A Place To Drink

Everyone has one. A place, either in their past or their present, where they have gone to sample adult libations in the company of friends and strangers. Sometimes these places are dark and cozy, with just the right mixture of stale cigarette smoke and peanuts to lend authenticity and heritage. Others are gargantuan clubs, filled with people and lights and music and fun. Give me the former.

At left is pictured the Plough and Stars, once one of my favorite haunts. The Plough is located on Massachusetts Avenue between Central and Harvard Squares in Cambridge, Mass. In other words, between M.I.T. and Harvard. It's a destination to walk to, as parking in nigh impossible and it's smack in-between T-stops.

The Plough is an Irish bar, of course, taking its name from the banner of the Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rebellion of 1916. (It is most definitely not taken from the infamous Sean O'Casey play that shocked and outraged Ireland.) It's a tiny place, with a long bar on one side and rickety tables on the other and a long bench built into the wall. There's usually a good crowd there everyday, from opening to last call.

I was introduced to the Plough around 1973-74 by friends of my older sister, who also lived in Boston at the time. These two gents, whose names are lost to me but whose faces I will never forget, ran their own business: Deathwish Piano Movers -which, thanks to Google, I am happy to report apparently thrives to this day. As piano movers should be, these guys were roughly the size of cement trucks. They were also avid rugby players, a game that was utterly foreign to me. But they sized me up, and then over a few pints of Guinness at the Plough convinced me that rugby was a game that would suit my build and temperament. Being a young, cocky idiot, I agreed to give the game a try the following Saturday. It was the single most painful experience of my life. I never played again. But I had found the Plough, and to me that was sufficient reward.

The Plough catered to a strange mix of blue collar locals, students, professors, and ex-pat Irish terrorists (I'm not positive about the last). Walk in, say, around four in the afternoon, and you'd see a bicycle mechanic lacing a wheel while enjoying a good pipe and playing chess with a Harvard physics professor. Conversation came easy at the bar while you waited for the barkeep to draw a perfect pint of stout. It can't be hurried, so patience was a key ingredient to being a welcomed guest of the Plough. Sometimes things got a little fuzzy. Like the time I took to talking to a German motorcycle tourist and he showed me how good a Guinness tastes with a shot of Jameson Irish Whiskey added. To this day I honor that unknown lad by calling the concoction a "Hamburg Sidecar." But trust me on this, folks: be very careful with this one, or you will be dusting the floor from your shoulder.

On Sundays there was a jazz brunch. Local guys and students from Berkley School of Music would jam while you quaffed your morning pint with the paper. Good food, too. Things like lamb stew and corned beef and cabbage were usually available. The music was the thing, though. It was so cramped that sound systems weren't necessary, and any Johnny with a fiddle or pipe could play whenever he wanted. (One day I'll tell you the story of St. Patrick's Day, the one-legged fiddler, and the older woman.)

The last time I was in the Plough must have been in the early 90's. I was in Boston on business and had some time to kill after a day of meetings. I wasn't sure if it was going to be as I had remembered, or whether the damned yuppies had wrecked it. It was comforting to see that, short of a fresh coat of paint on the door, the Plough looked just the same. I stepped inside and the memories of a squandered youth cheered my soul. Same people, different time. Same me.

The pint was perfect.