Ye Olde Alpha and Me – a 48-Year Odyssey

Ye Olde Alpha was a great American bar in Wheeling, WV. It recently closed. This is my recollection of a long history with a very special establishment.

It was sometime in the fall of 1972 when I was introduced to the charms, grit, comfort and quirky personality of Ye Olde Alpha – the Wheeling landmark establishment that became my home base touchstone for eating (but mostly drinking) for the next 48 years. 

I don’t remember which one of my friends escorted me into the Alpha for the very first time, but I suspect it may have been a tall, lanky, long-haired blond character named Ray who was a fellow orderly at the Ohio Valley Medical Center. 

I was a freshman at West Liberty State College when I wasn’t performing hospital duties to finance my education and the purchase of a beat-up old VW that I used to commute up Rt. 88 from my home in Elm Grove to the WLSC campus. I was just past my 18^th birthday and, unlike many boys my age, new to the crisp bitter taste and eventual buzz that beer offered after an hour or so at the Alpha. But I took to it quickly and with enthusiasm.

I didn’t start my Alpha career at the bar, but rather at one of the grill side tables that was adorned with a red checkered tablecloth and a flickering candle jar that sat in the center. We drank Stroh’s Beer in those days, and we drank it like the gentlemen we hoped to become – in a sleek tall pilsner glass poured with style out of unstylish brown quart bottles. I learned some silly habits in those early days of my beer-drinking.  For some reason, my companions taught me to sprinkle a dash of salt in my poured beer and I had a nervous habit of picking at the Strohs label with my fingernail in a senseless attempt to remove it in one piece. The wet condensation on the bottle made it an easy challenge.

We didn’t go to the Alpha to hear music or dance. We went to drink a lot of beer and engage in conversation. I started out with one companion at one table, but, as  time went on and more and more of my friends began to meet up as Alpha regulars, we ended up pushing tables together and rearranging chairs to accommodate our growing legion of beer drinking, storytelling, giggling, philosophizing late night carousers. We all began to blend our circles. My college friends met my work friends and my high school chums bonded with both groups. The talk was nonstop. If it was about sports or politics, we would argue it; if it was about academics or work, we would complain about it; if it was about personal missteps and tragedies, we would commiserate over it. 

The Alpha was where a friend predicted that the Pittsburgh Steelers might actually win a Super Bowl someday. It was where I took the girl that I had a crush on since seventh grade for our first shared beer together as adults. It was where I celebrated the birth of my son in 1990, hosted the informal rehearsal dinner for my 1997 remarriage, and drank a toast to my mother after her funeral.

Uniformed servers, like the woman named Fran who was an Alpha fixture for years, took great care of us, dutifully delivering trays full of draft beers and food orders like cheese plates with special “Alpha hot mustard,” chili, or a “fatboy sandwich.” They were patient, friendly and always kind even when some patrons showed the effects of their overindulging. Susie, who advanced from server to become the Alphas major domo until her retirement, kept everything running smoothly.

Some people fell in love over these sloppy noisy Wheeling versions of a Parisian salon. Others developed life-long animosities. Still others nurtured enduring best friendships. Over the years, we all went our separate ways, but we tended to reconvene on holiday breaks and sporadic weekends for decades because the Alpha was as much our home as our parents’ living room.

The Alpha also played an ongoing role in every phase of my professional career over the decades. 

When I was a newspaper reporter home for a visit, I would talk story ideas and issues with state lawmakers, congressional staffers, businesspeople and others who were also visiting home turf.

When I became a Congressional staffer and campaign manager myself, the Alpha buzzed with political gossip, intrigue, advice and arguments.

When I was a senior administrator at Wheeling Jesuit College and later University, the rooms of the Alpha were alive with student/professor interactions, academic discussions, and talk about the merits of University President ‘s (Fr. Thomas S. Acker) latest innovative idea for the institution’s development.

When I moved on to become an administrator at West Virginia University and a writer/editor at a Department of Energy National Laboratory, my visits to the Alpha became much less frequent. When I did come “home” I found the rooms had fewer acquaintances, the talk was much less wide-ranging, and the grill side had become more of a formal sit-down restaurant where you had to wait for a table and be seated by a hostess. The food was great, but the checkered tablecloths, candles and the magic were all gone – a victim of changing times, attrition of friends and an evolution of tastes.

But there was still the bar side of the Alpha – for me a place that had a different feel, function and history than the comfortable living room style of the grill side. It was where, in the 1980s and 1990s, then-owner the late Bobby Miller stood at the end of the bar smoking cigarettes, slurping black coffee and keeping an eye on the busy bartenders like Babe, a short bald, tobacco-chewing, hard-of-hearing beer slinger who wore a white apron and had a uniquely Babe-like way of serving (or not serving) Alpha bar side customers. Legend was that Babe and Bobby’s father, Frank, bagged the animals that were stuffed and mounted on the smoke-stained walls of the bar on far-flung hunting expeditions

Under the glassy watchful eyes of those slain stuffed creatures, and over the din of pinball dings and clangs from the back room, the bar side was a place for serious drinkers, legendary regulars, and sports on television. It could be a place of laughter and merriment, or a place of depression and loneliness.  It was where you went if you wanted to drown your grief over a torn relationship, a bad work day or some other disappointment  Or, it was where you went if you wanted to have a few laughs with the many regulars whose eccentric behaviors could always induce levity. It was also the place you went after the grill side closed down for the night and the buzz of an evening’s worth of beer-drinking led to late night shots of whiskey and less gentile behavior. You didn’t have to go to the bar side with a friend. You could go alone. You could stay alone or mix it up with the crowd. It was always your call.

