A neighborhood bar is a special place. After 16 months of burrowing in our own homes, afraid of other people while wanting to protect them from ourselves, we’ve perhaps learned the value of these shared spaces.
The simple gesture of a friendly face asking what you’d like has become exotic even as it comes tinged with a whisper of home. The warmth of voices, laughing, chatting, dipping hesitantly back into the unfamiliar flow of casual conversation, billows around the room. Even before touching your lips to the glass and that first shock of liquid cool, spirits are revived.
I turned 50 in February of 2020. I’m not big on birthdays but my wife and brother threw me a surprise party and the venue they chose was Finn MacCool’s.
My father-in-law John Hughes helped make the arrangements. He knew Connie, the owner, and always loved the place, even though he lived over in Great Neck and rarely had much free time to stop in himself. John made a call. Connie cheerfully obliged.
It was a terrific night of family and friends. Faces I hadn’t seen in what seemed like a long time crowded in with faces I see often but hardly ever had time to engage. Between the drinks and handshakes and grudgingly endured birthday backslaps, I recall fragments of talk.
“You hear about this thing?”
“Thing?”
“That virus?”
“Oh, that. Yeah. I feel bad for those people.”
But the talk moved on. Kids. Work. Vacation plans. All the best give and take over drinks and food. Another round. Another round. A neighborhood bar is a special place.
One face missing that night was my father-in-law. John loved rubbing shoulders and bending elbows, but he just wasn’t feeling up to it. Not long after that night, he checked back into Sloan Kettering.
By then, of course, we were all withdrawing. COVID scattered all of us into our respective homes, peering nervously out windows at a poisoned world. Faces could only be seen half-hidden behind a mask or safely pixelated and boxed within Zoom. Finn MacCool’s, like everywhere and everyone, shut down.
Winter became Spring and then Summer. We all adapted. Finn MacCool’s opened as much as it could, like everywhere and everyone. With masks and shields and better outdoors whenever possible we all adapted. We stayed distant behind the masks and shields.
John Hughes passed in August of 2020. He asked for Knowles Funeral Home here in Port Washington, liking that his last night above ground would be just down the block from Finn MacCool’s. His funeral was graveside, limited by crowd restrictions.
And then Fall and the bad Winter and the new Spring and then Summer again. Finn MacCool’s opened back up, like everywhere and everyone. My wife and daughter and I had dinner there a couple weeks ago for Port Outdoors, when traffic shuts down and neighbors wander Main Street like a stroll through the park.
Armed with our vaccination cards, we left the masks in our pockets. Faces and laughter surrounded us once again.
My wife and daughter went back out into the early evening sun while I stayed to pay the check. On my way out a tall gentleman came up and grabbed my hand. “I just want you to know,” Connie said in his courtly Irish brogue, “that your father-in-law was a fine man. A fine man. And I miss him.” We exchanged a few friendly words, standing close and not breaking the handshake.
The chatter from the bar made hearing difficult, but nothing more needed to be understood. The handshake said everything.
A neighborhood bar is a special place.
Douglas Parker
Port Washington
