Columnist John Katsilometes: A sobering celebration of taverns

Monday, April 30, 2001 | 8:16 a.m.

John Katsilometes is the Sun features editor. His column appears Mondays. Reach him at kats@lasvegassun.com or 259-2327.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Fact.

He polished off his final draft in Philadelphia. Fact.

He lived in a tavern at the time. Also fact.

At least that's according to the National Licenced Beverage Association, which has canvassed America the Beautiful with the celebratory reminder that May is National Tavern Month.

(Shake yourself, Otis. May starts tomorrow.)

We quote from an official NLBA's official news release, which (due to a dearth of imagination at the NLBA) was not scrawled on the back of a cocktail napkin:

"During the Revolutionary War, Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys planned raids on British position, including Fort Ticonderoga, while dining and enjoying licensed beverages at the Catamount Tavern in Bennington, Vt."

I know what you're thinking: How proud I am of the unshakable spirit and camaraderie of our young fighting men, and I wonder if that's where they got the name for the pencils I used in grade school.

Perhaps inspired by the dollar bills so often used to tip tavern personnel, the NLBA also invoked the spirit of Honest Abe:

"Abraham Lincoln was said to have operated a tavern early in his life and his wife gave birth to their first child while living in a room at the Globe Tavern in Springfield, Ill."

Sounds like an 1800s sitcom. Honest Abe walks into the Globe, the barkeep calls out "Abe!" (Laugh track.) "What's the address today?"

"Four score and seven beers ago ... " (Laugh track).

As for Jefferson, he was said to have lived at the Indian Queen Tavern (and now I know what I'm wearing for Halloween). Little did we know that at least half of the figures gracing Mount Rushmore boast a tavern lineage.

"My country 'tis of thee ..."

The value of taverns can also be measured economically. The NLBA states that taverns employ more than 2.25 million workers (20 percent of whom have the nickname "Rusty") and generate more than $130 billion in business activity. That "activity" includes "wages, payments to suppliers and others, and economic activity resulting from those payments."

That's nice and vague. It sounds like what Tony Soprano says when somebody asks him about his job: "All I can tell ya is I get my (expletive) money from wages, payments to suppliers and others, and economic activity resulting from those payments. Capiche?"

Really, we owe so much to our rich tavern heritage. Consider the lives that could have been devastated if it weren't for the womb-like comfort provided by the local watering hole.

TV is peppered (pickled?) with such characters. Norm from "Cheers" might have ended up a lowly accountant, pathetically drawing a regular paycheck and forced to experience a relatively contentious-free marriage to Vera. Barney on "The Simpsons" might have had no choice but to put his considerable singing talent on display, onstage or on recording, rather than being free to regale his tavern mates with goofy stories and gastric emissions.

So the next time you're at a local PT's or Roadrunner and spot a tavern industry supporter hunched over a bar, his face ashen and eyes shot with red from a hard day's night, give him a big hug. He probably needs it.