1301 2nd Street
“Horses have ridden through here, motorcycles, bicycles. There’s been everything through here,” Larry informs me. I eagerly grasp the overpriced, digital tape recorder that defines my role as the clueless student. Larry’s handlebar mustache perches neatly below his wire rim glasses giving him the look of a local, but his nonchalant responses to my badly organized questions mark him as more than just a local, but as a true Merrimaker veteran. Turns out, after more than 20 years, he has worked at the mellow bar for almost as long as I have been alive.
Built in the 1920’s, this quiet neighborhood bar is one of the few establishments that lays claims as a Baywood Park original. Walter Redfield, the first wealthy entrepreneur to exploit Baywood Park and Los Osos, discovered the sandy haven on the south end of the estuary behind Morro Bay after leaving a boring party in the previously defined township of Morro Bay. Boots and Spurs, the first incarnation of the bar, occupied the rural corner lot, and appeased the hunters and hell raisers of their needs of all things alcohol until 1963. Little is known about Boots and Spurs besides that it sported many a hunter’s fresh kill from the green hills that surround Los Osos and Baywood park. To prevent mountain lions, coyotes and foxes from eating their game, the hunters would bring the recently shot animals into the bar with them.
When Louise Holmes and her first husband bought the business in 1963, the most significant change they made was the name. The young couple wanted to give the bar a new identity with its new ownership. Louise herself explains the search for the name: “The real estate agent, we were talking about names, and she suggested, ‘Well, you want it to be merry, right? How about the Merrimaker?’”
Nicknames are a popular theme at the Merrimaker. Upon mentioning the Merrimaker to local hardware store, bicycle shop, and liquor store employees, a chorus of nicknames arises, varying from the Marriage Breaker to the Widow Maker to the Baby Maker. Inside, almost every bartender or regular has a nickname. Wacky Jackie, Insane Jane, Scary Larry, and Roy the Barber frequent the linoleum floors and the red and green, tattered stools. The nicknames foreshadow a greater theme: a sense of humor. All around, artistically drawn signs proclaim the normal bar rules, but in a distinct and witty style. Adjacent to the pool tables, a sign begins: “Attention Sharks: for those of us who missed golden/sharing rules that day in kindergarten, official rules are as follows.”
“Dive bar” on wikipedia.org shows a photograph of the Merrimaker’s aged marquee. Not only is the quiet and warm neighborhood icon an enjoyable place, but it really is the perfect example of what a good dive bar should be. Drinks are cheap, although not like the old days. In the early 60’s, a beer would cost between 25 and 35 cents. In modern times, the prices have climbed a bit, to around three dollars a beer, and are rarely consistent between bartenders, but remain below those of the larger, upscale bars. Drinks asked to be made strong are made far too strong, in the typical dive bar fashion. Many days, the smoking porch sees more people than the actual bar. Nascar-modeled fluorescent lights dimly illuminate the two pool tables in the back corner. An occasional shortage of pool cues forces players to share a cue or two between the tables. Knotty pine paneling lines the walls. However, what truly marks the bar as a dive is the enormous collection of photographs covering the walls, going back to the 1940’s with photos of Boots and Spurs.
“There are ghosts all over Los Osos,” Jackie tells me. She has worked here five and a half years, and the only way I can really understand her is when I play my record of our conversation back at half speed with the volume as loud as it gets. She is known as Wacky Jackie. The bar’s staff stays close knit, and knows that life is about living, not creating ridiculous drama. To this day, when Jackie cleans the mats behind the bar, she claims Warren Holmes, Louise’s late husband, re-appears as a ghost and swings from the NASCAR lights over the pool tables. Louise agrees that Warren haunts the Merrimaker during cleaning time.
“That might be Warren, saying you didn’t clean that enough.” Louise’s eyes grow as she tells about the man who seems to be her favorite of four husbands. “He was a working sun of a gun and everybody liked him.” Louise assures me that “he was overboard on it. One time I sent him back to Nebraska to visit his folks and when he came back, the first thing he did was to bitch because the bar wasn’t kept clean enough. He was a fanatic at that, and he did it himself.” Warren never hired any outside help to clean the bar, he simply did it all himself. While the bar now has hired help to maintain its cleanliness, Warren never gave up, and the entire staff feels that he will continue to swing from the quintessential lights until the bar closes its doors for good.
One clear and cool January night, my girlfriend and I rode our bicycles the mile and a half around the edge of the estuary from official Los Osos into Baywood Park. Our goal was to simply escape homework, college drama, and our normal weekend routines with a visit to the Merrimaker. Cycling along the un-sidewalked streets, down Palisades, over to 3rd, then around the bend and down to 2nd, we realized our little escape would land us there on a weekend night. We casually entered the building, same as many times before. Suddenly, a yellow, red and green blaze blinded us. What was this all this commotion? Bright lights? Loud music? As our eyes adjusted to the bright room, we made out the usual gang of characters, albeit surrounding a microphone, halfway through “Tuesday’s Gone.”
