RON SWARNER: LET IT ROLL, BABY, ROLL >>>
Doyle’s Public House co-owner Russ Heaton just sent me a reminder that tomorrow is Repeal Day. Last year, Heaton threw this statement my way:
On December 5th, 1933, Congress ratified the 21st Amendment, repealing Prohibition and restoring the American right to a celebratory drink. Unlike St. Patrick's Day or Cinco de Mayo, Repeal Day is a day that all Americans have a part in observing, because it's written in our Constitution. No other holiday celebrates the laws that guarantee our rights, and Repeal Day has everything to do with our personal pleasures.
In his reminder to me, Heaton stated, “This is not a plug for my bar, but for every bar. Tacoma is proud to support the constitution. I like the idea of buying strangers drinks in celebration.â€
I love that idea, too.
Better yet, I think it would be cool to celebrate tomorrow in a roadhouse of years gone by. You know, the kind with an unpaved parking lot filled with roadsters. The tinny sounds of a honky-tonk piano come drifting through the night air, mixed with laughter and the tinkling of many glasses. Inside, card tables are packed with sharp-faced hoodlums in fedoras, flanked by their even tougher-looking molls. Ida Lupino, or maybe Lauren Bacall, is draped across a piano in some impossibly slinky, sequined evening dress, belting out a torch song as a skinny kid tickles the ivories. George Raft or maybe Humphrey Bogart is slouched at a corner table, bourbon in hand and cigarette on lip, squinting cynically through the smoky blue haze.
Does this exist in the South Sound? I’m drawing a blank.
Maybe I will just go to Doyle’s.
