One of the great benefits of the rerun feature is that it can keep a story alive. We often have a story as a rerun more than once–with a year or so between minimum. Such is the way it is with Four Bars by Hugh Cron. It is one of his very best and it is extremely intricate and personal and always worth visiting.
Q. Once, in an inside communication, you mentioned the link between this story, meeting Gwen and the song In a Big Country. Would you please tell the story?
Q. Although it is jaded on my nicotine inhaling part, I believe that the smoking ban (est here in 2005) has somewhat ruined small tavern/bar/pub life. I mean really, who goes there for health?
Your thoughts?
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Hi Leila,
Thanks for choosing this. I love doing these, they are a blast!
Q. 1 When me and my classmates were around fifteen years old, we started to frequent a pub called ‘The Plough’. From there we got a bit bolder and started to go into a Nightclub called ‘The Darlington’ for around two years. That was where I met Gwen. Weirdly she also went into the same pub but it was always bouncing and we never met in there. Gwen was actually friends with the cousin of a good friend of mine so it was all a bit strange that we hadn’t met before.
The following week we had decided to meet again and it was a bit hysterical as the night we met we were both pished and she thought I was called something else and I couldn’t remember what she looked like! A workmate of hers who was with a workmate of mine pointed her out!
The thing is, between the pub and the club, they had music that they played that even now forty odd years later transports us back to those times.
Here’s a list for you! Off the top of my head: (See if you can name the bands)
In A Big Country.
Wings Of A Dove.
Club Tropicana
Can You Feel It?
Rock The Boat.
Precious Little Diamond.
On The Waterfront.
Temptation.
Jingo.
Male Stripper.
Tainted Love.
I loved that pub and nightclub. A lot of the scenarios in the story weren’t scenarios, they were actualities!
Q.2 I hate the demise of local pubs. The smoking ban was the start of the end. To be fair the pub that we go into, Claire who is the wonderful manageress will let Gwen use her vape. (She would still smoke if it wasn’t for some health issues and she still misses a cigarette.) I just heard this week that the government was considering banning smoking outside so the only place you could smoke would be in your own house. Governments love to be seen to be caring for us when they still want revenue.
Years back, pubs were busy from Thursday night right through until around 5.00pm on a Sunday and that carried them for the rest of the week. But now, the only night you really get a buzz is a Saturday, but not always.
Supermarket booze, Netflix, mobiles, fearty-bawz, shift patterns and the death of old traditions have put the boot into pubs. Also the insistence of serving food and letting wee unruly cunts run around while their parents sip some bottled water!! This hasn’t added to foot-fall, it’s just chased those regulars away.
Tomorrow I will be in my local from noon until I need to sleep. I try as much as I can to do this each week. I want to put money in their till as I want to always be able, of a Monday, to have a drink until I need to sleep!!!
Thanks again Leila – I need to go and seek out some music and drink loads of Bacardi and Coke!!!!
Hugh
Image: – Wormhole from Pixabay showing a tunnel to the unknown surrounded by clouds of red, blue and black gas and stars.
literally stories 
Great answers Hugh!
I miss the old bars we had here. Being on the water in a tough little military town, they had nautical names, Crows Nest, Pirates Cove. Governments don’t give a damn about people dying on the streets but they sure stick their noses where they do not belong.
This story brings back times I fear are forever gone.
Leila
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Hi Leila,
The thing that folks of this generation don’t understand is that going into those types of pubs was a right of passage. When you first went in, underage was a must, you were terrified but felt so alive all at once. You learnt pretty damn quick to observe, read folks and not piss them off. You grew an instinct to either leave, shut the fuck up or buy a round!
I honestly believe that these life skills are now missing. The shit you read on Social media and the likes could never have been spoken in those old pubs – You wouldn’t have got out alive!!
Thanks as always for the comments!
Hugh
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We had two within two blocks gone during the pandemic. Even worse, one of the closed down became a massage parlor with trafficed women kept inside the building.
I can remember many of the songs (newer ones for this old man), and some of the artists (Hues Corporation – cool word play).
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Hi Doug,
On my 21st, we did a pub crawl from the boundary from Prestwick through Ayr. Ayr ends where Prestwick begins only separated by a sign. On that stretch of the road there used to be seventeen pubs before you hit the High Street in Ayr. Now there are only four.