I don’t live near Wheeling anymore I live in California. But word reached me of the Alpha’s demise and its anticipated reincarnation up the hill at Stratford Springs. I’ve also heard about a plan to reopen the old Carmel Road bar and restaurant under a new name without the antique stuffed animals that offended some and delighted others. These new establishments may turn out to be wonderful new places for new generations to make similar memories and endure happy or sad experiences. I wish them and their customers well. 

For me, the Alpha is finally over after 48-years of social gatherings, luncheons, dinners, surprise birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, funeral wakes, ill-fated dating experiences, New Year’s Eve parties, football watching sessions and hundreds of beers, shots and cocktail experiments.

Death has claimed some of my close friends and family over the past year or two. Many of them happily interacted in the friendly confines of the Alpha. As long as I fondly recall those memories, those people and that special place will linger a bit longer no matter how far away I wander.

Nick’s Music in Wheeling, WV was a Cradle of the Folk Music Revival of the 1960s. It Vanished – or did it? 

That gap in the center of the picture is where Nick's Music used to stand.

Before he could expand upon his fading memories about growing up in Wheeling, WV for the stories he wrote for a popular local web site, the writer usually spent a few hours researching people, places, and events on the Internet to keep the facts straight. He wasn’t prepared for the bizarre twist his research took when he embarked upon a cyber search to find details about a dusty little music store he remembered from his childhood.

Some things about it he could recall clearly even though more than five decades had passed. Nick’s Music was located on what has once been a street called “Short Market.” But, after the demolition of some old buildings and the planting of some trees, Short Market was closed off to vehicular traffic and became known simply as “Market Plaza.”

The old two-story building on the plaza that housed the music store was marked for all to see with huge white plastic lettering that spelled out N I C K ‘ S  M U S I C – lettering that could be seen from quite a distance except for the apostrophe. Someone or something had impacted that punctuation and it hung in place upside down for several years after its initial injury before falling to the street and shattering.

Nearly the entire front of the first floor of the store featured floor to ceiling windows and a steel-framed commercial doorway. Plaza pedestrians could clearly see inside and gaze upon a variety of old guitars, banjos, mandolins and music accessories. 

Inside the display window, the instruments were dusty and haphazardly arranged. Interspersed among the musical clutter were paper cups. Some were half-full of cold coffee and punctuated with whatever grew on top after sitting in the sunshine for prolonged periods of time. There were also empty glass Pepsi bottles strewn about that came from the machine in the back of the store.

The cups and bottles found their way into the display window because inside, just in front of the windows was where young men – teenage boys mostly – congregated especially on Saturdays. They were an active bunch, energized by the popularity of the Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul, and Mary; the New Christie Minstrels and a host of other folk music acts. They came in to talk about their favorite new recordings, swap stories about music they would like to learn, and, most importantly, tinker and try out the mostly previously owned guitars that Nick kept laying around.

Nick presided over the store, usually from behind the glass counters that lined the right side and rear of the establishment. He was heavy-set, wore thick black-rimmed plastic glasses, had a thick head of salt and pepper slicked-back hair, and always wore a stained and rumpled white shirt and black trousers that were in a similar state. He walked with a limp like one leg was shorter than the other even though it was plain to see that one of his thick black shoes had been built up to compensate for the discrepancy in his legs.

The writer’s brother, Terry Griffith, was one of the teenage musicians who congregated in the store in the early 1960s. The writer, then 9 or 10, remembered tagging along on Saturdays and watching as his brother and his peers picked and strummed while sitting in Nick’s squeaky steel chairs and sipping those Pepsis. 

Terry’s recollections were dimming too.

“I do remember some really good jam sessions there where people would come in and just pick an instrument off the wall and play along with everybody else,” he told his writer/brother. “I’m sure many friendships were made there and maybe even some of those became new bands.”

He said he spent so much time at Nick’s that he would even get telephone calls there.

The writer remembered how, when the sun streamed in through the big display windows, it illuminated the dusk specks that seemed to hang in the air.

He remembered the stale smoke smells and the dirty worn grey and crimson checkerboard linoleum floor.

He remembered the discussions about some new guy named Bob Dylan and how one boy predicted that he wouldn’t last.

What he couldn’t remember was much anything about Nick beyond his appearance – like even his last name. He couldn’t’ recall ever being involved in a conversation with the proprietor. 

Nick would occasionally acknowledge the boy’s presence with a nod or a wink, but that was it. He couldn’t even remember his brother or the other budding folk music fans conversing much with Nick. Was Nick an old public-school music teacher who decided to pursue his dream of opening a music shop? Was he a musician himself who may have once toured the country with a big band like Tommy Dorsey?

The writer hadn’t thought about Nick in decades and, because he spent many years away from Wheeling, he wasn’t even sure when the store closed or whatever happened to Nick. Even the building is gone, replaced with a parking area for the bank building next door.

So, the writer looked to the Internet to work its magic and muster up information about people and things long gone. He typed in “Nick’s Music and Wheeling” and awaited the results. A web site popped up that professed to be “one of the most trusted and authoritative brands online offering guides and reviews of small businesses.” 