Before this, we had spent about 4 months frequenting the local dive, but only on weeknights. I liked to browse the classic book exchange, alongside the front wall, hoping for a copy of George Orwell’s 1984 or James Joyce’s Ulysses to appear. Cat liked to play old classic rock songs on the jukebox. We both fell for a good game of pool on one of the two pool tables, neither one of us making all our balls in without a minimum of 15 shots from the house cues. Despite all our previous Merrimaking, I had never honestly imagined what would actually happen in the bar over the weekends. Karaoke. Good old fashioned, made-in-America sing along. The explosion I witnessed was very real, and highly invigorating, but involved no more fire than what the singers could spit through their smiling mouths and growing goatees. The fireplace in the corner radiated an initial heat, the singer at the microphone with his entourage of back-up vocalists churned a second heat, and an overwhelming positive vibe palpitated personal warmth within the bar. The power mixed with the multi-colored and oddly new stage lights, all reflecting off the knotty pine walls right into the eyes of my un-expecting face.
How had Karaoke so magically transformed the local establishment into something I had never before seen or experienced, let alone imagined? According to Louise, in 1999, the Merrimaker stopped hosting live shows and live bands.
“Well we haven’t had musicians for quite a while. They got so loud that the neighbors were calling the law constantly.” Louise describes all of this in such amazing detail I cannot believe her age, at 84 years old, and still living only 10 blocks away on 11th street. “It got so that they had to close the doors, so we just have karaoke instead, everybody’s a part of it, it kinda works better. For this particular establishment.” Neighbors only a few short feet away were tired of the loud noise at such late hours. The price to host a band had begun to rise, and the crowds would get rather unruly. A group might charge $700, and with the need to pay bouncers at the door who would charge the faithful customers a cover, live bands did not fit in with the typical swing of the modern Merrimaker week. Karaoke, however, offered an alternative. The bar could retain its no-cover-charge way of business, and stick to its original plan of simply being a place everyone can enjoy.
Cat and I sat in front of the roaring fire in the brick fireplace, facing the rest of the bar, forcing us to realize we were half the age of the average patron. After a few minutes, the only non-Anglo in the place, a heavy set, Hispanic man with a twinkle in his eye as though he wants to be either a best friend or a best enemy, approached us with an overflowing notebook. He explained the song list, and encouraged us to go sing something. Neither Cat nor I are shy, but the level of talent we had observed intimidated us. After at least an hour debating which song to butcher while dodging the multi colored lights that made me think back to bad high school theatrical productions, I decided to sing “Man of Constant Sorrow” by the Soggy Bottom Boys. Floundering through the first stanza of the song, a sudden half-dozen characters appeared, surrounding me, all singing the same song. Rather than sit back and laugh at my rather public expense, a good number of fellow customers simply did what they always do, and chimed right in to help me get the old-timey words out. By the final chorus of my song, there were more people singing with me than there were sitting at the bar. This mark of a fun, friendly atmosphere is a Merrimaker original. It reflects the bar’s history, as well as Louise herself.
“It’s been good for me.” Louise’s sense of thick-skinned optimism has combined with a mind sharp as only four decades of sobriety can hone. “Even though my husband passed away, and I was left with this place, and a lot of people bet against me, the reason why I’m still here is I got 38 years without drinking. I celebrated last night.” Going into our interview, I had no idea what to expect with the lady who has owned the Merrimaker for 44 years. However, I was pretty sure 38 years of sobriety would not cross the agenda. Hearing about her four marriages, her pan-American migrations, her times singing with random bands in Michigan, and owning and working in not only the Merrimaker but another bar in Manhattan beach, Louise surprised me. The main idea she left me with was one I never would have expected, and certainly one that does not help her business any. She explained to me: “I’ve been in the AA for 38 years. I got out of the hospital [for tuberculosis] and back in the bar, and looked behind at those bottles and said, if there’s anything in any of those that’ll improve my life I’ll go back to it, and I haven’t had a drink since. Thank goodness I don’t do that anymore. It’s been a blessing, really. Otherwise I would of never made it. Got outta that, being hooked on booze.”
She is careful not to tell me to stop drinking, and I eventually got the feeling from her gentleness that she understands the differences between alcoholism and casual drinking. The irony of her story-- taking over a bar after a messy divorce, only to quit drinking, then following her dreams of surviving with the bar-- bests anything I’ve read at Calpoly. It is not usual or expected in any way that a divorcee will drop drinking, then surround herself with alcohol, and come out ahead. Then again, Louise is not a usual person. She looks at me with a smile, satisfied with her health, her successful business, and surrounded by friends. This is the Merrimaker.