Where have all the good times gone?

By Bill Pearse on April 16, 2013 • ( 0 )

Dad and I go for a beer in a small Pennsylvania Dutch town called Leather Corner Post. We cut through Claussville, Kernsville, Orefield, and there it is finally: the Leather Corner Post Hotel. They are known for their boom-ba playing, a bladder fiddle with a tambourine and a cowbell on a stick. Big guys beating the wood floor with them, to the tune of Polka-fied songs by The Cars, and ELO.

It’s just noon and dark inside, a handful of guys at the bar, each at safe distance from one another. The one nearest us is wearing a breathing assist device and sipping White Zinfandel, in flannels.

There’s a handwritten sign above the bar that says 3 Shot Limit, underlined twice, definitive. They have a new TV on the wall behind us that’s playing The Kinks, Where Have All The Good Times Gone? I take a picture of dad and myself, as he recalls the days of working for Dun & Bradstreet as a kid, carrying heavy boxes of credit reports and eying the new crops of female temps as they came and went.

The guy across from me orders a water but the bartender thinks he said Lager, so she pours him one and I offer to take it, rather than let it go bad. We decide we should go instead, and dad thanks me for the beer.