by Jim Draeger
I DRANK MY FIRST BEER at the Beehive Tavern in Oconto at the much too young age of five. My father’s German upbringing was probably the reason that he acquiesced to my request. Alcohol was not viewed as a taboo among Wisconsin’s ethnic German population, and, like most of my German friends, I was allowed to sip beer under the watchful eyes of my parents. The Beehive was a family-owned bar run by Ray Stutz, a local stone mason, and his wife, Dot. As in many of these mom-and-pop bars, the owners lived in a back room, and Dot kept the place open during the day while Ray worked his other job. I loved going to the Beehive, which perched at the edge of a bridge one block from our house. The lure of candy and sodas was enough encouragement for me, and if I got bored, I just walked home.
That day, as I sat on a bar stool next to my dad, Ray asked what I wanted. When I insisted that I wanted a beer, he looked to my dad, who nodded. Ray tapped off an inch or two of Oconto beer into a shorty glass. It was my first and last glass of our hometown brew, which went out of business shortly after, following the fate of many small Wisconsin breweries. The beer tasted horribly bitter to my youthful tongue, but I toughed it out and finished the glass. With that drink I naively entered a brotherhood of bar lovers, although it would be many more years before I gained full membership. Some might judge my father’s decision from a moral perspective, but the mystique of beer drinking held little appeal for me for many years to come as a result of that tasting session.
For all of its history, the tavern has balanced on a knife’s edge where our deep-seated longing for libation, socialization, and entertainment dance with our culture’s needs for moral order, accountability, and moderation. This tension has been a constant factor in the history of Wisconsin taverns and has shaped the tavern as it has evolved over the past century and a half.
The bar in its many guises, from stagecoach inn and neighborhood saloon to speakeasy, cocktail lounge, and sports bar, has been buffeted by the tides of change, tugged this way and that by politics, economics, changing social mores, and competition for leisure time. Indeed, the bar might be one of the most flexible of all cultural institutions. While churches, schools, museums, and libraries seemingly sit rock hard in the sea of time, the tavern is swept along in the currents of change.
In Tavern League, Carl Corey freezes fleeting moments of Wisconsin’s tavern history as it bobs among the tides and eddies. This work is important because tavern culture helps define the Wisconsin experience. Since the nineteenth century, when waves of German, Polish, and Irish immigrants landed in Wisconsin and swept aside the temperate reforms of Yankee settlers, Wisconsin has been a tavern state.
As a German descendant immersed in that culture, who came of drinking age in the mid-1970s, I grew to love Wisconsin taverns like those depicted in this book. While my peers headed to college hangouts and discos, a few of my friends and I discovered the joys of what we came to call old-timer bars. We fled from the smoke, noise, and congestion of teen bars for a much different experience at these local neighborhood bars. We came to enjoy what Ernest Hemmingway described as “a clean, well-lighted place”—although we were not always welcomed. Both owners and patrons often gave a cold, brusque reception to a carload of hippies crashing the quiet serenity of their barrooms. We learned that our admission was eased if one of us headed directly to the jukebox and played the first Hank Williams song we could find. Hank populated every old-timer juke box, and the incongruity of the strains of “Your Cheating Heart” against our long hair and outrageous clothes bought us the time we needed to warm up the barkeep and earn a place at the bar.
From that time forward, I have loved these classic bars. As a student at UW–Stevens Point, I sat many times at the rail of the Elbow Room, escaping the congested student bars like Buffy’s, Butter’s, and the Yacht Club. My downtown favorite, however, was the Ritz Tavern, where the eighty-two-year-old owner, Dominick Slazarski, answered the phone in Polish and served an older, local crowd. Dominick warmed up to us kids, probably because my cute young girlfriend, Cindy, danced with him on Friday and Saturday nights, when the bar hosted concertina bands playing polkas. Soon after I left Point, Dominick passed away and the Ritz closed, another classic bar shuttered and gone forever.
I did not appreciate the uniqueness of Wisconsin’s tavern culture until I moved to Tennessee and visited my local tavern, located in a converted fast food restaurant. The harsh overhead florescent lights and chairs bolted to the undersides of Formica tables—while arguably creating a clean, well-lighted place—were the antitheses of what I had come to know as a true Wisconsin tavern. Standing uncomfortably in this corporately conceived environment, I realized that a bar is defined by both the architecture of its space and the culture that inhabits it.
Taverns have been and still are predominantly a family business. Low start-up costs, long hours, and patrons longing for a “home away from home” have all rewarded the mom-and-pop operations, and these neighborhood joints have been a cornerstone of the Wisconsin tavern experience. For much of our history, workers lived in modest dwellings: small houses, apartments, and tenements with little space for gatherings of family and friends. Without family rooms, decks, and patios, Wisconsinites used the tavern as an extension of their own living rooms, a place to socialize with friends, family, and neighbors. Tavern owners responded to this longing for a home away from home by decorating their bars to reflect their interests as well as those of their patrons. Their local flavor became a comfortable attraction to their regular patrons and gave each tavern a particular and unique character. As a result, tavern owners have been staunchly individualistic, resisting attempts to standardize, franchise, and homogenize their spaces.
The personalization of these mom-and-pop bars created the very qualities that endeared them to their loyal patrons. The familiarity of a favorite watering hole cast bar keepers in the role of mother, father, banker, confidant, and social worker for generations of customers. As alcohol frees inhibitions, personal dramas play out in a public venue, making the bartender a social mediator, providing a check on excess and cultural chaos. Carl’s portraits—even those devoid of people—capture the emotional connection of bar owner to patron and patron to place. Through Carl’s lens, we find ourselves in the role of patron. We see the owners and their taverns from a perspective that is deeply personal and moving.
After college I became an architectural historian, my research and work experience giving me yet another perspective on Wisconsin’s classic taverns. I inevitably began to see them as what my profession calls built environments. The casual patron may not realize the degree to which the tavern is a carefully choreographed space. Honed over decades, its architecture is meant to help control the social interactions that occur there. Every element—the tables and chairs, bar stools and bar counter, rail and back bar—limit the physical interaction of patrons and staff. The bar counter creates a defensible space, separating customer and operator in a manner that secures the safety of proprietor and merchandize from the extremes of overindulgent patrons. Carl captures the impenetrability of that barrier in striking portraits depicting the owner ensconced behind the front bar.
During my time as a patron and observer of old-timer bars, significant changes have occurred in their location, demographics, and use. Many of our taverns’ once important social roles have been replaced. Taverns no longer function as a necessary extension of our living rooms. The larger square footage of today’s homes and the addition within them of family rooms, home theaters, and other entertainment spaces have created a cultural shift toward staying at home that sociologists describe as cocooning. Tougher drunk driving laws and stiffer regulations have forced bars out of residential neighborhoods, encouraging people to drink at home. The number of bars has constricted sharply since the 1970s, creating a harsh and competitive environment for the remaining old-timer bars.
This makes the work of Carl Corey all the more important. His book is a magical alchemy, mixing the realism of documentary photography with an artistry that is transcendent, capturing a mood, a presence, an impression of the fleeting world of taverns past. His photos frame more than a mere sense of place; we are drawn into their warm, rich color, the drama of their details, and the intimacy of their composition. His artistry is creating photos that pull us both intellectually and emotionally into vignettes comprising a slice of time and place. For me, that is enough to ensure that the love my friends and I have shared of old-timer bars will live on for others to appreciate.