It's funny about the origin of his using J.R. as the initials for his name, which are not the true initials for at least his middle name. And then combining them into his preference for them to be his first name.
Years ago on Cape Cod the house we were renting was next door to the owner's mother. The owner's son would stay with his grandmother, but also drifted over to our rental since my teen-age daughter and he were about the same age. At least that's what I suspect.
The son was universally called JR. After making sure I never heard him called anything else. I had to ask him why was he was called JR. It seems he was named William, and was a junior to his father's name: thus JR. Over the years we've heard from him, and he's still called JR. I don't think he ever legally changed his name.
JR of course sounds like big oil, Larry Hagman, 'Dallas'-style. J. R. Ewing. Big hat, does have cattle. JR sounds like it should only be pronounced, or uttered loudly into a phone (well intercom) by someone with a cigar in their mouth after someone has presented them with a subpoena.
'The Tender Bar' is a coming-of-age story that is not 'Catcher In the Rye'. Thank goodness, who needs more of that? Mr. Moehringer comes of age in Manhasset, several stations east of the Murray Hill station on the LIRR's Port Washington line, that was two blocks from our house. In fact, the tracks abutted our backyard, after a steep embankment. The train was a good, regularly scheduled neighbor. I'm sure my father bought the house because it was close to the railroad station for his commute. He didn't drive, so anything that was reasonably within walking distance was how he planned his life.
Murray Hill was scruffy then, and is still scruffy, although we no longer live there. Growing up there I always thought about the stops east of Murray Hill. They had to be better than us, and Manhasset sounded like the best of them.
I never had a reason to travel east of Murray Hill, except when I fell asleep on train ride home very late one night after a Ranger game and after waaay too much to drink in the city. I woke up in Manhasset, got off at something like 2 A.M. and wondered where the other track was. There was only a single track.
Jesus, all this time, and Manhasset only has one track to accommodate east and west bound trains? Whose idea was that? I gathered myself and took a cab home. No more trains for three hours headed back west from the one track that could take me there.
My oldest daughter went to high school at St. Mary's, only a few blocks south of the Manhasset train station. Before we moved from Murray Hill she took the train to Manhasset on a student fare. She got there more often than I did, and did it sober.
One evening, I can't remember why, but I was in Manhasset waiting to rendezvous with my wife. I was looking at the Manhasset train station from the overpass and was just thinking about that single track. A young fellow came up to me, completely sober, and I swear to God asked me where the other track was. I really could only look at him with wonderment, but I quickly recovered and told I used to wonder too. But the railroad seems to manage at this point with only one.
'The Tender Bar' is good. Very good. There is poetry in the writing, and any young boy growing up might easily relate to it. The description of the ride to the beach with the guys from the bar is priceless. One car, several hefty guys with hangovers are picked up like taxi passengers by the guy with the car After the last one squeezes in JR thinks there is now enough muscle in the car to pull off a bank job.
The bar memories are timeless. Mr. Moehringer's Nielsen rating analysis of guys and their TV sports is spot on: guys like boxing because they get off their stools just like the fighters they love to watch box on television. I spent many, many years in a bar, and when the place goes, the memories don't. But the attendance and drinking is usually only a portion of your life, and is worth remembering, but not worth going to back to.
As if you could. The place is gone, the people are gone, and that part of your life has been lived. Who really would ask to go back to geometry class at forty, even if they did do well in geometry?
And finally, Mr. Moehringer's father. He made it all possible. Somewhat like Pete Hamil's observation that life is the leading cause of death. The realization that his father's headstone is one stone object holding two lies will stay with you forever.
My own father didn't come at me with a knife, but I've yet to cry about his passing, and that was nearly 30 years ago.
But Manhasset is still there, with one track, and I no longer wish I lived there.
http://ww.onofframp.blogspot.com
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