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When you step into some bars, stereotypes sail away

By Dan DeWitt, Times Columnist
In print: Tuesday, May 13, 2008

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Gone was the beautiful jukebox, its age-yellowed selections of vintage country songs promising that at least I had musical taste in common with the rest of the customers.

In its place was a 6-foot-tall tower with blinking lights that, I was later told, allowed drinkers to download their choices from the Internet.

To me, it looked like the Wizard of Oz's control panel, except that the man operating it was burly and frightening — wearing fingerless biker gloves, shades pushed back on his shaved head and not even looking around to warn me away from an empty spot at the bar:

"That's my seat, bud.''

All this seemed to confirm the point I planned to make in this column: that I no longer felt welcome in the Sail Inn — a classic roadhouse south of Brooksville on U.S. 41, the one with its sign perched on a sawed-off oak.

This was to be part of my larger point: a response to news stories that ridiculed Barack Obama for looking uneasy when he tried to campaign in blue-collar bars.

Of course he did, I planned to say. The only way to look at ease in a bar is to hang out there. And serious adults with families and good jobs don't have time to waste soaking up suds and playing pool.

Furthermore, I knew this because I had become one of those serious adults in the decade or so since I had frequented the Sail Inn often enough that the bartender knew my name, my beer and that my hometown in Ohio was not far from hers.

A half hour after I arrived Saturday afternoon, though, I had not only changed my mind, I barely recognized the self-righteous jerk who thought himself too grown up for the Sail Inn.

No, I don't think Obama or any other candidate needs to prove he knows how to swig Budweiser. I just found I missed the place, the way it routinely worked the magic of a good bar — starting you and a few other strangers off with the shared appreciation of a cold beer and encouraging everybody to move on from there.

The guy at the jukebox shook my hand when he returned to his seat and introduced himself as Mic. No last name, he said, because, "I'm the black sheep of the family'' (the refrain, by the way, of a pretty good John Anderson song that was once a stalwart of the Sail Inn jukebox).

He and I and Kris Southerland, who sat at my other elbow, found out we had all recently watched relatives struggle to maintain their dignity as they approached death.

"I love hospice. Those people are great,'' Southerland said.

"Jack Kevorkian is a hero of mine,'' Mic said.

Southerland and I talked about the shared experience of watching rock concerts at the old Akron (Ohio) Rubber Bowl. Her friend Sherry Gattinella told me she was trying to write a book and had recently traveled to Malaysia.

"A lot of people might be surprised,'' she said, "but you can come in here and have an intelligent conversation.''

When the time came to head home, I realized I'd almost forgotten to ask my main journalistic question: Could a regular at a bar like the Sail Inn ever be fit to be president?

Southerland said just what I was thinking.

"I wouldn't vote for somebody who lives in here, somebody who's in here five days a week,'' she said. "But somebody who comes in once in a while? That would be fine.''