Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: I actively seek the social company of jerks, misfits and garden variety jaghoffs, figuring if I attempt to avoid them, life will impose them on me anyway. And I'd at least like to have some say in the matter.
As I drove by what to me will always be the Pond in Lake Trobe, Yesterday I did so to pay my respects. The bar had become Lucky Bees had suffered a devastating fire and. And the building could not be saved. It was being demolished.
My office had been above the pond from 2007 through 2015.
That was year the day that Dave Carfang, one of my all time hall of fame best buddies, sold the family bar the Carfangs had been running since, oh, I think 1953.
Oh, if those walls could talk.
If those walls could talk, I thought they'd probably tell a joke in a pirate accent arrangement. ARR.
Dave was always telling pirate jokes. And there are more of those than you think.
I was once asked to describe the appeal of such a throwback bar. And as it is with any great tavern, the appeal is the people who are sitting next to you. The Pond had some of the liveliest regulars of any bar I've ever frequented, and I've been frequenting bars since the fourth grade.
I said you can walk in there most any time of the day or night and sit next to someone who is adept at the art of conversation.
And they were all regular Joes, six of them, conveniently named Joe.
My wife once asked me what the hell we talked about in that bar for so many long hours.
I told her we talk about sports, politics, and how different our lives would be if we went anywhere where women went rather than get swept up in the misty throes of sentiment. I'm going to share with you the post I wrote the day the Pond closed.
These are the last words I'll ever write from the Pond.
Let me start that again.
These are the last words I'll ever write from the Pond. The stakes are high, so this had better be historic.
Here goes.
Fourscore and seven years ago, Dave Carfang's grandfather brought forth this bar.
Well, that's. Wait. That sentence contains some factual errors. Let's skip over some stuff and go back to just seven years ago.
The birth of our darling new baby daughter meant our charming little home on Fred Rogers Way was getting too crowded. We needed bigger digs.
But because we were human and naturally resistant to disruptive change, we didn't want to move far.
We found a lovely house in the woods just a mile up the mountain.
The house was more spacious but lacked an obvious workspace where I could have the isolation I find necessary to write.
Back then I was doing mostly magazine writing and conjuring Book Before Proposals, and I was teaching creative nonfiction at a Pittsburgh university where I often told students blogging was a waste of time.
It doesn't pay, so why would anyone do it?
I was getting promising reaction to several book projects and was confident about my professional prospects. Val suggested I looked into getting a small apartment.
I talked to one bar owner friend and he said he had a place for $250 a month.
It seemed steep, really. I didn't need that much.
So I shared my predicament with another bar owner friend and feel free to speculate how different my career would be if I didn't have so many friends who own bars.
$250. I've got a place upstairs I'll give to you for free.
That was Dave, and not wanting to take advantage of him, I shrewdly counteroffered $150 a month. That's how what would become the happiest epoch of my professional existence began to evolve.
Understand It's a mighty slim sample. I've had only three full time jobs in my entire adult life and one of them was at Pizza Hut.
In fact, I haven't had a job since 1992.
Whether or not this is good, this is Whether or not this is a job is up for you to debate, but doing so what I do every Let me start again.
So whether or not this is a job is up for debate, but doing what I do from above the pond has been the very best.
Look closely at the picture above and you'll see me waving out the window.
I've been so happy here. I think that shows in the blog, a nearly 1500 post compendium whose history and character are indelibly linked to this great neighborhood tavern and the friends who come here to eat, drink and work.
In 2008 things were tanking.
Freelance writing was becoming very unsatisfying and often was dependent on unfair circumstances.
I started a blog because, gee, I needed to do something. When I came to my office, I use quote marks because this has never felt like an office to me. It's always felt like a little boy's tree house or fort.
I decorated the walls and ceilings with keepsakes no wife would abide in her home.
It was a great place to put up all the art the kids gave me.
Everywhere I looked was a reminder of something I loved with all my heart.
Now my heart is feeling empty because the walls are barren.
I spent the last week tearing the place apart, ripping down the pictures, the drawings, the kiddie keepsakes. They were presented with so much ceremonial distinction.