It listed Nick’s Music at 1055 Market Street, Wheeling and offered a telephone number. It was the only result that the search offered and there was no additional information beyond the telephone number.

The writer was stunned to see a telephone number for a business that he knew full well hadn’t existed in years. But, finding no other sources for background about Nick’s, he decided to give the phone number a try out of curiosity. He punched in the number on his cell phone and waited.

“Nick’s,” he heard a raspy voice answer on the other end.

“Nick’s Music in Wheeling?” the writer asked, a bit off-balance.

“Yeah, that’s right. What can I help you with?”

The writer could hear background noise that was beginning to become clearer. It was music and it sounded like an old Kingston Trio tune called “Scotch n Soda.” It wasn’t the Trio. It wasn’t nearly that polished. The chord changes were slow and tentative like someone just trying to learn a new piece.

“Wow, I haven’t heard that song in years,” the writer said. “I didn’t think people still played. It.”

“Yeah,” the man on the other end said with a sigh. “That’s not the half of it. Everyone wants to be Pete Seeger. This folk stuff is red hot right now.”

“I wasn’t sure you were still around,” the writer said. “I thought they tore the building down.”

The writer could hear a familiar teenage voice in the background.

“Hey Nick,” he heard the voice say. “Can I try the Martin 12-string?”

The writer pulled the phone from his ear and double checked the number on the screen.

“If they tore my building down they didn’t tell me about it,” the man said. “How can I help you today?”

“I’m not sure at this point,” the writer asked showing his confusion. “Am I speaking to Nick?”

“Yeah. Nick of Nick’s Music. What’s this all about?”

There was silence for a few seconds as the writer gathered his wits.

“Are you down on the Plaza in Wheeling?” the writer asked.

“Yes, I’ve been here for years,” Nick answered. “Look, I’m kinda busy right now so if there’s nothing I can do for your specifically…”

“Do you have any 2017 Martins in stock?” the writer blurted out.

“Very funny pal,” the man answered. “What are you?  From the future?”

“By chance is Terry Griffith there?” the writer asked meekly, testing a theory that was just plain ridiculous.

“Yeah, he’s here,” Nick responded. “He just took his kid brother in the back to get a Pepsi. Wanna hold?”

“Please,” the writer responded trying to shake off his fog of confusion.

Nick must have put the phone down on a glass counter because it made a loud noise. Then, the writer could hear a squeaky voice in the background croak out a tune he recognized from the 1960s as the Weavers’ “Kisses Sweeter than Wine.”

After a few moments, the writer heard a voice that was familiar but much younger than he was used to.

“Hello,” he said. “Who is this?”

The words were broken and interrupted by the unique noises that a failing cell signal makes when a connection is being lost.

“Terry?” the writer said. “What the hell?”

There was no response. The line was dead. The writer wheeled around and double checked the number on his computer screen but the web site was gone and a new search didn’t produce any site offering a number for Nick’s Music. He went to the phone log on his cell and hit redial. It rang once before a recorded voice came on to announce that the number had been disconnected.

The writer shook his head and took a long drink from the soda on his desk after double checking to make sure the drink was indeed soda. He searched for some logic to explain the three-minute phone call but came up empty. Was he cracking up? Was it a wrinkle in time? Was it an imagination gone haywire?

He identified three options: go to bed and forget about it; tell somebody; or write about it.

He clicked on the Word icon to bring up a blank page on his Mac screen and typed in the words:

Before he could expand upon his fading memories about growing up in Wheeling for the brief stories he wrote for a popular web site, the writer usually spent a few hours researching people, places, and events on the Internet to keep the facts straight. He wasn’t prepared for the bizarre twist his research took when he embarked upon a cyber search to find details about a dusty little music store he remembered from his childhood….

For one W.VA. Justice of the Peace, Justice Really was Blind

Justice, as doled out by one man in Moundsville in the early 1960s, really was blind. One chilly night near Christmas, I was lucky enough to observe that he was also unexpectedly compassionate.


Chester Burk lost his sight as a child, grew up in Marshall County, held a series of jobs associated with the West Virginia Penitentiary, made lots of friends, and, at some point, became one of the County’s two elected Justices of the Peace – an office he held until he became too ill to do the job in his 70s.


Along the way, he became friends with my Grandma, Lizzie Minns, who was also blind. Every week, my Mother, Mabel, drove my Grandma and me in the old Rambler from our home in Elm Grove to Moundsville for our usual Wednesday night visits with “Uncle Chester,” his wife, “Aunt Jessie,” who was also blind, and “Aunt Alma,” Jessie’s sister who lived with the blind couple. Their home was in a very old block-long apartment complex on 9^th Street about where a Dairy Queen parking lot is today. My Mom would later describe Chester and Jessie as very frugal, serious, and conservative.


“I’d hate to have him throw the book at me,” she said one time years later.


Being older than me, my brother Terry was permitted to skip out on most of these visits thanks to a busy schedule of school and social events in Wheeling. Sometimes, he would take me to the Strand Theater a few blocks away, where we watched old Vincent Price horror movies until Mom picked us up.


But most times, I sat on the floor in the corner of Uncle Chester’s living room and played with a couple dozen plastic toy soldiers – the contents of a beat up old crinkled paper sack they kept just for me behind a bedroom door. The adults engaged in the lost art of general conversation on a range of topics from President Kennedy’s election to local news events.


