Stories From Westlake Village

"Wounded Knee" and "Medicine Hat" are wonderful names, constant reminders to the lucky people living there that they can be proud. And why not! They live in a place where something important once happened, important enough to name a town after. "East New York" and "New South Wales" are good examples of places with no character and, for that matter, so is Westlake Village. They are bastard names, given to bastard towns without a father or a mother . . . named for something they are not.

In spite of our questionable parentage, we are proudly approaching our 200th anniversary, a short span of time if you're Greek but not if you're American. Americans begin talking about the good old days before the sun goes down. At any rate, we are faced with being 200 years old and something must be done about it.

Westlake Village has little to be proud of on its birthday. There is no lake to be west of unless you count the seepage basin, a fetid mud hole that backs up to the railroad on the south side of town. In the past, when this was natural country, heavy rains and spring melts found their way to this basin with no trouble, and wild geese and ducks made it their home. Not any more. Civilization has built walls and roads, parking lots and supermarkets to frustrate the natural drainage, and so it does the only thing it can, it finds its way into people's basements. This past spring it flooded the high school basement computer room. Everyone wanted to know who was responsible, just as the people who buy houses next to an airport and demand the planes be rerouted. The basin is dry most of the time, but once after a summer storm, Tony Cannon, fresh from a fight with his wife, drove his De Soto into it.

The "Westlake Village Guardian", often referred to as "the paper of the people," was again in the forefront of the affair. (The slogan always made me shudder . . . I told Lucas Crosby again and again it sounded like something hung on a nail in the outhouse.) The "Guardian" has volunteered to locate the oldest building in the village and nail a plaque on it.

Just after the Civil War, Cyrus Shucks bought this land from the surviving family of a pioneering Dutchman and built a farm. He grew potatoes on it and called it "Toad Hollow." It made sense . . . it's a name every bit as meaningful as Medicine Hat. If you fly over Westlake Village in a small plane, you will notice that there is a ring of low hills surrounding it. It made the earth friable and rich with moisture, just right for potatoes, and toads, as well.

The house and farm of Cyrus Shucks would obviously qualify for the oldest buildings in Westlake Village if they were still here. They were still standing when I moved in, but they were leveled in less than an hour by a front-end loader to make way for the circumferential parking lot surrounding the Mall. Our visible ties with the past were quickly bulldozed away and, as a result, few residents are aware there was a time when this place had a history.

Lucas was convinced that our printing shop on Westlake Avenue would now qualify as the oldest building in town. I wasn't so sure. "Whad'ya mean y'not sure?" he bristled. "You gotta be the most dubious person in the world, take my word for it." He put down his dead cigar on which he'd been chewing on for the better part of an hour, stood up, and pointed to the old iron rings screwed into the wall over Stacey's desk.

"Looka that! . . . That's where they tied their horses. This place used to be a stable."

"Look, Lucas, just because it smells like one doesn't mean it was a stable. When I first moved here, this was a machine shop . . . you can't tell the age of a building by rings screwed in the wall."

He relit the cigar and shook his head. Stacey and I were enveloped in acrid smoke. "Well then, wise ass, the ball's in your court. You go find the oldest building in town!"

As a poor scrivener for the "Westlake Village Guardian," it is my burden to defend the integrity of the fourth estate. To do this I must venture down strange and twisted pathways. One of these led me to Timothy Clancy, the proprietor of the "Hollow Leg Saloon." Reporters need fortification for such delicate work.

Tim's grandfather bought a small piece of property from Cyrus Shucks on Toad Road in the middle of Toad Hollow. He built a two-story inn and tavern for the exclusive use of farmers and laborers who worked in the potato fields. It stood alone like a lighthouse in the desert and beckoned thirsty farmhands to come and have an ale or two when day was done. Tim told me many times that I was having a beer in the oldest building in town.

