Revelation arrived when he turned the car onto the last waterfront street, a block with the lake actually lapping under buildings held up by pilings, and parked at a ramshackle establishment with a sign over its door in weathered letters, THE SCHOONER. This I did not need to ask about, the Schlitz sign glowing in the window telling me all I needed to know.
Herman escorted me in as if the porthole in the door and the sawdust on the floor were perfectly natural furnishings where you go to take medicine, ha ha. I had been in bars before, what Montana kid hadn’t? But this one looked like it had floated up from the bottom of the harbor. Sags of fishnets hung from the entire ceiling like greenish-gray cloudbanks. Above the doorway were wicked-looking crossed harpoons, and the wall opposite the gleaming coppertop bar was decorated with life preservers imprinted with Northwind and Pere Marquette and Nanny Goat and Chequamegon and other wonderful ships’ names. Into the mix around the rest of the long barroom were walrus tusks carved into intricate scrimshaw, and long-handled grappling hooks that looked sharp as shark’s teeth, and those bright yellow slicker coats called sou’westers, as if the wearers had just stepped out to sniff the sea air. To me, the place was perfect from the first instant, and I could tell Herman felt at home simply entering its briny atmosphere.
Still setting up for the day, the man behind the bar was so round in his various parts that in the wraparound apron and white shirt he looked more like a snowman than a bartender, but plainly knew his business when he turned with towel and glass in hand to greet Herman. “Well, well, it’s the Dutcher. Must be ten o’clock of a Saturday.” Me, he eyed less merrily. “Uh oh, Herm, who’s your partner in crime?”
I waited for the guttural response I knew was going to turn my stomach, that I was his wife’s sister’s grandson, practically worse than no relative at all. Instead, I heard proudly announced, “Ernie, please to meet my grandnephew Donny from a big cowboy ranch in Montana.”
There. My full pedigree. Stuff that in your pink telephone, why don’t you, Aunt Kate.
I grew an inch or two and swaggered after Herman to a bar stool just like I belonged. As I scooted on, Ernie met me with a belly laugh—he had the full makings for it—while saying he didn’t get many cowboys in the Schooner and warning me not to get drunk and tear up the place. Just then the building shook, and I started to bolt for dry land.
“Sit tight, happens all the time.” Herman was chuckling now as he caught my arm before I could hit the floor running. Ernie informed me it was only the ferry to Michigan going out and the joint had never floated away yet, although it kept swaying thrillingly as I gawked at the gray steel side of a ship sweeping by the porthole windows facing the harbor and lake. Oh man, I loved this, almost the sense of sailing on the Great Lakes as Herman had so heroically done.
As the slosh of the ferry’s wake died down and the building quit quivering, Ernie snapped his towel playfully in Herman’s direction. “Ready to take your medicine? Gonna beat you this time.”
“Always ready for that, and it will be first miracle ever if you beat me,” Herman replied breezily. Laughing up a belly storm, the bartender moved off along the line of beer spigot handles extending half the length of the bar, running a hand along them the way you do a stick in a picket fence. The assortment made me stare, beer tap after beer tap of brands I had never heard of, nor, I would bet, had even the most seasoned drinkers in Montana. Rhinelander. Carling Black Label. Bavarian Club. Stroh’s. Schlitz, naturally, but then Blatz, followed by Pabst, for some reason spelled that way instead of Pabzt. On and on, down to the far end, where Ernie stopped at a handle with a towel draped over it so it couldn’t be read. “No peeking, Dutcher,” he sang out. “You either, Tex.”
“No reason to peek,” Herman replied with utter confidence and gazed off into the fishnets and such, the mermaids on his tie looking perfectly at home. I had no problem joining him in losing myself in the nautical trappings, knowing full well a ship did not have a bunkhouse, but this was the most comfortably close to such a thing since the Double W.
Shortly, Ernie came back scooting a shotglass of beer along the bar between thumb and forefinger. “Here you go, just up to the church window like always.” I saw he meant by that it was only up to the jigger line, not even a full shotglass. Huh. Herman must be a really careful drinker, I thought.
Sure enough, he took the little glass of beer in a long slow sip, almost like you do drinking creek water out of your hand. Swirled it in his mouth as if thinking it over, then swallowed with satisfaction. “Hah, easy—Olde Rhine Lager.”