I always thought it was funny that Uncle Chester chain-smoked a brand of cigarette called “Chesterfields.” He sat in his designated yellow chair and, between long deep drags on his cigarette, he would cup his left hand under his cigarette-bearing right hand in a futile effort to catch falling ashes. The brown carpet, in a near perfect semi-circle around his favorite chair, was dotted with tiny burn marks from the ashes that evaded his attempts.


It was usually a quiet evening that was topped off with strawberry ice cream – a cone for me and tasteful little bowls for the adults. But, sometimes, I got to watch as Uncle Chester responded to his own kind of “bat signal” and jumped into action as Moundsville’s “Squire Burk” – justice of the peace.


It always started with the sound of an annoying but effectively loud buzzer that signaled Uncle Chester that it was time for him to assume his other identity as Squire Burk in the Spartan office he maintained next door to his apartment. Aunt Alma oversaw the forms and paperwork for the proceedings and acted as a kind of bailiff by administering the oath to witnesses, so the buzzer meant she was off to work too.


I would tag along like a meek little church mouse following my legal heroes as they moved through the kitchen, into the dining room, and then through a bedroom where a simple door led into the justice of the peace office. There was a spacious back room set up for formal proceedings. It had a big oak desk, rows of chairs facing the desk, and a big orange bench against the wall. But the action always occurred in the front room where there was a desk for Alma with an old beat up typewriter, an older worn padded chair where Squire Burk sat, and a kind of counter space where police presented people who were in custody. Chairs lined the back wall of the room. There were cigarette burns on the linoleum floor around where Squire Burk sat.


I never ventured into that front room while proceedings were under way. Instead, I took a seat on the big orange bench in the other room where the lights were never on. That’s where I listened intently to the drama played out in the next room.


The cases often were violence-related – bar fight losers swearing out assault and battery warrants on their successful attackers were common. But, there were also drunk drivers, speeders and general moving violation defendants brought in by tall WV State Troopers in their forest green uniforms and “Smokey the Bear” hats.


It was like listening to an episode of Judge Judy 40 years before that show hit the airwaves. Law enforcement would present its case. The defendants would plead their side of the story with Squire Burk halting their digressions and talking back inconsistencies. Alma kept short hand notes which she would type up later. Finally, Squire Burk would render judgement which usually involved a fine if law enforcement’s story was more compelling than the defendant’s.


One Christmas, in the early 1960s, from my secret perch on the orange bench in the darkened room, I got to see what official kindness on the lowest rung of the West Virginia judiciary looked like, courtesy of Squire Burk. It was a cold mid-December evening long before domestic violence was a commonly-discussed issue or shelters were available to help women in crisis. State Troopers brought in a crying, disheveled woman who they found wandering in Moundsville. She was distraught and there was a big black bruise under her left eye.


“We do not believe this woman to be intoxicated and she isn’t seriously hurt,” a Trooper explained to Squire Burk. “She does appear to have been beaten. She has bruises and needed assistance to walk up your front steps. We stopped by the emergency room and they said it’s nothing serious. We know her husband because we have responded to calls to the house before.”


“Why did you bring her here if you aren’t seeking charges?” Squire Burk asked, lighting a Chesterfield with a Zippo lighter.


“Honestly, we thought you would know best what to do,” the Trooper responded.


“Young lady, do you wish to press charges against anyone?” Squire Burk asked.


“No sir,” she answered in a barely audible whisper.


“Do you want to go home?” he asked.


“No sir,” she responded more aggressively.


“Where do you want to go?” he asked as a cigarette ash dropped to the floor and created another burn dot in the linoleum.


“I don’t know. I have no money.”


Squire Burk lowered his voice and turned toward Alma who was taking notes.


“Alma do you have the number for that woman from the church who said she could help in these types of situations?” he asked as he smashed out his smoke in an old standing ash tray.


“Yes sir,” she responded. “I have it right here.”


“Young lady,” he said turning again to the frightened woman at the counter. “I am going to direct these Troopers to give you a ride to a place where you will be safe for tonight. Then, I want you to come back here tomorrow at, say 3 p.m. so we can talk about your situation.”
He stood, dug his hand into his left pocket and produced a $20 bill.


“Take this for incidentals you may need. We will make a call and they will be ready for you when you arrive.”


The two troopers exchanged approving glances and the young woman struggled for words. Alma wrote an address on a piece of paper and handed it to the troopers.


“Go now, rest up and we will see how things look tomorrow,” Squire Burk ordered as the troopers and the woman shuffled out the door.


As we passed back through the bedroom, dining room, and kitchen and entered the living room where my family and Aunt Jessie still sat chatting next to a giant Christmas tree, Squire Burk became Uncle Chester again. There was no discussion of what had just happened. No explanation of the young woman’s plight ensued.


“I just don’t know about that new school levy,” Uncle Chester said, picking up the conversation he left when his Justice of the Peace duties called.


On the way home, I couldn’t help but relate what I observed.


“I though you said Uncle Chester was kinda cheap,” I blurted out to my Mom and Grandma’s mortification. “Wait till you hear what he did.”


Note: Under the old justice of the peace system, justices received no salaries. They were compensated by the costs assessed against the losing party in civil cases and against criminal defendants who were convicted. In the early 1970s, the system was ruled unconstitutional and in 1974, voters approved the establishment of the magistrate system. Now, magistrates are elected, but they are paid a salary and are subject to the discipline of the Supreme Court.

Western PA Distillery Delights Visitors with  Hand-Crafted Fancy Moonshine 

All I knew about moonshine and the people who made it came from old movies and television shows—black and white images that conveyed the general idea that making strong illegal liquor in odd-looking secret copper contraptions and then transporting it to customers over remote back roads in beat up souped-up sedans was dangerous work done only by poor, rumpled, cranky mountain people.

Oh sure, I may have had a snort of a clear smelly liquid at a WVU football tailgate that someone claimed was moonshine, but by and large, I was a moonshine neophyte, unaccustomed to the new fangled ways of 21^st Century distilleries.

Then, I visited the totally legal and fun-loving McLaughlin Distillery near Sewickley, PA where a tall gray-haired ex-Marine named Kim McLaughlin made me a warm Apple Pie Moonshine with whipped cream and a sprinkle of sugar cinnamon for my sipping pleasure—a far cry from the little brown jug of cartoon lore. 

I also enjoyed a Not Your Momma’s Joe Coffee Moonshine and was tempted by other samples called Hokie Pokie Moonshine, Cranberry Moonshine, Pickle Moonshine (yes, it’s flavored with pickle juice), and M.G.R.T.A. Moonshine before realizing that it might be best to throttle my enthusiasm.

The humble home of McLaughlin Distillery

There isn’t a lot of signage on the highway to help you find the little cabin-like building in the woods that houses McLaughlin Distillery. On the ramp leading into the building is a friendly sign with the greeting: “Welcome you glorious bastard.” Just beside the door is another simple hand printed sign that adds gravitas to the whole endeavor: “McLaughlin Distillery World Headquarters.”

Kim and his products were in great demand on the day we visited. He greeted each customer and quizzed them about their likes before recommending and then serving up tastes of his product line. The bottles were neatly lined up with classy labels and colorful presentations on the big tasting bar and on a nearby display table.

A veteran dairy farmer from northern New York State, Kim spent time in Western Pennsylvania working the oil and gas industry. When the industry slowed, he took advantage of the timing to convert his hobby into a business and McLaughlin Distillery was

Distiller/Cooper Kim McLaughlin welcomes all visitors

born. The woman at the tasting bar said Kim worked all the time, welcomed visitors with open arms, and would be happy to give us a tour explaining, “He’s as Irish as he can be.”

She was right. Kim happily took us up a couple of steps into a very rustic and unique work room where he proudly told us what was going on in four extremely large stainless-steel barrels filled with a bubbling yellow stew-like concoction.

It was corn mash, fermenting along at a happy clip where a simple single-celled organism we call yeast was doing all the work in the initial step toward making Kim’s product. The mash is a mixture of water, corn meal, sugar, and yeast. Fermentation is a metabolic process that consumes sugar in a yeast-induced chemical breakdown that creates alcohol. Boiling water started the mixing process but now, having been cooled at an appropriate rate to promote proper fermenting, the mixture was left to its own devices. It gave off a strong pleasant aroma that’s hard to describe along with a mild radiating heat.

The mash

“That’s alive,” Kim said holding his hand over the contents. “You can feel the heat coming off it.”

The mash will do its thing for four or five days before it is strained by Kim’s pal Jim and and loaded up in a towering copper contraption. That’s the still that separates alcohol from other components. The still heats the solution, condensing it. Then, alcohol-rich vapors are released as a high strength liquid that drips from the end of copper tubing at the top. Next, Kim goes to work adding flavors that provide the color the clear moonshine liquid, depending upon what is added.

But the moonshine in all its variations, is only part of what Kim McLaughlin is up to in his rustic little Pennsylvania building. He also makes bourbon and other whiskeys that require an altogether different skill. To become bourbon, the alcohol from the distillery must be aged in special barrels. In McLaughlin’s case, they are barrels made by the distiller himself from oak wood harvested from his property in upstate New York. That makes Kim an official “cooper,” someone who makes barrels out of steamed wood bound together with hoops. The cooper industry once thrived in North America but not so much any more.

McLaughlin shows off his cooper skills

Kim showed us how the wood strips are assembled and bound, lids are carefully carved and fitted, interior portions are charred to give the aging liquor unique flavor, and a hole made in the side for access. The typical U.S. bourbon barrel that big time distillers use is 53 gallons. McLaughlin’s are much smaller and are used only once to age his whiskey products.

The little loft area over McLaughlin’s workshop is lined with racks of the little barrels and vital information along with a unique name is scrawled one each round barrel’s top. For example, one barrel

Still on the left and some aging barrels to the right

carried the hand-written name “Shaylee Grace” along with instructions that it should not be opened for 21 years. Shaylee Grace is Kim’s granddaughter.

Although he didn’t talk about it during our visit, Kim also makes vodka and has plans for even more products. He describes his operation as a small batch craft distillery where each spirit is crafted to perfection by hand. There aren’t any hulking machines or a big staff. In fact, his web site boasts that volunteers do a lot of the work in the intricate operations, but only under his close supervision.

Moonshine’s image has come a long way since that old movie, Thunder Road, when Robert Mitchum drove a souped-up 1951 Ford sedan with hidden moonshine past inept local police and rival big-city gangs to speed the product to market. Moonshine’s reputation has come miles from the stereotype images of grizzled

Appalachian hill people with toothless smiles and old-fashioned muskets defending their hidden stills against the interference of pesky Yankee revenuers. Now, it’s a respectable business and guys like Kim McLaughlin are taking it to a whole new level.