I couldn’t tell you another song that ‘Hues Corporation’ sang but maybe I’d know them if I heard them??
Thanks as always my fine friend.
Stay being you!
Hugh
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Rock the Boat
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Dear Hugh,
Thanks for this great story and commentary. As for myself, I remember all the old bars filled with ladies of the night and drunkards so fondly, from Chicago to California and New York City and pretty much everywhere in between. I closed down so many (“LAST CALL!”) that I could never count it. For twenty years, I spent vast portions of time in pubs, bars and saloons at least three to four nights of every single week, and sometimes every single night. (If I had the money back now that I spent in bars then, I’d easily be on Easy Street probably for the rest of my life.) And even though I became a full-blown alcoholic for about ten years known for blackout drinking and doing things like falling down the stairs and getting up again to drink some more (and being kicked out of many, many bars), I never regretted a single minute of any of it, from then to now. (When it came time to quit, I went cold turkey on my own with zero rehab or therapy or A.A., which is the very best way to do it, and the longest-lasting, by far. Studies have proved this.)
Saw Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson last night. Dylan has become one of the greatest jazz artists and singers of all time at 83, and portions of his show are now almost like poetry performances with musical backing. “Under the Red Sky,” “A Hard Rain,” and “It Ain’t Me Babe,” plus Grateful Dead songs, were reinvented by him last night in such a masterful way that the majority of the audience didn’t understand it at all. There were even drunken fools yelling at him to shut up. Not many but a few. This is the kind of reaction that great art can frequently elicit from the mob, or what Nietzsche called the herd. None of it stopped Dylan.
But the highlight of the evening was certainly 91-year-old Willie Nelson, when he sang the song “Last Leaf” by Tom Waits. A hush went over the thousands of drunken and stoned people in the arena. Anyone who didn’t feel it way down in their bones simply doesn’t have a soul. It was a moment and a song I’ll remember forever, maybe even on my own death bed kinda thing. Willie Nelson will be at the level of Elvis after he passes on. A hush will go over the unsuspecting world. God bless him.
Thanks for your short stories and all the other writing things you do, Hugh. It all has a unique spirit and soul to it that’s absolutely fabulous and awesome. As Van Morrison said, “Soul is the essence from within, soul is not the color of your skin.”
Sincerely,
Dale
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Hi Dale,
Thanks so much.
I’m glad that you have never regretted your drinking years, they were part of you and also a part of what has made you who you are today.
Regarding the AA or any help groups. They can be slagged off and even if anyone has any doubts, what the hell, if it works for even one single person, then who is anyone to comment??
I think the story that Alice Cooper tells about him becoming sober is very interesting. But he does admit that he has just replaced one addiction for another – His is now golf!! HAH! Drinking wouldn’t have been as frustrating!!
Exchanging one addiction for a healthier one is something that can work. Robert Downy Junior went from all sorts of substance abuse to martial arts. I loved his quote about alcohol, he said:
‘I’m allergic to alcohol, I break out in handcuffs’
I didn’t know that song but checked out the Willie Nelson version – It was stunning. How strange is it that a squeeze box can be irritating or beautifully haunting??
Glad you enjoyed the concert!!
Thanks again.
All the very best my fine friend.
Hugh
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Excellent story certainly worth keeping alive. A couple of the songs on the list bring back a flood of fond memories to me. Thanks for reminding me of them. “Walkingbosscooper” commented when the story was first published. I wonder what ever became of her? (wink, wink)
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Shhhh
She got a job working in an enchanted graveyard.
Top secret 🙈🙉🙊
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Hi Dave,
Thanks so much for the kind comments.
Yep, ‘Walkingbosscooper’ has went from strength to strength to legendary status!!!
Hope all is well with you and yours.
Hugh
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Hugh,
A great trip back in time and degradation. Glory O!
I remember how the Church and the local bar colluded to share the custom and the wealth. The Holy Name Society met at Kelly’s after Mass on Sundays to do shots of rye and beer — never abusing the Lord’s name in vain. If done without vain, well it couldn’t be helped.
Now it’s all Breweries, you can’t say fuck’all, there’s dogs and babies barking at each other, and if you need a smoke you have to go outside or swallow a gummy. Music? It’s all preprogramed sans jukebox by class and type: Yacht Rock , Indie Mix, Mellow Favs. Indie Mix?
