I was intrigued in the first paragraph of the prologue to "The Tender Bar," in

which Moehringer shares the reasons why he and others in his community

frequented a neighborhood bar: "We went there for everything we needed. We went

there when thirsty... and when hungry, and when dead tired. We went there when

happy, to celebrate, and when sad, to sulk... We went there when we didn't know

what we needed, hoping someone might tell us... Most of all we went there when we

needed to be found." 

By the third paragraph, I was hooked: "Long before it legally served me, the bar

saved me. It restored my faith when I was a boy, tended me as a teenager, and

when I was a young man the bar embraced me. While I fear that we're drawn to

what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I

believe we're defined by what embraces us. Naturally, I embraced the bar right

back, until one night the bar turned me away, and in that final abandonment the

bar saved my life." 

And from hereon I was never disappointed in this touching memoir of a young life

spent among the locals in a corner bar in Manhasset, Long Island. Moehringer was

raised in a raucously dysfunctional family which included a struggling,

emotional single mom, his grandparents, Aunt Ruth and her six kids, and Uncle

Charlie who tended bar at Dickens, a local pub. To escape the cacophony

atmosphere of the family home, J. R. spent much of his early years with his ear

glued to the radio searching for The Voice - the moniker J.R. assigned to his

father, a local DJ who was often heard but seldom seen. 

When he was about ten and finding it increasingly hard to locate The Voice on

the radio, and his household was growing louder, and his mother was becoming more

desperate to make her way out from under her family, J.R. was sent to Dickens to

buy cigarettes for Uncle Charlie. J. R. had never been inside Dickens - after all,

he was only a kid - but he found within its smoky depths the thing he had been

searching for all the years he had been spinning that radio dial. Here were the

men, characters all, who were to influence J. R. - to guide him, counsel him,

shelter him, teach him, raise him - throughout his youth and into adulthood. They

were his comfort when The Voice disappeared; they were his refuge when he

struggled as a scholarship student at Yale; they were his counselors when he

experienced the heartbreak of romance; they were his unconditional friends after

his disastrous first foray into journalism as a copy boy at the New York Times. 

Finally, it was unexpected change that sent J. R. from the shelter of the bar

(by now called Publicans) to pursue what has turned out to be a very successful

career as a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and correspondent. 

J. R. found his way back to the bar in September, 2001, after nearly fifty people

from Manhasset died in the attack on the World Trade Center. The bar had since

changed hands and none of the old gang was there, but in a very poignant ending

we meet another young man who had found solace in the shelter of an American

pub. 

Moehringer does not romanticize the bar scene. He hung out with drinkers,

gamblers, brawlers and, in fact, shares his own dark days when he used alcohol

to fight his demons. But at the heart of this memoir is a celebration of

ordinary people who embrace one another - flaws and all - to create a community.

Told with quiet passion, warmth and hilarity, this memoir is one of the best. 

Review by Carolyn Kretzer, October 13, 2005