The Great American Saloon Series/A Requiem for a Tavern
Royko, Mike
to sacrifice either quality or access, there is little we can do to cut costs. The Carter Administration should therefore be prepared to take the consequences of greater inflation if it...
...I don't think he understood what he was getting...
...Stanley slapped the reddish wood...
...In the cocktail lounges along Michigan Av., the martinis were starting to flow...
...You know it wasn't designed for any grocery store...
...Martin The Alternative: An American Spectator April 1977 25...
...I laughed at him...
...The Puerto Ricans go in their own places...
...So did Mayor Anton Cermak, an anti-Prohibition hero...
...Mayor William (Big Bill) Thompson came in with the local cigar-puffers...
...Stanley was explaining why, after almost 70 years in his family, the corner tavern was being shut down at the end of the month...
...A Pulitzer prize winning columnist for the Chicago Daily News, Royko is author of Boss: Richard J . Daley of Chicago...
...Look at it, the cigar counter, the package cabinet, they're mahogany too...
...Also mahogany, with ornate carving, pullout wine racks, and one of those huge mirrors that movie cowboys are always throwing things at...
...Men with lunch pails and accents came in after work and ordered their nickel shots and nickel beers...
...Or the singles bars, for that matter, with their strenuous games...
...Medical costs have been rising at an irritating rate, and we oughtto limit them if we can...
...That was 70 years ago and you could buy a good brick two-flat for that money in those days...
...Ed...
...By the time I pay for my license and dram-shop insurance, it costs me almost $2,000...
...The costs of pediatric care are relatively small and the benefits comparatively great: children have fewer chronic and incurable diseases than adults, and they can probably benefit more from preventive measures...
...but catastrophic care is by definition the most expensive kind of care, and to limit its costs, it might be best to follow the suggestion Martin Feldstein made several years ago in the Public Interest: i.e., to couple catastrophic insurance with fairly high deductibles varying according to income...
...Senator Javits and Representative Scheuer have introduced a bill calling for comprehensive insurance for children and p r e g n a n t mothers...
...Some dealer called me from Kentucky...
...If the Administration wants more comprehensive insurance, it might be best to limit it to children, as proposed by Theodore Marmor of the University of Chicago...
...So many of the people are old, living on their pensions...
...Mike Royko knows this well...
...One might even say that our health care today is a bargain...
...but health, as any grandmother will tell you, is just about the most valuable thing in life...
...Look at this ancient cash register...
...Most of us are healthy, after all, and it is hard to imagine how lucky we are to be relieved of the pain and the constant threat of death that have afflicted men, women, and their loved ones for most of history...
...When my father opened this place, the bar cost $3,700...
...The ad described the bar: 26 feet long, solid mahogany, built by Brunswick in 1886...
...Look, I put an ad in for all my fixtures...
...they see it as a foot in the door for a complete national health insurance plan, but it might be wiser to think of it as an ultimate goal...
...The young people move away as fast as they can afford to...
...A glance down the empty bar would have been enough: " J u s t look around the neighborhood...
...It was 5 o'clock and dusk...
...He took out a copy of an antique-dealer's magazine...
...With the author's permission we republish it...
...I told him to start talking at $8,000...
...It's too bad history can't be put in an ad because Stanley's fine mahogany bar has had a lot of it spilled across the top...
...But in Swastek's Tavern, 1859 W. Chicago, there were only Stanley the owner, a friend, and the sleeping watchdog...
...When John Swastek, his immigrant father, opened the place, a 3-cent-a-ride streetcar clanged past...
...When the police knocked out the sociable card games...
...In 1973 be wrote "A Requiem for a Tavern" for his column and later collected it in his volume, Slats Grobnik and Some Other Friends...
...In those days, a good tavern was a political center...
...They sat at the tables and played pinochle, banging down the cards until their knuckles were swollen...
...A candidate could get more votes by buying a round than making a speech...
...Some famous political bellies bellied up to Swastek's mahogany...
...He said he saw the ad and he was willing to take it off my hands for $1,200...
...So I think it's time to lock it up...
...People want to do more than just drink in a tavern...
...The back bar was in the ad, too...
...It rings up quart, pint, halfpint...
...The Carter Administration should therefore be prepared to take the consequences of greater inflation if it insists on some form of national health insurance...
...THE GREAT AMERICAN SALOON SERIES & Mike Royko A Requiem for Tavern Like old-time politicians, old-time saloons are fast slipping away...
...Look at the English pubs with their darts...
...Some people say TV killed the tavern business," Stanley said...
...In the meantime, perhaps we should worry a little less about health costs...
...and the most it can hope for is that the form it chooses will be less costly than others...
...The eager young glands were beginning to congregate in the singles bars on the Near North Side...
...You know what did it...
...And if he bought enough rounds, he could make a speech and the customers wouldn't even laugh...
...There seem to be good reasons, for example, to adopt a catastrophic insurance plan, such as that proposed by Senators Long and Ribicoff...
Vol. 10 • April 1977 • No. 7
