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| Ice House |
I woke early and stepped through the high grass and sand near Brewer’s Stadium. For three hours I waded up Menomonee River, one mile of water filled with spring refuse from the thaw. Plastic bags floated past, their shiny logos of Sendik’s and Lays, Sara-Lee and Wal-Mart, turned over and over by the current.
It wasn’t beautiful. Rivers seldom are this early in the season in Wisconsin. But it was enough to be out, to fly fish on a strong river and hope for something. That, and there’s a metaphor in it, somewhere.
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| Ice House bar |
So, out of the river I went, toward Ice House (4238 W. Orchard St.), only a few blocks down the street.
Dirty is the best way to describe it, but it sounds so negative and nasty. Dirty are the glasses the beer is served in. Dirty is the bar top they’re served on. Dirty are the people, caked in the dust of labor, smelling of sweat and a day of work.
This is a Wisconsin bar, the type of bar I grew up in; the type of bar I learned to drink in. It is built on the working class and the working glass. There are no frills of fancy, nothing unpronounceable and no exotic food to be eaten. The tap runs cheap at $2, the condom machine cheaper at $.50.
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| Ice House seating |
Things in the bar are numerous and odd: a pool table, many cherry machines, a mounted Northern Pike, nine TVs and only one in HD, small placards reading things like, “God Gave Us Beer.”
When people from out of state inquire about the drinking habits of Wisconsinites, and whether the thirst in this state is greater than the cheese it produces, it’s undoubted that it stems from places like the Ice House, places for drinkers where drinking is done. It’s solidified our place in the country as hearty folk who outlast a winter with glass and keg.
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| Ice House games |
It’s a cliché, yes, and it’s a generalization, but both have small truths that they’re produced upon. (I mean, our baseball team is the Brewers for christ’s sake). So too does this one. These are the bars in every small city of this state, outnumbering churches and frequented more often, religiously inhabited by farm hands and factory workers, by the blue collared and kind. Bars like the Ice House have fans that have never used Facebook, people who have no need to read reviews of a place they’ve grown, through years of labor, to love.
I can’t begin to explain what a place like this means to me or how it’s shaped the way I look at this state and the people I encounter here. And I doubt I have to. Those reading this understand it as I do, have seen these bars outside of Downtown Milwaukee and have seen the people within them. They’re the people of the land: the hard workers and hard drinkers, the men and women who forgo an office in place of the outdoors, or in place of a factory, or in place of any number of places. And, speaking of and in generalities, they are kind and quick to buy, and almost always offer a seat next to them.
Out of the river and into the street is not a fair comparison, most will note. That I hung up my slacks and took down my waders for a sport many deem “elitist,” for a half day of parting the current that carried plastic bags made in factories, doesn’t compare to a difficult day of making those bags, doesn’t compare to a difficult day of making anything, let alone a lifetime. But I feel I at least earned an hour among the people I grew up around, an hour on a barstool reserved for the salt of the earth.
