At The Cemetery Of Lost Saloons

News that Dick’s Bar in the very quaint Village of Mendocino has closed down surprised me only because I had assumed it had disappeared a decade or more ago, transformed into an art gallery, a real estate office or a vape shop.

Everywhere, bars are nearly extinct. The Forest Club is the last true bar still standing in Ukiah. Fort Bragg has a pair of gems in the Golden West and, almost next door, the Welcome Inn. Visit while you can.

In a blink of an eye (translation: 40 years) Ukiah has lost some of what helped make Ukiah Ukiah: The Water Trough, Happiness Is Club, Drifter’s Club, Peacock Lounge, a pair at the Palace Hotel, Bob’s Bar, the Samoa Club and too many more.

(If Applebee’s closed tomorrow it wouldn’t leave a vacancy.)

I went to Dick’s Bar a few times but usually found myself among those thrilled to experience a “real dive bar,” followed by photos of themselves and another Harvey Wallbanger.

My favorite bar was in the Dante Hotel in Cloverdale. I was a hippie in the 1970s and I did occasional afternoons, and far more evenings at the Dante following ballgames in the local fastpitch softball league. It was a comfy place that fit me like an old pair of Frye boots.

The two-story hotel, drab and unpainted in the decades I knew her, sat in the southeast corner of the city. It had a wooden porch.

Here’s something I wrote recently (translation: a dozen years ago) about the Dante. I never published it, but it’s either now or another dozen years.

THE DANTE HOTEL is run by longtime proprietor Tosca, shaped like a beer keg, heart of pure pasta, shrewd as a pawnbroker. A kitchen adjoined the bar back then, and a plate of spaghetti cost about the same as a bottle of beer. The stained ceiling is T&G (ask your boyfriend) with a floor of oriented strand board (ask a construction guy).

The joint looks both homey and sad from the string of Christmas lights over the bar. In a side room there’s a cigarette machine alongside a pinball machine and a broken jukebox. The cigs range from Camel Filters to Pall Mall, and Salems for women and sissies.

Geri is your host, and a pleasant lass she is. She says the last time someone pulled a pack of smokes out of the machine was a couple years ago and they were stale. BYOC.

The beer rotation leans heavily toward the Bud, the Coors and the Miller, with some craft brews and imports for you Salem smokers. Pool table is a busy one. Plenty of free parking.

I dislike the term “dive bar” and the Dante isn’t one anyway. It’s an old local joint with genuine local customers. Talk around the bar involves the A’s, Giants, the merits of a ‘64 Chevy with a 409. Guys debating the cars have owned ‘em all and raced them to Boonville and back. You can ask One-Eye Ralph (it’s his name, that’s why) for details.

A Ukiah pal, Pat Walsh, said last time he was at the Dante the TV screen was rolling, like black-and-white TV screens always seem to be, showing a Gilligan’s Island re-run.

Men’s room door (only one I sampled; gender confusion is not common at the Dante) is held open with a loop of clothesline. The box that dispenses liquid soap doesn’t. Relax: a sliver of white soap rests on the edge of the sink.

There is a faucet on the right for cold water and a faucet on the left for display purposes only. Bathroom features also include a draining sink, a mirror. Having never visited the ladies’ room I’m unable to comment on its amenities. I doubt there’s a bidet.

And then I stopped at the Dante a few weeks back (translation: two summers ago) and it was closed, locked, shut down for good. Health Code Violations someone said. And I said Well of Course. But it won’t be a real estate shop unless they bulldoze it to dust, which has probably already happened.

As Mr. Dylan sang 60-plus years ago:

He was only a hobo

But one more is gone

Leavin’ nobody

To carry it on

And those bars aren’t just drinking facilities, but community gathering spots where they play Liar’s Dice at the bar, argue over the ballgame on TV, half-listen to Wanda Jackson on the jukebox and get home in time for dinner.

Always A Thrill

Imagine my delight to learn so many of Ukiah’s most credulous and gullible had gathered ‘round the courthouse to hug each other and tremble in fear of Donald the Monster. ”Hands Off!” they shrieked.

I learned long ago that lefties love to see themselves as romantic rebels forever in danger from the forces of repression. Their faux hysteria and rampant paranoia in confronting imaginary enemies makes grand theater.

But remember: of the two catastrophic events in the past 40 years, leftists have predicted 378 of them.

(Tom Hine writes these columns but the glory and the paychecks go to his imaginary friend. TWK points out that before crowbars were invented crows mostly just drank at home.)

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Keeping The Bar; Keeping The Peace

by Sheriff Matt Kendall

I truly appreciated TWK’s article today, well written and reminiscent of a time that I remember and sometimes find myself missing.

I lived in Cloverdale in 1990 and spent a little time in the Dante as well as a few other fine establishments which I am quite certain “the upper crust” wouldn’t have been caught dead in. Being raised in Covelo caused me to gravitate to the locations where cowboys and Indians commingled, that always felt like home to me.

I enjoyed doing bar checks as a young deputy and learned early on to check them early in the evening. This allowed me to check the temperature of the room and look for friends I may need when last call was looming. In Mendocino County deputies were usually treated well by all in attendance and the bar keep normally kept a pot of coffee on for the cops as an unspoken reminder we were in this together. Cops and bar tenders often become very good friends as we have a mutual duty of keeping a lid on a pot that is destined to boil over eventually.

I learned a lot from the bartenders who worked these places. A good barkeep knows when to cut folks off and when to close shop early. He also knows when to call the law vs when to call someone’s wife or girlfriend. Once you knew the bartender and he knew you, life was much simpler. At times there would be a simple head nod as I walked in the door indicating all was well, or a glance down the bar with a look which said “that one is trouble.” There was a lot of unspoken communication in these small taverns.

Deputies had a duty to walk in without stirring the pot and still retaining authority. That’s what the barkeep expected and working with the patrons was always better than working against them. There are politics even among the inebriated, at times a very popular person won’t be so popular under the influence and his friends knew it long before I arrived.

Bars in the Ukiah area had their own flavor and often were exclusive to the clientele. Some were redneck bars where cowboys and loggers would toss a few back. Others catered to the more refined or youthful crowds. Those places seemed a little tamer than our small town bars because there wasn’t a large mixture of thoughts and beliefs.

Our small town bars were the places everyone wound up like it or not and that was where things got really interesting.

Dick’s place in Mendo, the Buckhorn in Covelo, Hoppers in Porter Valley and Boomers in Laytonville always carried a unique mixture of locals that sometimes seemed to be a testament to the sociology of our small towns while simultaneously testing the limits of toleration for many folks while under the influence.

There was an old David Alan Coe song where he described a dive “where bikers stare at Cowboys, who are laughing at the hippies, who are praying they get out of here alive.” At times I could hear that song in my head while walking into the weekly social experiment which occurred in these small taverns.

Funny how you can look back and realize every single weekend these establishments were tap dancing on a land and tempting fate with every shot which was sold. I laugh a little realizing although we are imperfect and completely flawed, somehow we do OK. It takes some patience and experience but somehow we get through the messes we all seem to pay good money to get ourselves in.