James Etheridge

Sometime last fall, Jackie found on Hulu the entire series of America’s favorite neighborhood bar, Cheers. We have watched it starting with season 1, episode 1 and now are about halfway through number 11, the final season. Watching the series, where the regulars are an odd mix of folks from all walks of life who seem to spend most of their waking hours at Cheers, I cannot help but think about some of the neighborhood places we frequented in the days of our youth.

The first one where I was a regular patron was Mother’s Pub, which was located at the back of South DeKalb Mall. It opened in 1974 and was originally called The Sports Page. About a year or so later, the owners sold out to a guy named Bob Davis, who renamed it Mother’s Pub because his mother had loaned him the money to buy the bar. Mother’s was a small place, long and narrow with a bar along the right-hand wall and tables along the left. There was a jukebox just inside the front door to the right and a dartboard to the left. At the back were two pinball machines, a bumper pool table and a nineteen-inch TV on a shelf up in the corner. Mother’s became a regular hangout of former students of Walker, Gordon and Cedar Grove high schools and thrived for about five years. It was our regular meeting place on weeknights or before heading out to the clubs on Friday or Saturday evenings.

There were several other neighborhood bars in the area whose regular clientele were from the area high schools. Bud’s Picnic in Snapfinger Woods Plaza at Wesley Chapel and I-20 was a hangout for Southwest DeKalb alumni. While researching for this blog, I ran across the obit of Bud Bales, the owner of Bud’s Picnic. Bud passed in 2013 and the obit compared his place to Cheers, “where everybody knows your name.” And that’s how it was with the neighborhood bars at that time because most of us had grown up together. I visited Bud’s occasionally and one night my buddy Bobby and I dropped in for a couple of beers. We left and walked a few doors down to a nightclub called 4000 East. It had a bandstand, two bars, a dance floor and, on that particular night, a wet t-shirt contest. This was in 1976. The contest got out of hand and the wet t-shirts came flying off. That was all great and a lot of fun until two DeKalb County police officers happened by. They saw through the door what was going on, came in and broke up the party. As soon as they came in there was a mass exodus for the door, Bobby and myself included.

The Keg on Glenwood Road was the spot for Columbia, Avondale and Towers folks. I only went in The Keg a couple of times but it was a great place with a cool atmosphere. The first time I was there was with a group of friends. We sat down at the bar and the bartender walked up to take our orders. It was my old friend Lisa. Our parents were close friends and she and I were good friends growing up. Her family lived in South Florida and moved to Atlanta when she and I were about thirteen. They stayed with us for a couple of months in the summer of ’69 while her dad was finishing the move, setting up his new business and searching for a house for the family. Lisa went to Columbia, but we hadn’t seen each other in a few years. I had heard she tended bar but didn’t know where. We both looked at one another and burst out laughing. I ordered a Bud, she opened the bottle, set it on the bar in front of me and said, “That one’s on the house.” I didn’t get to talk to her much that night because she was working, but before we left she handed me her phone number and said, “Give me a call sometime.” Lisa was and is a very attractive lady and my friends were staring a hole through me. “Who was that?” one of them asked as we were walking out the door.
“That was Lisa.”
“How do you know her?”
“Oh, she’s an old friend,” I said. “We used to live together.”

One thing everyone had in common, from our neighborhoods to well beyond, was Stone Mountain on Sunday afternoon. Carloads of youngsters would cruise the roads around The Rock and all congregate at the parking lot on the back side of the mountain. When the lot filled up, people would start parking along the curbs on the side of the roads and there was a steady stream of cars crawling by. It was inevitable that you were going to run into someone you knew, had known or hoped to get to know better.

There was a big field across from the parking lot and it was always full of couples and groups throwing Frisbees, sitting on blankets or dancing to transistor radios. There would often be a football, softball or soccer game going on. People would be sitting on the fenders and hoods of cars with the radios or 8-track tape players blaring. No matter where you went on Saturday night, Stone Mountain was the place to be on Sunday afternoon.

Times change, of course, and things move on. Mother’s Pub closed sometime in the early Eighties. The Keg was still open in the mid-Eighties, but I heard it had begun to attract a pretty rough crowd. Bud’s closed in 1991, but Bud opened up another restaurant called Bud’s Eastside Café. Bud’s old place in Snapfinger Woods is now a dance studio. The Keg is a church. Mother’s Pub was not so fortunate. It is now a trash bin with a big dumpster inside. These days Stone Mountain has a litany of restrictions, which are strictly enforced.   But back in the day and in our memories, they were our places to meet. They were our watering holes, our launching pads, our sanctuaries and our place in the sun. Back in that place and time, each one was the place you could go “where everybody knows your name.”