In the old days, people lived only as long as they had to, properly seasoned by smoke, stale air, bad whisky & bad habits. Not to bring up the demise of the funeral ‘parlor.’ It’s a wonder anyone bothers to die at all anymore.
Gerry
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Hi Gerry,
Love it!
You have the heart of a realistic poet!!!!
I loved the ‘lessons’ and ‘etiquette’ (For want of a better word. Or should that be for want of a worse word??) that you learnt in a pub when you first went in. (See my answer to Leila)
One quick wee story – I started work at sixteen and every Friday night went into a ‘District’ pub for a few pints with an old joiner called Joke Tarrana (Yep, very Scottish name!!) I started playing Pool and went up to the bar to get us a pint. Joke was sitting there smoking and studying the Racing Post. In my youthful, naive glee I said, ‘Joke, I’m beating them all!’ He looked at me, laughed and said, ‘Start losing!’
…I didn’t go back.
And Mellow Favourites should never be played in a pub!!!
Thanks as always my fine friend.
Hope all is well with you and yours.
Hugh
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Hugh
Early lessons learned in Mulrenhan’s:
1) Play the best pool shark in the house for $ — lose and learn.
2) Whether you lie, tell the truth, or were just kiddin’, never admit “nuttin’.”
3) There were only two classes of bars — old men’s/young men’s bars AND middle-aged men’s bars. Period. And every bar cycled through each denomination and back again until there were no bars anymore. At least 250 years’ worth. As the men in their prime aged they were joined by under-aged young men sneaking in. When they died, everyone left was middle aged. Until, . . .. Yeah. you know.
Hey Hugh, where would you sort ‘Muskrat Love.’ Mellow or Bubblegum Pop? I don’t suppose you could ask Joke, could you?
Gerry
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Love the piece and great to go back and read a previous one of Hugh’s. It’s a perfect rendition of those times and reads uncannily similar to my own formative drinking years in the 80s. Likewise, we had a set of pubs we went to in a designated order and for a designated period of time – in fact in any of us was ever late (and this was obviously pre-mobile phone days) then they simply knew which pub we were in for which 30-minute slot of an evening.
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Hi Paul,
Your comment makes me smile! We all thought we were individuals and bucking the trend but I see that we were all doing the same thing!!
Thanks so much – Your time and comments are much appreciated.
Hope all is well with you my fine!
Hugh
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Agree with Paul: LS re-runs are always a great read. This one is no exception.
Reminded me of a club I went to for a while in Birmingham. It was over above an Irish pub, and the pub customers would try to enter the club at closing time, resulting in spectacular battles on the stars. One night a pal and I tried to cut in on two lovely girls dancing together. The beautiful blonde one turned to me and said, ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ I never went back again.
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Stars=stairs, damn it
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HAH!! I can beat you!!!
Ally MacLeod had a club in Ayr (Yep the Scotland manager – Mainly run by his son, Andrew, who is now a physio, I think??) and the place was a square shaped building – One night I went in and asked each lady who was standing against the wall if they wanted to dance, I got ‘No’ after ‘No’ after ‘Fuck off!’, I did the four sides of the square and ended up back at the entrance / exit door and decided to go for a kebab a cry and home!
All the very best my fine friend.
Hugh
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Hi Gerry,
Hope you see this. For some reason the site only allows a couple of follow-on comments from the original.
All I wanted to say is, it’s weird how some middle of the road music is acceptable compared to the majority which is just pants!! For example, there is something cool about ‘Bread’ ‘The Drifters’ and ’10cc’ but Mr Manilow and Coldplay are just shit!! I know that ‘Coldplay’ may not be classified as such but I do like any opportunity to say that they are shit!!!
There is no room for bubble-gum pop anywhere in the world. And I don’t care if there is a perturbed teen reading this.
But that has made me want to tell you a quick wee story. I knew the mother of a convicted killer and their street-cred / reputation went out the window when their mother was in ‘Woolworths’ searching for an ‘Aqua’ CD to take to them!!
…Go figure!!
…With any luck, ‘Aqua’ will not have reached your corner of the world!!! (If you haven’t heard of them and you are curious (You WILL regret this!!) check out ‘Barbie-Girl’ or ‘Doctor Jones’.
All the very best my fine friend.
Hugh
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