EDITOR AT LARGE

The editor vaguely recalls the low life in Portsmouth back before designer beer, health codes and homeland security. In its final transition from hardknuckle seaport to family destination, the downtown scene was cheaper and cheesier, if you knew where to go.

Cat Dancing in Portsmouth, NH Bars

Boozing is a difficult hobby to maintain after a certain age. I know a few elderly drunks, but most of my peers tend to follow their second beer with a nap. I vaguely recall a dirty old man who used to drink with us UNH students back in the early 1970s. It was disgusting watching him hit-on the young women. I’ll bet the guy was pushing 35.

I’d tell you about my own wasted youth, but we’ve all got better things to do. Besides, there’s no reason to be proud of waking up with your head wedged under a clothes bureau in a girl’s dorm at Oxford College, England -- even if it is the coolest thing you ever did. For a few months of my traveling years I was the bartender in a pub called The Trumpet in Norwich, England. It was the English custom at the time to tip the barkeep in drinks. As an American working under a forged British work permit, I tried to be discreet, but the old East Anglian drunks liked the way I poured their stout. They called me “Tex” and tipped me often. I used to park my Raleigh three-speed bike up against an ancient chunk of Roman wall outside the pub and could barely ride home after each shift. It never occurred to me that the other bartenders only pretended to accept the drinks, nursed one warm half pint all evening long and kept the money.

To prove how suave and hip I was back at the dawn of the 70s, I took a date to the funky 92-seat Theattre-by-the-Sea in the basement of an ancient grain warehouse on the docks on Ceres Street. If you have your AARP card you will recall The Cave just up the hill on Bow where the waitresses were topless. I didn’t know this, of course, until I looked up from the table and forgot, for an hour or so, to stop staring.

The waitresses actually wore transparent blouses made out of what looked like low-grade mosquito netting. The establishment sported black lights, aluminum foil on the walls, loud music, peanut shells on the floor and bathrooms you wouldn't visit today without an armed guard and a hazmat suit. The room was painfully dark, since the windows that opened onto the scenic harbor and tugboats, had been boarded up. The waitresses looked bored, watched TV and chain-smoked. They knew what you were looking at. It was about as sexy as a college seminar in Human Reproduction, but life was different back before the Internet.

The other “topless bar” was on Market Street. It was called the Oxcart Pub, I assume, because there was a figure of a burro with a cart in the window which was otherwise draped from public view. Master chef Jim Haller, creator of the Blue Strawbery reminded me the other day about the guy from Maine who was walking around Portsmouth in the early 70s with his wife when he peered in past the curtains and almost fell over at what he saw. “Look, Matha,” he exclaimed, and you have to say this aloud in your best Downeast accent, “that woman ain’t got no harness on!” (say HA-ness)

It was a tough crowd by today's standards and had been much rougher. People in the bars used to hurt one another recreationally. I witnessed my share of bar fights and almost was the subject of one. I remember it pretty clearly so it must have been early in the evening. I used to frequent the Orient Express, later the back room of the Schezuan Taste, now Tequila Jacks. The place was popular with the Iron Horseman, a collection of motorcycle gentlemen who shaved their heads before it was chic and had a thing for black leather. They never bothered me and I never bothered them until that one evening when I was dancing happily with an attractive young woman who happened to have one arm. I probably should have noticed the inscription on her tattoo, but they kept the lights very low for good reason.

“So you like dancin’ with my old lady?” the bald bearded biker asked during a break in the action. He smelled just a little stronger than he looked.

“C’mon,” I kidded. “She’s not THAT old.”

“Oh, a comedian,” my new friend said, calling over a few of his leathery companions. “Hey boys, what do you thing I should do with this funny lady-stealer?”

It sounded like a straight line from a Three Stooges film. The lady was giving me a pained expression and ticking her head toward the door.

“I think you should all take me outside and beat the living snot out of me,” I said enthusiastically. “That would teach me a lesson I damn well deserve.”

This was years before the movie where Pee-Wee Herman befriends the biker gang and dances across the bar, but that’s pretty much how it went. The gang laughed. I bought a round. I recall betting somebody that I could stand up on the back of a bike while he drove it around the traffic circle.

There are lots more stories, but they all seen to be missing the ending. Any thing from this point on is just hearsay. Like the time I was apparently thrown out of The Night Owl, another Portsmouth dive, for reportedly dancing with the owner’s cat. The poor thing was sitting up on the pool table all alone and there was music playing on the jukebox and not a woman in sight. “That guy’s killin’ my cat!” the owner shouted, but I swear we were only dancing.

I could go on, but modesty forbids. Luckily I was not genetically disposed to keep on truckin’. At some point it dawned on me that whatever I was looking for was not in a sleazy bar, and unable to afford the drinks or stomach the music in a more sophisticated establishment, I gave up the sporting life cold turkey. My stories have been duller ever since, but at least now they have endings.

Copyright © 2007 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.