You can find McLaughlin Distillery at 3799 Blackburn Road. Sewickley, PA or on the web at www.mclaughlindistillery.com.

Anger of the Stupidly Dead

Barney Kimble’s death was quick and relatively painless. A staunch opponent of the “click it or ticket” approach to forcing people to wear seatbelts while in their automobiles, he practiced what he preached. But, he never preached being propelled through the windshield of his pale blue ’92 Subaru and smashing his skull against a utility pole. It happened in a rainstorm, after an evening in a bar, and involved a deer. But, that’s not important anymore.

Now, Barney frequents an establishment where he made all new friends—the Purgatory Bar and Grille, known as the PP&G to its patrons, “the stupidly dead.” It was a simple concept, really, and one that Barney, never one to overthink the hereafter, had never even contemplated when he was alive. The PP&G was a holding room for folks who died under stupid circumstances. With some notable exceptions, most weren’t bad people—they were just involved in stupid situations that ended their lives.

At the PP&G, you could find the young, the old, the famous, and the infamous from all walks of life from all over the world from every period.

Over there in the corner sat the pitiful Calvin Coolidge Jr., the 16-year-old son of old “Silent Cal,” the 30^th President of the United States. Young Cal’s stupid mistake was playing tennis at the White House without wearing socks. The tremendous blister he suffered became infected, and, well you know what happened before antibiotics were invented.

At the bar, in full armor no less, leaned Phillipe Marquard, a humble soldier in the French Army of 1540 who, through a spectacularly noisy act of stupidity, spawned the Shakespearian term “hoisted with one’s own petard.”  A petard was a cubical wooden box jammed full of gunpower and used to blow off the doors and gates of enemy strongholds. Sent to fetch a petard from a dark arsenal tent, young Phillipe set a torch ablaze so he could see which petard to use. You don’t need more information.

Ricardo Espinoza, originally from Ecuador, sat playing cards at a table and hoped desperately for his luck to change. Ricardo became a patron of the bar and grille after he searched for a good Wi-Fi connection on his phone and leaned out too far on his fifth-floor balcony. He never got the connection he was looking for.

Sammy Kim Park ordered a Mountain Dew from the bar while playing with a fidget spinner. Sammy’s mistake was playing a video game called Star Craft for 50 hours straight. He died of dehydration and heart failure.

Allan Pinkerton, the famous 19^th century founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency sat cleaning his fingernails with a dangerous-looking dagger. In Chicago, Pinkerton had been walking his wife’s dog when he became tangled in its leash and then tripped over a raised crack in a sidewalk. Upon impact with the ground, he severely bit his tongue, which became infected with gangrene. It led to his demise. He didn’t talk to the other patrons.

You get the idea. They were all members of an exclusive club— “the stupidly dead.”

These and other patrons of the bar took an immediate liking to Barney, who told a good tale, fell for their practical jokes, and expressed the proper amount of empathy when people told him how and why they died. All that changed as suddenly as that deer appeared on the highway the night he went airborne through the front of his Subaru.

The payphone on the wall of the bar rang one evening as a precursor to Barney’s fall from grace at the PB&G. Isadora Duncan, the famous dancer, answered it. She was a patron because she died of a broken neck in 1927 when she chose to wear a scarf that was so long that it caught on the rear axle of her car. The other departed souls watched her eyes get big as she listened intently to the speaker on the other end of the call. She hung up the phone and turned to face the rest of the room.

“That was the guardian upstairs,” she said, the anger building in her voice. “Barney, he wanted me to let you know that your appeal was successful. There are some new Libertarian members on the board who decided that refusing to wear a seat belt was a right, not an act of stupidity after all. Plainly, you are NOT one of us.”

Widespread muttering ensued among the stupidly dead and angry eyes flashed Barney’s way.

“Wait. You have no cause to be angry with Barney,” acclaimed lawyer Clement Vallandigham shouted. Clement defended a man in a murder trial in 1871 and accidentally shot himself in the courtroom while demonstrating how the victim might have shot himself. Clement’s defense was more effective than he expected. The defendant was acquitted. Clement was not so lucky.

“I presented Barney’s appeal. Choosing not to abide by what could very well be an insipid law that infringes upon his freedom is not, in itself, an act of stupidity. He doesn’t belong here not because he didn’t die stupidly, but because it was a stupid law that made him do so.”

But, the stupidly dead did not agree, and they started to turn on old Clement too until he told them he only took Barney’s case because he lost a bet on a PB&G dart game.

One by one, they turned their backs on poor Barney. No one spoke to him, smiled his way, or even acknowledged his presence from that moment forward—except for Adolf Frederick, the departed King of Sweden who had a special favor to ask of Barney.

Adolf left life in 1771 after consuming a meal of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring, and champagne, topped off with 14 servings of his favorite dessert.

“My dear Barney,” Adolf began. “Might you see your way clear to do me the favor of sending us some roasted goose when you move on to the next station? We can’t get it here and, although it has only been 246 years, it seems like forever since I’ve had a decent leg.”

Barney, deeply hurt by the reaction of his new friends to his good news, remained stunned.

“Wait,” he said ignoring Adolph’s request. “You can’t be angry with me. None of this is my fault. I’m not stupid. I’m a freedom fighter against unfair regulation.”

Qin Shi Huang the first Emperor of China who died in 210 B.C. after taking mercury pills in the belief that it would grant him eternal life, just rolled his eyes.

“That’s not how it works,” said Basil Brown, a health food advocate from England who, in 1974, drank 10 gallons of carrot juice in ten days causing an overdose of vitamin A and a nasty amount of damage to his liver. “You made a stupid choice like everyone else here and you can’t cloak it in politics.”

“The hell you can’t,” barked Adolph Hitler who was a patron because he was…well…Adolph Hitler.

“That’s enough,” said Sergey Tuganov. Sergey had bet two women $3,000 that he could keep them happy all day in the sack. His mistake was taking a whole bottle of Viagra to assist him in his challenge. He died 12 hours later of a heart attack. He always claimed he won the bet.

“Barney, whether you died stupidly enough to be one of us or not, you sought a reversal of your stupidity ruling and are no longer a patron of this establishment. No one recognizes your rights here. Good day sir.”

Barney waited a long time for the Hereafter Lyft service to pick him up for his next destination. During that time, the patrons ignored him.

Gina Lalapola, an Italian stripper who suffocated inside a sealed cake while waiting for a bachelor party to commence back in the 1990s, risked the wrath of the stupidly dead when she whispered a special request to Barney as he waited by the door.

“Please sir,” she said. “Can you put in a word for me? I don’t belong here either. It wasn’t my fault. How could I have known I couldn’t breathe inside that cake? I’m not a baker. I’m not stupid. I’m an artist.”

Barney just shook his head and went outside to meet his ride.

Dodging Snippy Dogs and Dealing with Cranky Doltish Husbands: a Delivery Boy in the 1960s

Even with my limp, I could always outrun a yappy little dog like a Chihuahua or a Pug, and a Dachshund was a piece of cake to evade. But, I knew I didn’t stand a chance with bigger breeds like German Shepherds or any of those Retriever types. As a pint-sized delivery boy in the orderly little suburban neighborhoods of a medium sized city in the mid-1960s, it was in my best interest to know my breeds and my own limitations for making it to safety.

The little dogs issued more noise than danger, although their needle-like front teeth nips could inflict painful little pinches at ankle level. The big dogs gave you a growl of warning before their lunge and that was usually enough to get me started on a dash for safety either behind a gated fence or beyond the reach of the chain that often restrained them. Sometimes, when there was no fence and no chain, I had to awkwardly scurry all the way back to the safety of our 1961 Rambler as fast as my chubby little legs would allow. Somehow, they never caught me, but they sure did scare the snot out of me.

Most of those critters probably meant me no harm. They were just doing their job of protecting their owners’ territory when I innocently walked into their domain. But then, I was only doing my job of delivering a host of household products to the homes of the housewives who ordered them in response to telephone calls from my blind grandmother, Lizzie Minns.

Today, telemarketers, poll takers, and scam artists interrupt dinners, destroy weekend morning sleep-ins, and generally annoy the hell out of families to the point where most of us don’t even answer our land lines anymore. But in the 1950s and 1960s my Grandma had the field mostly to herself.

Every day, and for hours at a time, Grandma and my Mom, Mabel, sat at the kitchen table and followed a routine. Mom sat on one side with a “Criss-Cross” phone directory opened in front of her. It was a directory that listed telephone numbers by street and house number followed by the name of the resident. That way, everyone on a street could be called one-by-one, street-by street, and neighborhood-by-neighborhood. Grandma sat on the other side of the table with the fingers of her right hand strategically placed in the holes of the telephone rotary dial and the heavy black telephone receiver held tight against her ear. Mom would read out the telephone numbers loudly and slowly and Grandma would dial. When she dialed the final digit, Mom would call out the name of the person that went with the number.

I will never forget Grandma’s prattle when the recipient of the call answered because I probably heard it a thousand times before I was old enough to go to school and on summer afternoons all the way through my childhood:

“Hello, I am Elizabeth Minns, a blind person selling products made by the blind. I have brooms, mops, tablecloths, ironing board covers, pillow cases, mattress covers, floor mats, liquid cleaner, and handmade tea towels made of unbleached muslin. I am calling to see if you need any of these items.”

Polite banter often ensued and if the customer had questions, Grandma was ready. She had memorized all the prices for each of the products and was well versed about the factory where they were made in Pittsburgh. If there was a sale, Grandma would repeat the order and my Mom would write it down.

On Wednesday mornings while my brother and I were in school, my Mom would gather up the week’s orders and go down to our basement where our little inventory was kept in racks my father made a decade earlier just before his fatal heart attack. She would collect all the products for delivery and set them aside so that when either my brother, Terry, or I would come home for lunch we could quickly load them up into the trunk of our Rambler.

After school every Wednesday, our big bronze Rambler would be sitting outside our schools with Mom behind the wheel and Grandma in the back seat. We would tumble out of our respective school buildings and hop in to do our two to three-hour after school delivery jobs as a family. Terry and I would take turns as Mom would hand us the product and a hand-written receipt with the total price written on the bottom. Terry or I would then head to the designated house, warily watch for dogs, knock on the door, and execute the transaction. We were always disappointed when the customer needed change because we had to schlep back to the car where Mom kept a change box on the front seat.

There was the dog challenge, like when the customer would open the door and a noisy little mutt would bark and try to get at me. “Oh don’t worry, he doesn’t bite,” the customer would often say. But, the dog always seemed to be dead set on proving that advice incorrect. I always survived these encounters but only after my little seven-year-old nerves were put through the ringer. Another obstacle we often faced was the cranky husband who didn’t know anything about any mop or broom delivery and was reluctant to execute the transaction without the wife around to make sure it was okay. It was not infrequent that we were sent back to the car with undelivered product in hand after a husband had informed us that he would not be “bamboozled by some little boy.”