Tim pointed proudly to the polished bar of mahogany that had been built by a coffin manufacturer in Brooklyn. It was fully forty feet long, long enough to accommodate every thirsty potato worker on Cyrus Shucks' farm shoulder to shoulder. Inside, a stair along one wall led to six rooms above the saloon for overnighters. This part of the country has never been particularly puritanical, so what went on in those rooms above and in the bar below should not be a surprise. Back then Toad Hollow was about as remote as you can get, a dirt road running through a field of potatoes. After hoeing potatoes all day, a man develops a thirst for the good things in life.

As the years passed, the Hollow Leg Saloon was flanked by dozens of similar wood frame structures built cheek-to-cheek, and it no longer stood alone on Toad Road in the middle of nowhere. It lost its identity and was left with nothing but a front and a back. As city people put down tentative roots out here in potato country, the old saloon found itself wedged between a Chinese laundry and an Italian bakery. Four of the six interior rooms above were now windowless and unventilated — unfit for human habitation, however temporary. A generation later, Tim's father closed the ceiling opening but never bothered to remove the stairs. Instead he put wooden window boxes containing artificial dahlias on the first five steps.

My relentless efforts combing through our archaic building department and the county historical society's records confirmed the fact that the Hollow Leg Saloon was indeed, just as Tim had said, the oldest building in town. Not a building really . . . just a front wall and a back wall. Lucas was crushed when I told him about it.

"I don't believe it . . . there's gotta be a mistake," he turned to Stacey. "Get me the building department!"

"What's the number?" Stacey asked from behind her bubble gum.

I told Stacey to forget it and then twisted the knife in Lucas' wounded pride, "Furthermore, Lucas, this ancient eyesore you call home was built in 1938."

"But the rings," he protested. Then he fished in his ashtray for another dead cigar. "How we gonna nail a plaque on the Hollow Leg Saloon?"

"We better figure a way, Lucas. If we don't, sure as hell Tim will wanna know why not."

"Y'still ain't gimme the number, Mr. Crosby." Stacey, like a Roman Centurian, waits for orders from Lucas — it is pitiful in a way. A girl with such potential. She will stay at her post 'til the end . . . long after the general has left her standing alone in the field.

The anniversary committee shared Lucas' uncertainty about the fitness of the old Hollow Leg Saloon for such an award. They would have preferred a pre-selected antebellum mansion on Lincoln Boulevard. The Town Supervisor with the high school band behind him and an honor guard of elderly American Legionnaires on the flank would have made a memorable photograph. The occupants would be white and well-to-do. They would have two children and a well-behaved dog. The lawn would be carefully manicured for the occasion, and the evergreens immaculately clipped. The committee would do everything they could, including arson, to keep the Hollow Leg Saloon from being the oldest building in town.

Charlie Gristly was the committee chairman. On a hot, sultry afternoon in August, his burly frame appeared in the open door of the "Guardian." He sidled up to Stacey like a super-tanker on two fat legs.

"Which one is Buschman?" he asked.

Unimpressed, Stacey tilted her bouffant in my direction, "The old guy in the baseball cap."

The upshot was that the committee had thought better about putting a torch to the saloon and, instead, established a fund to buy the old place from Tim Clancy. In turn, it would be sold for a song to the Italian bakery next door and, by anniversary day, they'd be rolling pizza dough in the Hollow Leg Saloon.

"In short, there will be no acknowledgement whatsoever that there was ever a saloon in Toad Hollow. Within a month there will not be one in Westlake Village either." Gristly had an annoying habit of talking as though he were at a press conference. "The committee, in plenary session," he continued, "has unanimously voted to erect a free-standing memorial at the bus station at the Mall. It will be dedicated to the memory of Cyrus Shucks. The Mall has promised to provide and maintain the memorial as well."

"Well, hey now, that's great," Lucas piped up cheerfully, realizing he was off the hook.

"Now all you gotta do is get Tim Clancy to go along with you." I remarked, I wasn't too sure he would, he was one of these Irishmen who take offense without visible cause . . . turn tight-lipped and white around the eyebrows. Before you know it, he's got the shillelagh out.

