934 Wolfe the First wrote his magum opus, “You Can’t Go Home Again” and 34 years later I shelled out $2.25 for my paperback copy. It’s on the desk as I write this. It’s about a writer who leaves a small town for New York, writes a novel about his home and then returns as a famous author only to be despised and hated by the old friends and acquaintances he has portrayed (or betrayed).

Not far in, Wolfe wrote a passage which has remained with me ever since, and which resonates within me as I sit back at my table, confronted by another couple of ales and a plate of old style (what else?) cheese and raw onion:

“…. a phrase that had been running through his head all evening, like an overtone to everything that he had seen and heard, now flashed once more into his consciousness:

--He who lets himself be whored by fashion will be whored by time.”

This is an idiosyncratic saloon which has whored itself to no-one and, in being true to itself, to its history and its present, has become has one of the great destination bars of the world.