LIBERTY BARS
Our favorite liberty bars were unlike no other watering holes or dens of
iniquity inhabited by normal men and women. Ours had to meet
strict standards to be in compliance with the acceptable requirement for asailor
beer-swilling dump.
The first and foremost requirement was a crusty old gal serving suds. She had to
be able to wrestle King Kong to parade rest, be able to
balance a tray with one hand, knock bluejackets out of the way with the other
hand and skillfully navigate through a roomful of milling around
drunks. On slow nights, she had to be the kind of gal who would give you a back
scratch with a fly swatter handle or put her foot on the table so you
could admire her new ankle bracelet some "mook" brought her back from a Hong
Kong liberty.
A good barmaid had
to be able to whisper sweet nothings in your ear like, "Sailor, your thirteen
button flap is twelve buttons short of a green board." And, “Buy a pack of
Clorets and chew up the whole thing before you get within heaving range of any
gal you ever want to see again." And, "Hey
animals, I know we have a crowd tonight, but if any of you guys find the head
facilities fully occupied and start urinating down the floor drain, you're gonna
find yourself scrubbing the deck with your white hats!".
They had to be able to admire great tattoos, look at pictures ofugly bucktooth
kids and smile and be able to help haul drunks to cabs and comfort 19 year-olds
who had lost someone close to them. They could look at your ship's
identification shoulder tab and tell you the names of the Skippers back to the
time you were a Cub Scout.
Then there is the imported table wipe down guy and glass washer, trash dumper,
deck swabber and paper towel replacement officer. The guy had to have baggy
tweed pants and a gold tooth and a grin like a 1950 Buick. And a name like
"Ramon", "Juan", "Pedro" or "Tico". He had to smoke unfiltered Luckies, Camels
or Raleighs. He wiped the tables down with a sour wash rag that smelled like a
skunk diaper and said, "How are choo navee mans tonight? He was the
indispensable man. The guy with credentials that allowed him to borrow
Slim-Jims, Beer Nuts and pickled hard boiled eggs from other beer joints when
they ran out where he worked.
The establishment itself. The place had to have walls covered with ship and
squadron plaques. The walls were adorned with enlarged unit patches
and the dates of previous deployments. A dozen or more old, yellowed photographs
of fellows named "Buster", "Chicago", "P-Boat Barney", "Flaming Hooker Harry",
"Malone", "Honshu Harry", Jackson, Douche Bag Doug, and Capt. Slade Cutter
decorated any unused space.
It had to have the obligatory Michelob, Pabst Blue Ribbon and "BeerNuts sold
here" neon signs. An eight-ball mystery beer tap handle and signs reading:
"Your mother does not work here, so clean away your frickin' trash."
"Keep your hands off the barmaid."
"Don't throw butts in urinal."
"Barmaid's word is final in settling bets."
"Take your fights out in the alley behind the bar!"
"Owner reserves the right to waltz your worthless sorry ass outside."
"Shipmates are responsible for riding herd on their ship/squadron drunks."
This was typical signage found in classy establishments catering tosophisticated
as well as unsophisticated clientele.
You had to have a juke box built along the lines of a Sherman tank loaded with
Hank Williams, Mother Maybelle Carter, Johnny Horton, Johnny Cash and twenty
other crooning goobers nobody ever heard of. The damn thing has to have "La
Bamba", Herb Alpert's "Lonely Bull" and Johnny Cash's "Don't take your guns to
town" in memory of Alameda's barmaid goddess, Thelma. If Thelma is within a
twelve-mile radius of where any of those three recordings can be found on a
jukebox, it is wise to have a stack of life insurance applications within reach
of the coin slot.
The furniture in a real good liberty bar had to be made from coal mine shoring
lumber and was not fully acceptable until it had 600 cigarette burns and your
ship's numbers or "FTN" carved into it. The bar had to have a brass foot rail
and at least six Slim-Jim containers, an oversized glass cookie jar full of
Beer-Nuts, a jar of pickled hard boiled eggs that could produce rectal gas
emissions that could shut down a sorority party, and big glass containers full
of something called Pickled Pig s Feet and Polish Sausage. Only drunk Chiefs and
starving Ethiopians ate pickled pigs feet and unless the last three feet of your
colon had been manufactured by Midas, you didn't want to get any where near the
Polish Napalm Dogs.
No liberty bar was complete without a couple of hundred faded ship or airplane
pictures and a "Shut the hell up!" sign taped on the mirror behind the bar along
with several rather tasteless naked lady pictures. The pool table felt had to
have at least three strategic rips as a result of drunken competitors and balls
that looked as if a gorilla baby had teethed on the sonuvabitches.
Liberty bars were home and it didn't matter what country, state, or city you
were in, when you walked into a good liberty bar, you felt at home. They were
also establishments where 19 year-old kids received an education available
nowhere else on earth. You learned how to "tell" and "listen" to sea stories.
You learned about sex at $25 a pop! -- from professional ladies who taught you
things your high school biology teacher didn't know were anatomically possible.
You learned how to make a two cushion bank shot and how to toss down a beer and
shot of Sun Torry known as a "depth charge." We were young, and a helluva long
way from home. We were pulling down crappy wages for twenty-four hours a day,
seven days a-week availability and loving the life we lived. We didn't know it
at the time, but our association with the men we served with forged us into the
men we became. And a lot of that association took place in bars where we shared
the stories accumulated in our, up to then, short lives. We learned about women
and that life could be tough on a gal.
While many of our classmates were attending college, we were getting an
education slicing through the green rolling seas in WestPac or the Med
experiencing the orgasmic rush of a night cat shot, the heart pounding drama of
the return to the ship with the gut wrenching arrestment to a pitching deck. The
hours of tedium, boring holes in the sky late at night, experiencing the
periodic discomfort of turbulence, marveling at the creation of St. Elmo's Fire,
and sometimes having our reverie interrupted with stark terror.
But when we came ashore on liberty, we could rub shoulders with some of the
finest men we would ever know, in bars our mothers would never have approved of,
in saloons and cabarets that would live in our memories forever.
Long live those liberties in WestPac and in the Med! They were thegreatest
teachers about life and how to live it.
Albert J. Mundo