HEDGESVILLE, West Virginia — The jukebox blares only the first few notes of Tanya Tucker’s voice singing “Delta Dawn” before Kahlua starts drowning it out with her own rendition.
Kahlua was born a few yards from here. Someone had brought a scared, pregnant dog to the Longbranch Saloon in the middle of the winter about five years ago. She became “a bar dog,” as Becky, a Longbranch regular, puts it.
One freezing cold day, the bar dog showed up no longer pregnant. Staff and clientele, as the story goes, begged the mother to take them to the pups. “She took us right to them,” Becky told me Monday night, pointing up the steep wooded bluff across the road. “She had hollowed out a log. It was about zero degrees.”
Three of those pups are still alive. One is named Diesel and still lives in town. Kahlua tonight is one of about a dozen locals occupying the “patio seating” outside the saloon, which sits on a country road.
The patio is really the old smoking section: a yard (shared with a double-wide trailer home that sits behind the bar) and a metal-roofed carport that hangs over a few picnic tables, each with a bottle of hand sanitizer. In the parking lot, Brett’s bright-red, sparkling clean F-150 is its own meeting ground — four to five large, mostly bald and bearded man down Bud Light after Bud Light and relieve themselves behind the dumpster. (You wouldn’t want anyone using the indoor bathrooms, after all.)
At the picnic tables sits Todd, Kahlua’s owner. Todd is probably a Democrat but doesn’t admit it. His father, uncle, and grandfather all were union workers at the Washington Post growing up, typing and laying out the hot lead for the daily paper. On his mom’s side, they were all coal workers.
Nowadays, Todd is still in the union, but he laments organized labor’s lack of clout. When he learns I’m a political reporter, Todd (who, in full disclosure, bought me a beer) asks me what the hell happened to the Democrats’ lock on the union vote and on places such as West Virginia and Ohio. “I don’t know what happened,” Todd begins. “It used to be that union guys were Democrats, since FDR. But then, they became all about protecting the environment, killing jobs, and taking away my firearms.”
Todd is in his 60s. Becky? Who knows? The crowd is all working-class white, but diverse in age and origin. Tessa shows up later, and she’s in her 20s with jet-black hair. She brags about her brother, who is getting married and wants to have kids, “after they get married, because he wants to do it right.” She gives me a slice of her pizza with banana peppers.
That’s when “Delta Dawn” comes on, and Kahlua starts howling again. The other song that gets her howling is Johnny Cash’s “Daddy Sang Bass.” If you simply say the song title, the howls come out. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Over a couple of hours, locals trickle in and trickle out. Everyone knows everyone (except for me). When I step inside on a few occasions to purchase a beer, it’s eerie. I haven’t been in a bar, basically, since before Ash Wednesday. I gave up drinking for Lent, you see, and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has made me give up bars ever since Easter.
Why am I here? In order to catch up on work a bit, I fled to West Virginia for two days with my half pit bull and rented a low-price cabin on Airbnb. Soon I learned that West Virginia was allowing some bars and restaurants to have outdoor seating.
I’ve written dozens of pieces from bars across America. Whether it’s at DK’s in Williston, North Dakota, Freddy’s in Brooklyn, New York, Smitty’s in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Mulligan’s outside of Cleveland or the Rusty Bucket outside of Columbus, Ohio, the clientele have had a story to tell that can be drawn into a larger story.
Usually, there’s a conclusion about politics, culture, marriage, or economics. Tonight there is none.
At the Longbranch, there’s a range of politics and a complicated mixture of opinions on coronavirus lockdowns. There are strong views on China and trade. But mostly, there are happy faces greeting neighbors and colleagues, and there are hugs and handshakes. Everyone has a good time at Longbranch Saloon on a Monday night.
There’s only one bar fight at the saloon tonight: Some nasty cat attacked Kahlua while she waited for Todd to get his Bud Light from the bar. She’s bloodied but howling away to Johnny Cash again pretty soon.
And that’s it. That’s the column: For the first time since February, I just went out to a bar and had drinks while talking to strangers, and it was awesome.
