BARS: Gosh's in Stevens Point, Wisconsin

Kids will groan when you tell a story, complaining that they've heard it a hundred times.  Then, one day, unaccountably, they'll ask you to tell it again.  Go figure.

BARS

Sometime in the 1980s, while we were living in Ames, Iowa, the kids gave me a book for my birthday, though I believe Marlis likely played some part in the selection.  I don’t remember the title, but it was about the 100 best bars in America, two for each state.

From that author’s perspective, a good bar—a bar bar, as he termed it—would be a window-less structure made of concrete blocks, with one thick, padded red door for entering (or possibly leaving).  In the deep murk of the interior, there could be no ferns, no pinball machines, nothing except possibly a fuzzy black-and-white TV.   Basically, it should be a machine for drunks, at least one of whom should be a master at “holding forth”—i.e., delivering long,  rhetorically florid commentaries on matters of little interest to any adult with a brain and at least a minimal experience of life outside of a barroom.

I had been in seven of them.

In my time, I’ve enjoyed quite a few others, too.  Here’s one.

GOSH’S IN STEVENS POINT, WISCONSIN

Back in the mid-1970s, I visited my friends Neal and Abigail in Stevens Point, WI, for a week or so in late December—the season of the year when the radio would daily announce the amount of time it would take for human flesh to freeze.  In this daunting milieu, I took to spending late afternoons at a bar on the town square called Gosh's.

Fronting this town square in Stevens Point were at least 10 or possibly 15 bars, lounges, and liquor-enabled restaurants.  Of these, Gosh’s was a classic neighborhood bar.  As you entered, a long wooden counter and back-bar extended more than halfway down the left side of the room, always tended by a bald gent who looked to be in his 60s.  Only guys sat or stood at the bar.  

On the right side of the room were 10 or 15 tables where husband/wife pairs and the occasional female group of friends or relatives sat.  At the back of the room was a pool table surrounded by a ring of small tables and chairs, all set far enough away that you could actually play pool.  A very decent set-up.

At that time, as my friends had warned me, there was a strong town-and-gown antipathy in Stevens Point, whose economy depended almost entirely on the Lullaby Furniture Company.  So my bearded presence at the bar was aggressively ignored as I sipped my bourbon on the rocks.  However, the place had an ancient jukebox stocked with about 8 million really good polkas and schottisches, which naturally drew my musical and ethnomusicological interest, and I played a bunch of the 45 rpm records each day that I went there—which was basically every day for a week or more.

After several visits, I decided I wanted to play some pool, so I walked to the back of the room and put a quarter down on the pool table’s edge to reserve a place. When my turn came, I inexplicably shot better than I ever had in my life (or ever would again, except maybe for one time in another bar), and as I neared victory I started taking a lot of verbal abuse from the very large mid-20s Polish guy whom I was, against all odds, beating.

The guy was getting pretty hot, I felt, making slurred comments and then glaring at me, and he seemed to have the enthusiastic support of several friends.  After a while, however, an older guy walked back from the front of the bar, drew my opponent’s attention with a beckoning finger, waited for the guy to bend his head down to hear him, and said quietly but firmly, "Old Mr. Gosh says to lay off the kapusti."

The guy immediately backed away from me, but wasn’t happy about it, and stood there muttering. To try to clear the air, I said "Hey, let me buy you a drink." He deliberated and then said okay if I'd have one with him.  I shouted to the bartender, "Two of whatever he's having."

This turned out to be peppermint schnapps.  Yes, “This turned out to be peppermint schnapps.”  There should be room in that sentence somewhere for the F word, at least twice.  Somehow, I managed to chug down the shot like a man, quickly chasing it with a small glass of Point Special beer. After a few more one-ounce slugs of this vile swill (with chasers) and several increasingly hilarious games of pool, which I was careful to lose (by playing at my normal skill level), I paid off my debts, thanked everyone for the games, and then went back to the bar and stood in an open space next to the guy who'd calmed down my opponent.

After a respectful silence, I asked him, “Which person is Old Mr. Gosh?”

“He was here a while, but he left.  That’s his son behind the bar,” he said, nodding toward the old bald guy.

“Ah,” I said, and stood quietly for quite a while, trying not to seem inquisitive.

"What," I asked him at last, "does kapusti mean?"

He thought a few moments, and then said "Cabbage-head."

I nodded.

After a few minutes more, I turned to him again and said, more as a statement than a question, "It doesn't really mean 'cabbage-head,' does it.'"

He looked at me for a moment, and finally said "No."

I took a rest from Gosh’s on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but dropped in the day after, found a stool at the long bar, and ordered peppermint schnapps with a Point Special chaser.

The waitress looked at me and said, "Oh, there you are."  She walked down to a small table-top Christmas tree at the end of the bar, picked up a tiny wrapped present, and brought it back to me.

"From Old Mr. Gosh," she said.  "He says thanks for the polkas."

So kapusti is good with me.

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AFTERWORD:  No, I don’t remember what the gift was.  Probably a key holder, or maybe a church key with “Gosh’s” stamped on it.  I’d like to think it was a tiny bottle of peppermint schnapps.