Gristly explained that Clancy didn't have a chance. He was behind three payments on his property taxes and had four citations from the Board of Health for the condition of his dirt basement where all the beer pumping equipment had been installed and where much of his whiskey and bourbon were stored. He didn't have a ladies room, nor did he have an access ramp for the handicapped, even though he was but one step above the street. It was either sell the place or have it pulled out from under him.

"So it would behoove us," Gristly went on, "to concentrate our efforts on publicity for the dedication of the Cyrus Shucks memorial. We should all be grateful to our friends at the Mall for contributing more than their share to our 200th anniversary." While Gristly was addressing these remarks to me, he was smiling benignly at both Stacey and Lucas. He seemed to be incapable of talking without an audience.

"Cheese, what a windbag," Stacey muttered under her breath as Gristly closed the door behind him.

A contented smile flooded Lucas's face. He was off the hook . . . no plaque to buy and a flowery "thank you" article to congratulate his many advertisers at the Mall. "Well, all's well that ends well . . . mebbe you can write something nice to put in the paper . . . "

I couldn't help but interrupt. "Before you say anything, Lucas answer me this. How's this town gonna get along without a saloon?"

"We don't need a saloon. Maybe you do, but Westlake Village is a sober town — a God fearin' town — always has been. We can do without the few drunks that stagger in and outta Clancy's place."

I took a deep breath. "Let me tell you about saloons — you don't know about saloons, do you, Lucas? How about you, Stacey, you ever drop in the Hollow Leg?"

I looked at the fat-cat smile on the pinched face of Lucas Crosby and decided to tell him the story of The Hollow Leg Saloon. Free standing memorial to the Cyrus Shucks farm! Courtesy of the rental agents of the Mall. The very same gangsters that tore it down to make room for their parking lot! The hell with them!! Poor Tim Clancy, third generation bartender, not only wasn't getting his plaque for the oldest building in town, but they were running him out of town!

"Listen to me, Lucas! It's not that we won't get by without a saloon in town, but this saloon is special. It's been in that same place for 129 years. Tim's grandfather built it just after the Civil War. Tim's father took over and saw it through two World Wars. Even prohibition couldn't shut it down. The Clancys were honest enough to call it a "Saloon." None of this "Bar and Grill" or "Lounge" chi-chi pretense you see everywhere. This is the Hollow Leg Saloon and damn proud of it.

"But the blue-nose prudes in Westlake Village refuse to nail a plaque above the bar honoring it as the oldest building in town! Why I can remember seeing the Rocky Marciano/Jersey Joe Walcott fight there. God knows it's got to be fifty years ago. Tim had the only TV in town then. The beer flowed free, and the smoke was so thick you could hardly see the screen. Once in a while a fight would break out at the bar. A careless word, someone's opinions belittled or a candidate for town clerk would try to make a speech. Before you knew it, the sleeves were up, and Tim would be in the middle of it with his grandfather's shillelagh.

"Then there was the night Willie died. Right there in the Hollow Leg saloon. He spent a good part of his life on the second stool from the front door, and I can't think of a place more fitting to leave from than that particular stool. Just far enough back from the door so you didn't get caught in the draft when it opened. It was a Sunday night and Dallas was playing the Steelers. With Dallas ahead by 14 points midway through the third period, Willie, with a bourbon in his hand, suddenly slid off his stool. He didn't fall; he righted himself, placed his left hand over his heart and threw his head back. It seemed to the rest of us that he was going to make a speech or sing for us as he had so often before. Then he skipped sideways to his right, passing his bar mates one by one until he came abreast of Lotte. She had dropped in for a snort — her back was bothering her. Well, Lotte had her black-handled cane ready, like she always did. She belted him with it and Willie went down.

