thurcday, octcbcr 23, 1070
Third Dimension
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Cy iUcrfs Young
"How'dyou like to have that son of a bitch smsAed
over your head?"-jo&gt bar patron to photographer Jim
Williams, carrying a camera.
The "redneck bar" ranks with the dumb jock and the
crazed philosophy professor as one of the last great col
legiate myths.
Stories of brutal stupidity and inbred bigotry clash
with tales of how kind-hearted and funny the common
man is in his natural environment. It seems strange,
though, that most of these stories are told in the
traditional college hangouts downtown. If these bars are
so good, why don't students go there themselves? Hell: do
these bars even exist?
Driven by these questions, I set out to find the one bar
in the Lincoln area which I could file away as Redneck. I
wanted a bar where, in the words of Esquire columnist
Harry Crewes, The smoke was so thick you could cut it
up and make work shirts out of it." The kind of bar you'd
be embarrassed to take a woman to. What I wanted was a
home away from home.
If anyone can be considered an 'expert" on rednecks
it is James Lee, literature professor at North Texas State
University in Denton. Lee has studied rednecks and their
folklore for over 20 years.
A redneck originally was a poor Southern farmer who
did his own field work and acquired a sunburn on the
The Lcde made me very nervcus. A rather Isrge
snd ssxly friend cf mine fasd sagested it, adding:
"It's red red. I shnost got the shit kicked cat of
me there." Great, jast what I need a brawl.
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back of his neck, Lee said. Later the term came to apply
to all Southerners with "Archie Bunker" ideas, he said.
Today it has been broadened even more.
In a telephone interview Lee laid down the guidelines
for a real redneck bar.
"When you walk in, the music should tip you off,"
he said. "If it's Way I on Jennings and Willie Nelson you're
in with pseudo-rednecks. If it's Porter Wagner or Dolly
Pardon you're in a redneck bar."
The beehive hairdo never went out of style among
redneck women, Lee said, and the great redneck bars in
Texas sell only beer.
Other less famous, local "experts" talked of the in
ability of redneck bartenders to mix drinks and the fre
quency of fights (both male and female) in bars like the
Taylor (Nebr.) Dance Hall. Unfortunately, all the ex
perts said, there are no redneck bars in, or around,
Lincoln. Or at least, none they have ever heard of.
So, there was nothing left for me to do but to find
some on my own.
"Come to Council Bhffs on a Saturday night
IH take you to apkee where well see
some sights czHsd the PeMce."
-Taken from the "Palace Car Boogie" by Johnny
Id and the Latent Libido Band, a shcrt-lred local band.
Why not?
Down the road from the Joker, a teen handout ia
Council Bluffs, a tiny, whits building with a snull, unlit
sign slouches ia a cute testimony for urban resewsl. In
side fee Palace the working class rif-rzf cf Council Bluffs
gathers to drink and dance. On any weekend evenin
men, fat women with Jsmdaged limbs and low-rent bikers
polka and twist to the perverse musical miscegenation of
, Lowell and the Westerners.
Lowell, a faded country singer from Florida, sings the
standard Country-Western numbers from the '50s. His
band works and drinks hard but they never seem to find a
common key. It doesn't matter; their job isn't to play
good music, but music with a strong, beat. The kind of
music that allows fast, free-form dancing which saps agres
siveness and induces states of pleasantly befuddled
exhaustion.:
Despite the dark surroundings and the grim-looking
patrons, the Palace is a friendly bar. The waitress
remembers you, Lowell wants to jam and the bikers want
your roommate to join their club. No one seems patho-
logically aggressive or at all wise-just very drunk.
The Palace is a city redneck bar. Its customers are fac
tory workers and dime-store clerks. The men take pride in
their short hair and strong arms. The women smoke too
much and laugh a little too loudly. A nice enough place,
but hardly the stuff from which legends arise.
Perhaps the dassic examples of this genre exist only in
the small town, where the rednecks first arose. With this
in mind, two companions were shanghaied, and a trip into
the wild hills of Saunders county was undertaken. I
In the small town of Raymond, the Ding-a-Ling forced
us to stop. From the outside it looked promising, a white
frame building with wrought-iron bars on the windows.
