Where Widows Drink

There was a Norman Rockwell feeling to the scene, a bunch of old veterans sitting around a table in a VFW bar, under flags and combat emblems, watching a military parade on television.

Terry Maynard was there from the Vietnam era and Bob Dodson, who’d been a Marine in World War II, and Tom Morrow, a veteran of both Korea and World War II.

As sailors, pilots and paratroopers, they’d fought out of foxholes, rammed tanks into hell and hit beaches no one even remembers anymore.

They kept saying it’s too bad some of the real old-timers from World War I weren’t here. Guys who’d been at the Marne and in the battle of Belleau Woods. Post 1614 boasts six members who took part in that war to end wars a lifetime ago.

When I got there they were watching the $12-million Washington parade that welcomed home the troops from Operation Desert Storm, the picture-pretty war in the Persian Gulf. It’s a time of parades for veterans, one of them remarked: the Hallelujah Hollywood Doo-Dah thing, the D.C. spectacular and then the blowout in New York.

Given all that, the scene in the VFW hall would have been a still life of pride if this were a Norman Rockwell tableau. But there was irony at work here and Rockwell didn’t deal in that.

The old vets couldn’t figure out why, in the current climate of idolizing America’s veterans, they were having such a tough time hanging onto a place where a veteran could sit and have a drink.

“This ain’t exactly a cowboy bar,” 76-year-old Tom Morrow said, gesturing to the surroundings, “and we’re not exactly wild drunks. Old men and widows drink here.”

Welcome to Glendale, where folks are righteous and God-fearing. It’s like a town in the Midwest, which is why the Rockwellian tableau seemed appropriate. Even places that sell booze have names like Pete and Lucy’s Liquors.

The VFW Hall is across Honolulu Avenue from Robbin’s Nest Pre-School and a couple of doors down from Phil’s Food Queen. It’s been there for 22 years and has never been a problem.

It’s a private club. Only VFW members and their guests are allowed in, plus the widows of members. You’ve got to figure a kind of decency prevails where widows drink.

“Our average age is 55,” Bob Dodson was saying. He’s 71, by the way. “After bypass surgery and prostate operations, guys like me are not out to raise a lot of hell.”

The problem is, the VFW can’t afford its current hall anymore. The rent has gone up and no one is breaking down doors these days to join. So about a year ago, its members voted to move into an American Legion hall a few blocks away, combine the two memberships and open its bar there.

That, to paraphrase an old military term, is when the spit hit the fan.

They got city approval all right, but one Sharon Olsen, who lives down the street from the hall, sued to stop the move. The suit failed, but an administrator for the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board is saying he’s not going to approve the liquor license transfer because of objections by those who live nearby.

“I’m not a temperance crusader and I’m not anti-veteran,” Olsen said the other day. She’s 41 and a nondrinker. “I just don’t want drunks driving on my street.” She pointed to her two small daughters. “That’s what it’s all about.”

There’s hardly ever a good reason to go to Glendale. I went because I feed on the kind of irony extant in a group of veterans watching a military parade on a day they’re mourning the probable end of a veterans’ bar.

But after talking to both sides, I come away with the feeling that everyone’s right. That’s the trouble with trying to be fair--you walk away muddled. There’s got to be somebody truly wronged to make a clean hit.

If you come out against allowing vets and widows a place to drink, you end up looking like the grinch who stole their Jack Daniels. If you come down in favor of a bar in a residential neighborhood, you’re for drooling drunks who play chicken with little children.

Olsen makes sense when she waves a newspaper clipping and says, “The city won’t allow day-care centers in residential neighborhoods because it violates our ‘serenity and privacy.’ Why in God’s name would they allow a bar?”

The members and widows of the VFW aren’t the kind of people who get drunk and run down kids. But let’s face it, guys. Even as the era honors veterans, it also dishonors drinkers. This isn’t a good time for bars. We’re adrift in a sea of Evian water.

Let me put that another way. The wars are over, the parades have passed and this is a battle you’re bound to lose. Maybe you just oughta start a fund drive to pay the rent and keep the bar where it is. Count me in for a $20, and for a quiet thanks for the victories no one remembers.