Finding the Friendly Tap

Walk into a tavern as a stranger, and you walk out having new friends.  Next time you stop in, you’re a regular.  From the six-stool Sharon Valley Tavern in a small Victorian building erected by an iron company in Sharon, to the Dutch Tavern in a centuries-old storefront on a narrow New London street, you’ll find welcoming good cheer and conversation.

Since prohibition ended about eighty years ago, Connecticut taverns have been singular institutions licensed to sell only beer and cider, and in recent years, wine.  Many watering holes call themselves “taverns,” but only those without hard liquor are the real deal.  Decades ago the state had hundreds, but economic and social pressures for full liquor service have left only a handful.

It felt like a homecoming when I first stepped into The Stables, a slightly down-at-the-heels squat block building on an old multi-family residential street in Torrington.  Owner Mike Hand greeted me like a friend as I pulled up a stool at the long dark bar with a brass foot rail.  He had me deep in conversation about beer, food, and city history as quickly as he filled a pint glass.  Soon, gray bearded “Punky,” a thirty year regular, was spilling tales about the old-timers he’d known.  A muscular young fellow named Rick was talking baseball.  Before I knew it, Mike had scratched two chalk stripes on the bar in front of me indicating I had a couple beers coming, compliments of guys a few stools away.

On my first visit to the cozy Dutch Tavern with its red tin ceiling and worn hardwood floors, I bantered about the weather and the day’s  headlines with a fellow wearing glasses and a close-cropped beard.  To my surprise, it was Daryl Finizio, New London’s mayor.  Comfortably gritty and little changed in decades, it took but fifteen minutes at Deep River’s Calamari Tavern before my wife Mary and I were swapping tales and cracking up with bartender Billy Schumacher and several patrons.

“This is a neighborhood to itself,” said Ron, a Vietnam vet behind the taps in a World War II era Quonset hut fittingly called the Half Keg Tavern, located in New London.  The curved walls were dotted with photos of ballplayers and boxers.  “These are my people,” he added, gesturing down the glossy bar at a few customers and recalling times they closed the place because a regular was celebrating a life event to which all the others had been invited.

It’s no wonder sociologist Ray Oldenburg considers taverns among the “great good places,” essential to vibrant community life and democracy where people blow off steam and discuss issues of the day.  Even in the 1600s, when excessive drinking was a criminal offense, Connecticut law nevertheless recognized the social necessity of places that “retaile wine, beare and victualls” such that “in each towne, one sufficient inhabitant” had to provide such services.  Taverns were “a vital part of the Revolution,” writes Christine Sismondo, author of a book about American bars.  They “served as recruitment centers, hiding places, communications hubs, supply dumps, and safe havens.”  Today, taverns remain places where people go for camaraderie, to swap yarns, talk politics and plot the future.

“Taverns have a more old-time feel, a slower pace,” says Peter Detmold, a tall man with glasses and wavy dark hair who was a patron at the Dutch Tavern for ten years, worked there another ten, and has owned it for fifteen.  Taverns invite talk because a glass of beer takes more time than a shot of whiskey and patrons don’t get crazy.  He’s tried to keep the place much like it was when prohibition ended, resisting juke boxes, arcade games, and anything inhibiting conversation.

Enhancing their timeless atmosphere, some taverns, like The Stables and the Dutch, serve homey  comfort foods.  There’s stuffed cabbage at Torrington’s Towne Tavern; the anti-gravity burger at Manchester’s Grady Tavern; grilled cheese at Guilford’s Sheppards Tavern; and mouth-watering rib-eye steak at Torrington’s Northside Tavern.

Connecticut’s taverns may be few, but they endure as vibrant social institutions alive with stories and laughter.  Enter and step back a couple generations, order a draft, and meet friends you never knew you had.