sonora2sonoma

By Tim Konrad

Before 1957, when a change in California law made it so that minors could no longer enter bars that didn’t serve food unless accompanied by an adult, I had begun to offer shoe-shining services to local bar patrons for the modest price of twenty-five cents a pair. I was thirteen years-old at the time and the idea of having a few coins to clink around in my pocket had begun to have a certain appeal to me. The inspiration for my undertaking had come from noticing how successful an enterprising school-friend had become at earning money shining shoes. He had graciously agreed to share with me the secrets of how he’d started his venture.

In the 1950s, the nation’s attitude toward alcohol consumption, like that surrounding smoking, was one of acceptance. Everyone, it seemed, either drank alcohol or smoked cigarettes or did both—in the movies and in everyday life, inside auditoriums, in restaurants, on airplanes, in homes, in hospitals. Even the president smoked!  

Beer commercials and cigarette advertisements were displayed on billboards, in magazines and newspapers as well as broadcast over the airwaves. The use of these substances was equated with “living fully,” as if their use magically conferred upon the user a sense of well-being unattainable through ordinary means, an approach seen in beer commercials even today! The public discourse of the time did not include any appreciation for the health concerns inherent in alcohol abuse or cigarette smoking. What little concern was voiced about the health risks of those substances was actively suppressed or quickly discredited.

In the Sonora of that time, the number of taverns and bars lining Washington Street exceeded the number of churches serving the community’s faithful. This meant opportunity abounded for enterprising young people willing to do their part to combat shoe-neglect among the alcohol-aficionados lining the town’s barstools. Upon discovering that bar patrons, some likely out of bemusement, seemed okay with the idea of helping a kid make a little change, I found enough takers to maintain my interest in sticking with the enterprise.

One fellow, an obvious trickster, threw me a curve one afternoon when, after agreeing to a shine, he revealed the shoes he was wearing were white tennis shoes. While the joke was on me, I quickly located a source for a type of shoe treatment designed to spruce up white tennis shoes and added a can of the stuff my shoe-shine kit so I would be prepared the next time someone tried to pull that trick on me.

Just when I thought things were going somewhere, however, the law was changed and I was no longer allowed to enter those establishments, effectively cutting me off from access to my former customer base.

At that time, I already knew more about the bar culture in Sonora in the 1950s than a child my age should have known. My parents, frequent patrons of the local watering holes, would often bring me along when they went out drinking, buying me grenadine-laced soft drinks to solicit my cooperation and maintain my interest. It was thus that I learned, early on, that a Roy Rogers without ice (balls) was a Shirley Temple and a Shirley Temple with cherries was a virgin version of that well-known concoction. Of the half-dozen or so drinking establishments lining Sonora’s main street in the 50s, I knew the bartenders by name in all but one of them.

The one exception to this routine was the sole saloon my parents never visited, at least when I was with them. Called, ironically, The Louvre—ironic since the folks who patronized the place bore little resemblance to art aficionados—the decorative motif of its interior might best have been described as Slaughterhouse Chic, as I’d discovered when, after my 21^st birthday, I’d visited the place to satiate my curiosity.   

On display spread across the dimly lit wall behind the Louvre’s long bar were a series of sprawling age-yellowed photographs portraying large, open pits into which had been thrown dozens of dead livestock, animals that had been shot to combat an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease that had ravaged the county in the 1920s. The images depicted were raw, brutally honest and difficult to observe without becoming overcome by their sobering bluntness and sad sense of loss.

The general vibe of starkness, shadow and simplicity inside the Louvre was complimented by the total absence of the sort of adornments commonly employed in such places to make people feel welcome. Upon reflection, I wondered if the depressing décor of the place, and especially its “artworks,” played a role in why my parents never took me there. I couldn’t imagine my mother would have felt any more comfortable than I did sitting at that bar beneath the stultifying spectacle of those soul-deadening photographs staring down from the dingy, cobweb-laden shadows looming high above.

Where the Louvre was concerned, the irony didn’t end with its naming!

Having grown accustomed to the company of my parents and their friends and drinking acquaintances, I found myself more at ease with adults growing up than I was with my peers. My mother was 33 and my father was 37 when I was born, which was a fair bit older than the parents of most of my classmates.

While my peers’ fathers engaged in various activities with their kids, taking them skiing, coaching sports, etc., my dad did few such things with me. He took me fishing sometimes, but I wasn’t very good at it. He took me hunting a few times, but most of his hunting days had taken place when he was in his 20s. He took me on a couple of memorable hikes, but their principal distinguishing feature was their rarity. And so it went. As a provider, my father was peerless; as an engaged father, he was busy working more than I would have liked. I found myself envious of classmates’ fathers who would spend more time doing things with them.

In addition, although I was the third child in the birth order, I grew up in effect an only child.  My older brother was still-born and my sister only lived 18 hours. My closest cousin, emotionally speaking, lived 3 hours away and we only got to see each other every 6 weeks at best. With no siblings with whom to bond, and no kids in the neighborhood my own age, I had much more exposure to adults growing up than I did other children.

The opportunity to observe my parents interacting with their friends and acquaintances in the local taverns broadened my sense of their world, insofar as such exposure can inform a mind still in process of development. The downside of accompanying my parents on their drinking and socializing outings was the unintended effect the normalization of that behavior had on my young and impressionable mind.

For years afterward, I believed it was my “duty” somehow to carry on the “family tradition” of holding up bar stools in dimly-lit dives spending too much money consuming substances that never really agreed with my physiology in the first place. Whether this twisted logic was borne of a naive misunderstanding of what being authentic looked like or was merely a means of justifying self-destructive behaviors, it took me years to tease apart and disarm the maladaptive thoughts and feelings that sustained it.

At some point, though, in the manner of wisdom teeth, some bull’s horns eventually grow out, while others never do. I’m thankful that, whatever the reason, I belong to the former group.

To be continued: