i don’t even know
grandpa patterson’s first name

A few years after the war ended, my uncle George called my father again. This time he started with the punch line: “I found our father.”

My uncle went on to report that their father was tending bar in Poughkeepsie, New York. He was working in a seedy joint under the Mid-Hudson Bridge. My uncle George said, “C’mon, Pat, let’s go to Poughkeepsie. The two of us. I want to meet him.”

My father said, “Well, I don’t. I’m not interested in meeting the bastard. I’m not going with you, George.”

So my uncle went all by himself to this ugly little gin mill sitting under the Poughkeepsie bridge. A couple of rummies were inside, bellied up to the bar. The joint reeked of months-old stale beer and hard liquor that was even older. Just right for a scene in a novel about upstate New York by William Kennedy or Richard Russo.

My uncle George didn’t drink, so he ordered a Coca-Cola. Then he sat there nursing his soda, watching his father, who he’d never met, growing so disgusted by this poor excuse for a human being that he never even introduced himself. After half an hour—an excruciating time, I imagine—Uncle George left the bar and drove back to Port Jervis alone. His father never knew that one of his sons had been there.

And to this day, I don’t know my grandpa Patterson’s first name.

Small-town bars actually played a big part in my youth. On many a Saturday afternoon, my father would drag me along to a local joint on Broadway in Newburgh. My dad called it “babysitting the boy.”

Here was our ritual: The bartender would slap half a mug of beer down in front of me. I was five or six years old. I’d quaff the beer in one big sip. Every Saturday. The guys in the bar would cheer for me, and my dad was clearly proud. Somehow, I didn’t become an alcoholic, but encouraging your kid to chug down beers at six was an interesting way of being a dad. I don’t recommend it.