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.