My first time tasting nachos was at a bar in Powers Lake, Wisconsin. My dad took me one evening after picking me up for the weekend. My parents had been divorced for five years at this point, and he would pick me up for his weekend visitation.
He was living at the time with my grandparents in Genoa City, Wisconsin. On the way to my grandparents’, we took a small detour to begin the first tasting of my life’s obsession with that cheesy goodness.
This was not the first time I had headed to a bar after he picked me up, but it was one of the most memorable of thousands of other instances.
This bar was unique; beautifully decorated with lake-style artifacts and an old-fashioned wooden phone booth with a closable door for calling privacy. This was long before cell phones. This was the time of payphones if you wanted to make a call outside of your home.
He flagged down the bartender and ordered our first batch of nachos. These were the original nachos: individual tortilla chips laid out flat on the plate, cheese melted over the top, and one slice of pickled jalapeno pepper placed at the center of each piece.
As with many of our trips to get a tasty plate of nachos, I doubt it ended with just one.
This story isn’t about the original Nachos or the piled-high debacle they have evolved into, but it’s about me sitting in a bar at six or seven years old. These weren’t isolated instances. These were places I knew well. It was not just one bar where I was the token little kid amongst the old men who sat in there all day nursing their beer. Where they knew my name and took their turn giving me quarters to play pinball. I went to those also. But I was a bar-hopping regular with my dad. By my 13th birthday, I’ll bet I had been in more bars than most grown adults. Most times, he would take me during the day when things were slower and were less out of hand. But, again, I did spend many nights in some, perched on a stool, drinking a Coke.
Yeah, my dad probably had a drinking problem. Or, maybe it was more of a social problem. You see, I don’t ever remember him drinking at home. I don’t ever remember alcohol, Vodka was his choice, ever in anywhere he lived. And, there were plenty of those places, too. But that’s a different story for a different time.
I think the drinking was more associated with the need to be around people all the time. His relationships were many, and I rarely ever remember him on his own. He would jump from girlfriend to girlfriend like I change socks.
Most people now would shiver at the fact of their kid even seeing someone drink alcohol. We have become an insulated, bubble-wrapped kid culture who go out of its way to insulate its children from the evils of the world. I call it the ‘no punish’ take a time out culture of Ritalin-medicated kids.
We were the no-seat belt-wearing, seventies culture, where you were thirty-five by age ten. I remember going to get-togethers with my cousins, and several times throughout the night we’d go into the adult area and sip off our parents’ beer.
The bars I was brought up in were not the restaurants that serve alcohol like we see so many today. These were bars that might sometimes serve a little food.
But like many people, it becomes a replica of what our parents are. You would think I would be in a bar drinking down my money and following along with the plan outlined for me by my parents’ habit. But quite the opposite.
I rarely drink. I might have one somewhere every three to four months, maybe. At one point, I hadn’t had anything in over two years.
It’s not like I try hard to break free of something that feels like it is pulling me in. It isn’t. But I think I’ve grown into a better person because of it. Not being sheltered by so much of the grittiness of society has helped me have more empathy. I felt the pain and angst in other people as they sat on the stools and tried to drink their problems away. I saw real emotion. Heard real stories of struggle and pain. I heard stories that didn’t have happy endings.
I used to think of my dad as a bad parent for being the way he was. But I think it was a gift. He lifted the sheltering screen and exposed me to a different part of the world, sheltered and not seen by so many kids today. What will become of the world when the sheltered generation gets old enough to take control? Who knows. Maybe I could have gotten to my place in life as a truly empathetic person in life through a better route. But, I know I’m now a better person because I spent my childhood in bars with my dad.