Eviction notice says I have to be out by tomorrow.
So be it.
I later wrote that evicting me from the pond was like evicting Elvis from Graceland.
Back to the story Moving the contents of even a shabby little office deciding what to keep and what to pitch is a stressful undertaking.
See, in some ways, my office has become like my presidential library. I kept many old clips and magazines from over the years in the vain belief that someday they'd matter to someone.
Of course, now I believe the only things that will matter to anyone are use all the crayons and this blog so well crafted essays from prestigious publications I had preserved for decades had diminished in value. I pitched nearly all of them what hurt the Most, tossing a four slot toaster sized stack of 1000 National Enquirer articles into the township recycling compactor.
It felt like setting fire to 10 of the most interesting years of my life.
But I tried to look at it through the eyes of my children, who, upon my eventual demise, will be burdened with sorting through all the crap.
Would they really be interested in reading the 1998 story I wrote about under the headline, your pizza toppings reveal what kind of lover you are?
I hope the stories they'll want to most fondly remember are the ones I tell I sold the refrigerator, the filing cabinets, the shelves, the bookcase, the toaster oven, gave old Joe the rocker where we once gave parental comforts to the precious little ones who always matter most.
Most of the rest will go into basement storage where it'll remain untouched until we, years from now, pitch it all during the next stressful move.
I have a new place about which I'll write next week. Spoiler alert. It's the Tin Lizzie. It may be temporary, but it will be Spartan. All I really need is my laptop, my Bosewave radio, a table, a printer, and my squeaky old chair.
Hell, I've thought to advance the name I might have to advance the name of the blog to two days to Amish.
I've been so touched by the warmth and concern of so many friends who, reacting like me, being evicted from my office means I'll somehow be homeless.
They've offered to share spare rooms, a garage space, advice and good wishes.
Eviction is part of the closing formalities. Bar ownership will transfer, or so I hear, sometime in August.
We're all anxious. No one likes change, I say let's embrace it with cheer. Maybe things will involved. Maybe things for all involved will flourish. Maybe the new owners will make necessary changes that will stabilize this beloved landmark. Maybe Dave will find he has a whimsical talent for painting landscapes in bowls of fruit.
Maybe next year's next chapter will be like the finale of Mad Men, where at the most trying hour, every character found satisfying alternatives. Alternatives that in many cases surpass the status quo.
Everyone but Betty, who, spoiler alert, dies of brain cancer.
So now let's not be Mad Men.
Let us go forth and greet these changes with confidence that things will be better.
Thank you, one and all, for making all these many years of happy hours truly happy hours.
And let us together highly resolve that this bar under which was once my office shall have a new birth of soulful conviviality. And that the good times and memories of the pond may by the pond, for the pond shall not perish from this little corner of Lake Trobe.
How's that for historic?
[00:08:41] Speaker B: I'm Chris and I'm nostalgic for days
[00:08:43] Speaker A: when phones used to be phone shaped.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: Leonardo da Vinci was a true genius. His understanding of the prerogatives of anatomical diversity led to the creation of enduring works of art like the Mona Lisa. Few know that he had an idiot brother who understood none of that. His name was Fred da Vinci. Calling our mortal passages the circle of life is cruelly misleading. In any life, there's going to be starts and stops, wicked turns, right angles, left angles, and completely minds that go off the map. It's more like the trapezoid of life.
Nostradamus is famous for using a visionary mind to predict the future.
Someone with a keen sense of smell who uses that to predict the future is a nostril domus. I'm confused about the common phrase doing time. If you're incarcerated, isn't time doing you? I think I'm going to call my next book a New York Times bestseller. That way, if anybody ever asks, hey, have you ever written a New York Times bestseller? I'll be able to truthfully say, yes, in 2026, I wrote a New York Times bestseller.
Or maybe I should just call it an NY Times BSer. I'm Chris, and I've been thinking and no, I didn't have to pass a drug test.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: Rodale. I've been thinking, getting great reaction to that and I'd love to see it thrive and I hope you have a great weekend.
