Every Criminal Returns to the Scene of the Crime - Part 3

I stopped at the West Side to have a nostalgic beer. It was the place to go for quite awhile during those 4 years. The Lantern opened up at the corner and it siphoned some business, but for sheer surrealism the West Side was a fascinating place. There was a troop of interesting characters Hollywood couldn't have dreamed up:

a. There was one gentleman who claimed seriously that he was President of the University of Hawaii and regularly had large planes land in his back yard.

b. One old guy had cancer of the stomach and after each beer he'd have to go to the restroom and purge it. He;d come back out and order another.

c. One guy had lost his upper lip and we joked how he could brush his teeth and never open his mouth.

d. One guy was blind and we'd toss him quarters to play in the juke box.


Doris owned the place and while she was humorless and all-business thank God she never put a cent back into the place, thus preserving it in its own time machine. Eventually it was cleaned up and renovated a bit and somehow it was never the same.

My brother Mark went to school at IWC too and he even tended bar on occasion. The pool tables in the back were where we would congregate and and I can remember Kube and I would pretend we were back from Nam and play partners with the locals. We each would tuck an arm in our shirts and claim we had lost them. We'd then play a kind of tandem pool, one taking the front cue stick and the other taking the back and we'd beat people that way. Tasteless, yes, but political correctness wouldn't rear its head for another decade.


Speaking of Kube, we knocked the Hell out of each other in a real honest to goodness fist fight one summer night after I'd graduated and he was still a student doing summer classes. We had never been in a fight before and we wanted to know what it was like. We were drunk but we sure fought and when it was over and we went back to the bar our friends couldn't believe that we had been in a fight.

About the only thing remaining original from those days is the counter top.



The bartenders told me that the college kids never come into West Side Tap anymore. They go to other places, and that surprised me. It was within walking distance and just the kind of divy place to enjoy a beer (or 12) and unwind after a long day at the library.

And the final destination was Jerry's to have a pizza. I had half and as I write this I still have the other half in the fridge. Notice that the sausage is not sprinkled over the pizza like Davis Brothers, but you actually get a small chunk with each bite. Best damn pizza in the world.

Good day for a ride and awash with memories of my youth.

One more interesting aspect of my college experience. My first job after graduating from IWC was as a ditchdigger. The summer after graduating I helped an independent contractor dig trenches for the Burlington Mall street lights and stop lights.