Before Moving Behind Bars, I was a Young, Dumb Drinker!

The Red Bull Inn was, by Ambridge standards, a bit of an upscale restaurant and bar. As I had said, I had gone there for "date nights" when I was a mill worker. It was one of a small chain of locally owned Inns with an old English style. It had started as a small tavern in the middle of the shopping district of Carnegie Pennsylvania, selling roast beef sandwiches and had grown, at its peak in the late '70's early '80's, into an 18 unit chain, all within about a 25 mile radius of the main headquarters, and the commissary, also located in Carnegie. They saved money by making most of the soups, sauces, and dressings at the commissary and trucking them to each local store, most of which were located in the small mill towns of the area.

The outside signage at each restaurant was an old style wooden shield. Inside the shield was the big, smiling head of a red bull with a golden ring through his nose. The inside of each restaurant was also very similar, but unlike the large chains of today, each one had a certain individuality to it. They all had dark wood beams over white stucco walls, and each had similar, but unique, murals on at least one wall. The mural depicted a 19th century English inn with laughing, well dressed gentlemen enjoying pewter mugs full of beer served by full breasted wenches in peasant dresses, one of whom always had a man's hand slapping or pinching her butt. The booths were also dark wood upholstered with red cushioned seats, as were the bar stools. Before the big decline in the steel industry in the Pittsburgh area, all of the Red Bulls did a terrific business. The mill workers would go there, like I did, on dates and for special occasions, and the mill executives along with the local businessmen, who profited from all the money the mill workers spent at their businesses, used the Bulls as their main watering hole.


The main watering holes of the steelworkers were just a little different. Ambridge, at one time, was in the Guinness Book of World Records for two things; one record was that the town had more churches per capita than any other town in America. The other record was that the town also had more bars per capita than any other town in America. I'm a little surprised that it didn't hold a third record for more banks per capita. If you drove down the main street, on the corner of 5th and Merchant was Economy bank, on the corner of 6th and Merchant was Mellon Bank and on the corner of 7th and Merchant was First Seneca Bank. In between and in each direction further up and down Merchant Street were various other Savings and Loans, Credit Unions and loan companies, all of which were flourishing.

But the local bars outnumbered both churches and banks, and the mill workers had their favorites, but frequented them all. I first stepped into one of these bars when I was 11 years old and had just finished a boys league baseball practice. Hills Tavern on Duss Ave. in Ambridge was my fathers favorite place and he took me there for a pop and to enjoy his Carling Black Label beer poured over a couple of ounces of tomato juice. I remember sitting at the bar, sipping my bottle of cherry pop and being amazed at all the different bottles lining the glass shelves behind the bar. All different shapes, colors and sizes, and I was really intrigued by one, the Jacquins Rock and Rye, it seemed to have sugar crystals growing inside it!


It wasn't until high school that I entered another bar. Negley, Ohio was the destination then. Pennsylvania's drinking age is 21, but in Ohio you could drink cheap 3.2% beer at 18 years old. My friends and I made that trip to Negley a lot on the weekends. The first stop was usually Woody's in Brady's Run Park. You had to pay $10.00 to be a member, and actually got a card for "Woody's Peppermint Nightclub". It was an under 21 dance hall that had "Rinky Dink" the DJ playing all the popular hits of the day and all the pretty young girls in the county would come out to dance and have a good time. We'd go there, stand against the wall like we were still in jr. high, and make feeble remarks to try to impress the girls. If only we'd have asked them to dance I'm sure we'd have been a lot more successful at impressing them as we had intended.  The one time I did try that, it worked out pretty well, I'll never forget Lucy, the pretty little Italian girl from Freedom.


After Woody's closed up, we'd all hop into one car and take the short drive across the line into Ohio. One trip to Negley stands out above all the rest though. We had been to Woody's, made our usual ineffective passes at the girls, and then hit the road in Chris's Blue '67 Camaro, leaving my '64 four door Impala behind in the parking lot at Woody's. We stopped at Dicks bar and had a couple of pitchers, then went farther down the road to Pappy's.

That's when the fun really began. Chris, Tony, Mike and I were sitting at the bar at Pappy's when the door opened and in stepped four equally young men from another town in Beaver County. The small town rivalries were, and I guess still are, tough in Western Pennsylvania, and these boys had obviously noticed the "Bridger" bumper sticker and PA license plates on our car outside and figured they'd stir up some trouble. "Only pussy's live in Ambridge, I wonder which of these guys are the pussy's?" Now our little foursome had never been much for fighting, we were more like good time Charlie’s just lookin' to have some fun and to catch a buzz from the cheap beer, so we tried to ignore the insult. But then one of the shitheads from their group came up to the bar where we were sitting and said that we looked like pussy's and was there anything we wanted to do about it. The four of us just looked at each other and I could sense that none of us was going to do anything so, having grown some beer balls from all pitchers of cheap brew, I figured I had to save us some face and make an attempt at rectifying this situation. I got up off of the bar stool and said, "yea, I think I'd like to do something about it, why don't we take it outside, just you and I?"

I hadn't been in a fight since the 7th grade, walkin' home from school with Chuck and Georgie. Chuck said he could beat me up, I said no he couldn't. We went at least 5 three minute rounds with George keeping time on his wrist watch before we decided to call it a draw and go home and have dinner. So, even with the beer balls I had the smarts to realize that I was no fighter, and should use the element of surprise.


As we headed for the door of the bar, I was polite and said, "after you", and as he stepped over the threshold I grabbed him from behind and into a headlock with my right arm and started banging left hooks into his face. To this day I don't understand why his boys didn't jump in to help. Maybe they weren't as ballsy as he was, or maybe the thought of an all out brawl with my friends was not a desirable way to spend a Sunday night, but nobody else got involved in the melee. I landed a few good shots to his head before he managed to break out of the headlock and as we bobbed and weaved in the parking lot with the others standing around cheering us on, not another punch was thrown. Through either luck or a phone call from the bartender the Negley police showed up right then.


They flashed their red lights and got out of the cruiser asking what was going on. We managed to fabricate a story that we were just Beaver County boys out having a good time with the friends from the next town and that we were just joking around, no serious harm intended. Negley is a small town and I think they didn't want to discourage the constant influx of PA drinkers from coming into town to spend their money so they told us to dust off and go inside and have a beer and stop the shenanigan's, so we did just that.


After a few more pitchers we headed back to Woody's to pick up our other cars. Woody's parking lot was all gravel surrounded by a field of grass and weeds, and at this time of the night was completely empty except for our three cars, the perfect place to "spin out", throw gravel all over the place and go round and round in circles. We were all buzzed and excited, after all, we had just gotten the best of our cross river rivals that night, and Chris's Camaro was doing loop de loops in the gravel as I started my Chevy.


Not to be outdone, I floored it and cut the wheel, spinning the rear end sideways. I headed for the grass, so as not to cause a collision with the other guys and as I spun into the tall weeds the car came to a fierce and sudden halt, my nose smashing into the steering wheel. I had no idea what had just happened but when I got out of the car and walked to the front end, the whole grille and bumper of which were smashed in, I saw the tree stump just below the level of the tall weeds. My nose was bleeding, water was running from my radiator and I was standing in the grass, kicking the car and cussing, while Chris, Tony and Mike are standing their laughing their asses off!!


It was another great adventure buying a used front end and putting the Impala back together, but that's a story for another day.