On the walls of the entryway auction notices ind dance
band advertisments were posted.
Inside, a good country song about rednecks, trucks and '
beer was playing. Nailed to the wall, a notice ordered
parents to keep their children at the table-perhaps a sign
to the reverse would be more effective. The Los Angeles
Rams were playing on TV, although no one was watching.
Perfect redneck, except for eight shaggy-headed youths
seated at one end of the bar. The Ding-a-Ling isn't
redneck: it's community, a place where little kids and
their parents and farm boy hippies can stare at the TV or
at each other, trying to think of something to do.
We drank up and headed north for Memphis. Memphis
locks more like a movie set than an actual town. A hand
ful of houses and an elevator cluster oh the side of a hill
near a stream. Outsfde of town, the government built a
. dam. Why? I don't know. But it's there, and the lake
behind it draws boaters and fishermen to the town's two
bars.
The bars, Don's and Beer Lunch, are a contrast in time.
Don's is a cement block structure, filled with loaves of
bread and a fishing tackle, that was built after the lake's
arrival. Beer Lunch probably pre-dates Wounded Knee
. (the original one).
Inside Don's three or four families were drinking and
eating supper. A drunk screamed at his children while his
wife played pool. The waiter, a slender man wearing a
blue sweater and slacks looked like he belonged in a salon
rather than a saloon. -
Inside Beer Lunch, the woman who owns the place and
a grizzled old man sat watching a Rock Hudson movie. A
radio from the 20s and a row of dusty knickknacks lined
V' the bar..
The eld nn stared at us for avails and then mumbled
at the TV.
"Whsi?"! said.
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Pod sharks they isfght not be, but patrsns cf &e
so-csfSed "redsecSt' fear such as &!s ens Lhe sir
billiards.
"That dam leaks, you know. If you got a big boat
you ain't gonna get it in." .
"Don't own a boat."
"That's good, cause the dam leaks. What was the price
of corn today?" -
With the Beer Lunch Bar we knew we were on the right
track. A quiet country bar, with friendly, down-to-earth
people. It is, unfortunately, too good a bar to be labeled
redneck. It's in a class all its own.
Flushed with the by-products of the afternoon, we ca
reened back to Lincoln. Rumor had it that several likely
bars were within our own fair city after all, such as the
Stockade, the Tack Room and the Outpost, but looming
ominously over them all was the Lodge Tavern.
The Lodge made me very nervous. A rather large and
surly friend of mine had suggested it, adding, "It's real
red, I almost got the shit kicked out of me there." Great,
just what I need a brawL
The Lodge bar on O St. is as close as I want to come to
a real red bar, if it is indeed one.
Unlike the Palace, the Lodge has an air of despondent
boredom which hits the moment you walk in. The dour '.
- waitress, the toothless bartender and the customers all
look as though they'd rather be somewhere else and are
angry about being anywhere at alL Bare lightbulbs, a foot
bail gme on the tube and a pool table; no entertainment
in this funhouse. ', :: -'.-...--. . . - .
The trouble started after Jim took the pictures. A 6 fti,
20CMb. redneck whose picture had been taken lumbered "'
over to the table and growled.
"You always click at people in bars?" Things looked
bad. This cro-rnagnon and his friends could easily cause a
very nasty scene. Luckily, Jim's cool, polite evasion con
fused the poor schmuck, and he wandered away
muttering, "Nice kid, nice kid, real nice kid."
We left, and if I go back in, I'm taking my camshaft
and elements of the 5th Panzer division along for
company. After all, drinking and fighting are compatible
social activities.
The redneck bar exists mairJy in the minds of those
who seek them, I concluded. Like the whooping crane,
the hiding places of the redneck are frequently reported
but seldom verified. Besides, on the way back to town I
saw a girl who locked like Tatum OTJeil stllig rnrps to
the Redseck Bar Country.
FeUcm stsdnts who spent thdr chil-hocds ia rarcl
Ncbraa dince hills. -