March 23, 1984
Adventures of the Second Lost
Expedition,
Part V:
Part V:
St. Patrick’s Day
CAPTAIN’S LOG, BAR DATE XXI: St. Patrick’s Day is a major
holiday in the bar business, but how big would it be on Oliver Street North
Tonawanda
To begin the latest installment of this mission to have a
drink in every licensed establishment on Oliver, the safari shuttled straight
to the spiffiest spot on the street, the Stardust Lounge at 775 Oliver.
Large and darkly paneled, it featured a dance floor amid all
its tables. A sing on the organ on the bandstand announced “The Stardusters.”
Obviously, the house band. This evening also found the Stardust festooned with
a generous compliment of shamrocks and green balloons, but the corned beef and
cabbage special advertised in the front window had already come and gone.
“We did it last Sunday,” the barman reported as he
distributed menus to the party of 11. “We didn’t want to compete with everyone
else.”
The kitchen seemed more prepared for snacking than serious
dining. Chicken in the basket and a rib-eye steak with fries were about as
substantial as the menu got, except for Friday, when seafood dominates the deep
fryers. No prices were listed. Most of the troupe opted for chicken wings,
which turned up scrawny for $1.85 a single order, $3.50 a double.
What left the deepest impression on the expeditioners,
however, was the pristine condition of the restrooms. Nowhere had they
encountered such spotlessness, not even at home. A label assured the visitors
that the cleaning agent “disinfects faster than boiling water.”
A different set of priorities reigned across the street in
the Shanty Shack at 756 Oliver, a hard-core rock ‘n’ roll bar with a reputation
for roughness. At this early hour, the rough crowd kept itself in the back room
around the pool table, awaiting the arrival of one of the St. Pat’s specials –
free pizza.
Also special this night was green beer at 50 cents a bottle.
A tiny bottle of food coloring sat ready to convert any golden glass of Matt’s
Premium to emerald. Judging by the sign behind the bar, specials are a way of
life at the Shanty Shack. Every night has a different price break. Thursday,
for instance, is dollar night. Another sign touted “the best wings in the Twin
Cities, 99 cents.”
The safari confined its recreation to the front room,
commandeering the Centipede and Donkey Kong games. The Captain and the Chief
Science Officer noted the ceiling panels made of particle board, the splendor
of MTV playing soundlessly while the PA system pumped out hard rock, and the
coin-operated Breathalyzer machine.
Across the street was the most charming stop of the night.
Though the sign above the door of Topolski’s Restaurant at 747 Oliver suggested
a full kitchen, it had long been shut down, as had the back room full of
tables. A large, pink stuffed rabbit greeted anyone drifting back there.
Sitting disassembled on another back table were a couple of
the model trains that circled the ceiling of the barroom on a bed of Plexiglas.
The trains, a regular named Keith reported, were installed a few years ago, as
were the murals that made a landscape for the railroad to run through.
Sitting at the bar was the man who put it all together,
septuagenarian Julian Topolski. In this location for 42 years, he was content
this night to watch his barmaid serve the drinks. The sports photos on the back
wall showed him surrounded by vigorous young women softball players. A
contingent of them took over the foosball table and gave the expeditioners a
taste of their athletic prowess.
Humbled at foosball, the crew retreated to the pool table,
where they unsuccessfully challenged another regular named Chuck, who at age 25
had lost his job and was about to depart for the Navy. When a young man popped
in to deliver free Shanty Shack pizza to the women athletes, the trekkers
decided it was time to explore other worlds.
They proved few and far between. At the Mirror Room, 728
Oliver, three elderly women in the front window waved the troupe away. “We don’t
feel so good tonight,” they explained.
Next door in the eight-alley Deluxe Bowling Lanes, 712
Oliver, the leagues were wrapping up around midnight and so were the owners. “There’s
never much call for open bowling,” the bartender noted, serving a round of $1
Labatts Blues. The crew made do with the video games and the pinball machines
until the last of the bowlers left.
Pressing onward, the expeditioners discovered the next two
stops closed for the night. In fact, no life forms could be detected until they
reached the Gratwick district on the north side of North Tonawanda
Whooping it up at the bar was a contingent of reckless
regulars, a hunting and fishing kind of crowd. After the jukebox played “Elvira”
and “The Curly Shuffle,” they amused themselves with a 10-minute round of
shouting: “Where’s the beef?”
Presiding over it all was an ample, good-natured barmaid
named Peggy, who volleyed insults back as hard as they were delivered and
shrugged off the splashing bursts of gas from the soft drink wand by announcing
with a laugh, “If I ever catch the guy who did this, I’ll kill him.”
The safari spread out across the big back room, picking up on
the pool table, the coin-operated games and the antique photos showing early
incarnations of this place as the J. T. Schmidt Café. The Chief Science Officer
stepped outside to see if there was any resemblance between the present
structure and the one pictured from 1901. There wasn’t.
Since it was only 1:30 a.m., the Captain urged the company to
press on to a sixth destination, thereby easing the itinerary for the final
jaunt in April. But there was none to be found. Only two more places remained
before Oliver turned into Ward
Road
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