Book Review: The Tender Bar: A Memoir
by Richard Grooms, Springville Road Regional Branch Library
The Tender Bar: A Memoir
J. R. Moehringer
I have no interest in bars. I don’t drink and I can’t stand cigarette smoke. I was not the ideal reader for The Tender Bar. Not in theory anyway. In reality, I’m a fan of memoirs and, after reading the review blurbs in the front of the book, I gave it a try. I was captivated early on and I somehow knew I’d have a very good reading experience ahead of me. Turned out I was right. Dickens is the name of the bar at the center of Manhasset, Long Island, and J.R. Moehringer’s early life. It was where the “Little League, softball league, bowling league and Junior League” all met. It gives you the best overview, nine yards and cross section you could get of Manhasset, and therefore sort of sums up America, or at least small town life.
Moehringer’s dysfunctional (this is a memoir) family meant an absent father, a grandfather so patriarchal he made sure all the women in the household never went to college, and a general sense of failure. He didn’t have good male role models at home, but the bar, where Uncle Charlie worked, did provide men who helped steer J.R. through rites of passage. They functioned as tribal elders, or at least would-be tribal elders. There’s the obscenely-named employee who lived in a car in back of the bar, did his laundry in the bar’s dishwasher and hung the clothes out to dry in the trees out back. And there’s Colt, who talked like Yogi Bear. Both men mumbled everything and J.R. was one of the few who could make some sense out of them. His phonetic transcriptions of their language are reliably hilarious. These guys and others functioned not too well, but they weren’t too very dysfunctional either. Still, despite all, says Moehringer, “They taught me the importance of confidence…that was enough. That, I later realized, was everything.”
Back at Dysfunctional Ranch. J.R.’s mom eventually gets fed up with going nowhere and moves herself and son to Arizona. Something extraordinary happens there. While place making (but not working) at a mall bookstore, J.R. is given permission by the two eccentric owners to read all he likes. There’s plenty of time as there are no customers to speak of. Bill and Bud, the managers so to speak, hide in the back and read all day. They see potential in J.R. and complete his high school training, giving him a literary education. They set high standards for J.R. and, miracle of miracles, he gets into Yale, barely. He struggles through college and gets a job at the New York Times as a reporter. J.R. is always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and he does have many setbacks along the way, including getting fired from the Times. His move up the class ladder is meticulously told in accounts that are sensitive, painful to read at times, and sometimes heartbreaking.
Wherever he ends up, J.R. always comes back to Manhasset, family, and Dickens. The section on Dickens closing made me really sad. This is a bar I wish I could have visited. Moehringer has come up with a small American classic, one to savor and learn from.
J. R. Moehringer
I have no interest in bars. I don’t drink and I can’t stand cigarette smoke. I was not the ideal reader for The Tender Bar. Not in theory anyway. In reality, I’m a fan of memoirs and, after reading the review blurbs in the front of the book, I gave it a try. I was captivated early on and I somehow knew I’d have a very good reading experience ahead of me. Turned out I was right. Dickens is the name of the bar at the center of Manhasset, Long Island, and J.R. Moehringer’s early life. It was where the “Little League, softball league, bowling league and Junior League” all met. It gives you the best overview, nine yards and cross section you could get of Manhasset, and therefore sort of sums up America, or at least small town life.
Moehringer’s dysfunctional (this is a memoir) family meant an absent father, a grandfather so patriarchal he made sure all the women in the household never went to college, and a general sense of failure. He didn’t have good male role models at home, but the bar, where Uncle Charlie worked, did provide men who helped steer J.R. through rites of passage. They functioned as tribal elders, or at least would-be tribal elders. There’s the obscenely-named employee who lived in a car in back of the bar, did his laundry in the bar’s dishwasher and hung the clothes out to dry in the trees out back. And there’s Colt, who talked like Yogi Bear. Both men mumbled everything and J.R. was one of the few who could make some sense out of them. His phonetic transcriptions of their language are reliably hilarious. These guys and others functioned not too well, but they weren’t too very dysfunctional either. Still, despite all, says Moehringer, “They taught me the importance of confidence…that was enough. That, I later realized, was everything.”
Back at Dysfunctional Ranch. J.R.’s mom eventually gets fed up with going nowhere and moves herself and son to Arizona. Something extraordinary happens there. While place making (but not working) at a mall bookstore, J.R. is given permission by the two eccentric owners to read all he likes. There’s plenty of time as there are no customers to speak of. Bill and Bud, the managers so to speak, hide in the back and read all day. They see potential in J.R. and complete his high school training, giving him a literary education. They set high standards for J.R. and, miracle of miracles, he gets into Yale, barely. He struggles through college and gets a job at the New York Times as a reporter. J.R. is always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and he does have many setbacks along the way, including getting fired from the Times. His move up the class ladder is meticulously told in accounts that are sensitive, painful to read at times, and sometimes heartbreaking.
Wherever he ends up, J.R. always comes back to Manhasset, family, and Dickens. The section on Dickens closing made me really sad. This is a bar I wish I could have visited. Moehringer has come up with a small American classic, one to savor and learn from.
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