Being well schooled in my Mother and Grandmother’s aversion to all forms of alcohol and the bad behavior that sometimes went with it, I was always shocked (and a bit curious) when I was dispatched into one of those shot and a beer-type bars that dot urban neighborhoods to make a delivery. For example, apparently, the bar tender at a bar called the Trophy Club was a loyal customer and old family friend. About once a year, always in the daytime, I gingerly entered the mysterious establishment with a broom or mop in hand to execute the traditional transaction with Mom watching closely from the car out front. The muttering conversation and laughter among the men at the bar always ceased when I made my appearance and they gazed with surprise in my direction. It seemed like Bob Prince was always calling a Pirate game over the radio when I timidly approached the man in the white apron behind the bar and the smell of spilled beer, cigarette smoke, and chili dogs mingled in the air. He would always smile, take the little receipt from my outstretched hand and spin around to open the cash register. He would place the money in my little hand and wish me a wonderful afternoon before I scampered out the door and back to the Rambler.

Every month or so, if sales had been good, we got a treat when our Wednesday work was done: we stopped at Burger Chef for 15-cent hamburgers.

Every couple of months, our inventory ran low, which required a long trip to the Skilcraft factory on Craig Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh where scores of blind people manufactured the products we sold. Before the days of the Interstate highways, Mom and Grandma drove over a treacherous stretch of U.S. Rt. 40 and Rt. 19 to Pittsburgh, some 54 miles away. Timing was important because they had to be back in time to be home before Terry and I got out of school. But, in the summertime, Terry and I got to go along and see what went on up there.

Mom always skillfully backed the Rambler up to the Craig Street loading dock—sometimes between two hulking tractor trailer rigs—and opened the trunk. Then, she and Grandma got out and led us inside to meet with a stern-looking man named Mr. O’Toole who seemed to run the place and started the paperwork to fill our order. He was tall, lanky, and wore flannel shirts and khaki pants. He was completely bald and wore little steel-rimmed glasses. He frightened me with his frank no-nonsense approach but he always proved me wrong by the end of the visit with his kindness and curiosity about my school life. Sometimes, he would even give me a Clark Bar.

The rolling metal on metal sounds made by the red Pittsburgh trolley cars as they moved over the rails embedded in the brick streets, and the sparking noises that their electrical connections made on the overhead lines that gave the big vehicles power were always in the background of our visits to the Skilcraft factory.

The place smelled wonderful, if you like the smell of straw and hot

rubber. On the upper floors, blind men and women were at work cutting, bundling, and stitching straw to make brooms. On another floor, workers used big hot machines to cut old automobile tires into long strips that were then fashioned into doormats.

Terry and I got in trouble there one hot summer afternoon. There was this big orange shoot that workers used to send bundles of brooms down to the loading dock. Terry had always told me how much he wanted to go upstairs and take a ride down that shoot. One day, we did it. It was much dirtier than we anticipated and

Mom was very unhappy with our untidy and disheveled appearance.

Mr. O’Toole was very unhappy with our irresponsibility in tempting fate.

Some of the sightless workers who were expecting brooms at the foot of the shoot were unhappy with our sudden and unexpected arrival in place of their products. When told of the escapade, Grandma just gave us her quiet little smile and an admonishment to not do it again.

All those Skilcraft products and the jobs they represented for blind people were the result of the Wagner-O’Day Act signed by

President Roosevelt in 1938. That legislation directed the government to purchase products manufactured by blind Americans. The National Industries for the Blind was created and after World War II, when it was decided to sell the products to the commercial market, a brand name, Skilcraft, was established. The Pittsburgh factory was one of 62 workshops established nationwide. Grandma and Mom never called it a factory. They called the Pittsburgh location “the shops.”

We were kids. As much as we enjoyed the occasional Pittsburgh supply trip adventures, we hated the Wednesday delivery days. Sometimes, we complained and Mom would raise a finger to her lips to shush us so Grandma wouldn’t have to hear it. Later, when Grandma would be out of the room, Mom would explain it to us.

“This is Grandma’s livelihood and our family’s livelihood,” she would say. “This is how we put food on the table and how Grandma maintains her independence. We don’t ask much of you boys. She depends upon you to help with the business. I don’t think it is too much to expect. It’s only one day a week.”

Then we would remember Grandma surprising us with some little treat or another or recall how she would come up with an unexpected five-dollar bill that she would slip us when we needed school supplies, were getting ready for a field trip, or just needed funding for a bus ride in town for a movie and shopping. We thought about our warm comfortable little home and our plain but tasty and nourishing meat and potatoes dinners.  All those comforts and kindnesses—edible and material—were all made possible by that little business that she and Mom worked on almost every day and we worked on just one day a week.

We were poorer than we realized but because of Mom and Grandma’s attention to that little business, we always had what we needed.

Looking back, it was worth our Wednesday evenings and it was worth dodging snippy dogs and putting up with cranky doltish husbands. It didn’t really require much of an effort on our part, and it really didn’t last very long in the grand scheme of our lives.

Our childhood delivery careers contributed to shaping our work ethic and our ability to hack our way through successful lives of our own. That’s why we ended up grateful for the experience—as well as the cakes and pies.