"It was pretty close to the end of the third period before Tim dialed 911. They don't respond lickety-split in Westlake Village under the best of conditions, and by the time they arrived that Sunday night, Willie had stiffened a little. He had a death grip on his bourbon glass and rather than pry it loose, we let him take it with him to emergency. When O'Dell claimed the body next day, he found the bourbon glass in his property bag. Later, O'Dell told me that he put it between Willie's feet at the bottom of the coffin. A gentlemanly gesture, Willy would have approved. All is not lost, so long as a man can take a glass with him.

"The Hollow Leg Saloon is one of the few drinking establishments in the world that doesn't have a mirror behind the bar. Tim is sympathetic to the feelings of respectable drunks. As a third generation bartender, he knows more about them than anyone I know. He will hitch up his apron a bit, look you straight in the eye and say, "A saloon is not a bar, this is the last stop. The guys that come in here — they don't wanna look at themselves in no mirror." The rationale is commendable and the more you think about it, the more you have to agree. What could be sadder than to see your wasted face surrounded by the bottles that wasted it and the faces of your friends beside you.

"The last stop," he says, "next step down is sittin' on the sidewalk with your back to the wall with a bottle of wine in a brown paper bag. I don't make no pink ladies, no brandy alexanders — they're for people who wanna be seen drinkin' —the Hollow Leg's for the men who can't help drinkin'."

"It is Tim's conviction that a man must keep his pride as a member of the family of man. One with weaknesses, granted; one with unkept promises to himself and his loved ones, acknowledged; yet one who can still sit on a stool like a man and find his way home when he's told he's had enough. Tim will do that . . . "Go home Leonard, you've had enough!" You won't get that consideration in a cocktail lounge — they'll let you drink until your money's gone, and you've got no idea where the hell you are. Drunk as you may be, they'll let you drive off alone in your car. Tim doesn't have a parking lot . . . you walk in and you walk out or else you don't come in at all.

"Unlike his grandfather, Tim allows no young unaccompanied ladies in the Hollow Leg. Even young couples are persuaded to "drink up" and leave as quickly as possible. Like Angelo's barber shop, this is a saloon for elderly drinkers who wait in vain for the "Iceman." From time to time you may find an elderly lady at the far end of the bar, away from the windows. Lotte, for instance, with her chronic back problems can find solace there in the late afternoon — it's gin for Lotte. Alice Sims in her flowered hat drops in three or four times a day. On her way to the laundromat or the convenience store, she will duck in for a snort of country bourbon. Mama "Flo" will come in using the pretext of "having to use the facilities." She will then belt down a scotch or two before the john has stopped flushing. Tim really doesn't have a "Men's" or a "Ladies," he has a "Toilet," and he keeps a key to it tied to a giant Budweiser beer coaster on the door. Ladies are not harassed in the Hollow Leg. Tim would not permit it, and his customers are dedicated drinkers, not Don Juans.

"No man is a willing teetotaler. He will drink deeply until something stronger than his habit comes along to stop him. A iron-willed spouse, a threat of excommunication from the church, or a final warning from his physician might slow him down. But if he's a drinker, nothing will stop him short of whatever it was that stopped Willie. Men have been drinking at the Hollow Leg Saloon for 129 years. Their presence can be felt, and if you stop in the street outside and listen carefully, their voices can still be heard. Every morning, except Sunday, Tim props open the door with a brick and turns on a giant floor fan that stands at the rear of the bar. Fragrance and history are blown away. Pigeons fly up in panic and early morning walkers cross to the other side.

"It is a sanctuary, Lucas, but even more than that — it's a living sanctuary. Where will we go, Lucas?" Stacey's eyes were moist with tears but Lucas looked at me blankly.

I had been talking for God knows how long. It was a subject I guess I felt very strongly about. I looked up at the clock and saw it was nearly five. Stacey was drying her eyes, her nose was running, and she blew it vigorously. Never once did she stop chewing.

She shrugged herself into her coat and made her way to the door saying, "Cheese, ain't that the pits! Cheese, that's awful! You're a creep, Mr. Lucas!"