I am a bartender’s granddaughter. My maternal grandparents, now deceased, owned and operated a tavern called the Hop Inn in Buffalo, New York. When my grandfather died in 1990, the establishment closed and the Hop Inn ceased to exist outside the memories of those who had once stepped inside. I don’t often think about these beer-scented roots of mine, but when I do it is with the utmost fondness. It wasn’t much, but it was magic for me back when I hadn’t a clue that having a baby (or 7 year old) in a bar might be frowned upon.

My grandparents, Henry and Charlotte Rzeszutek, operated the Hop Inn for forty years. The tavern sat on an unassuming corner at the intersection of Koons and Empire, a mile east of Buffalo’s Broadway Market, in a then predominantly Polish neighborhood. The tavern was fully wood-paneled and had a long bar with deep red, vinyl-covered, spinning barstools that my sisters and I would twirl on with glee. Beyond the main tavern room was another larger room that contained a coin-operated pool table and additional seating that was never filled and beyond that room was a narrow commercial kitchen that also was rarely used but still smelled of french-fry grease. Behind the bar where my grandparents worked there was a large white refrigerator, myriad bottles of whiskey and other spirits, an ancient cash register, several beer taps, and an assortment of snacks. There were a half-dozen tables in the main bar area as well, and my grandparents kept us amused wiping tables, emptying ashtrays, and washing the barware while soap operas or the evening news played on the high-mounted television in the corner. We were well rewarded for our service with bottles of orange and cherry soda, which we would combine in highball glasses to create orange-cherry sludges, bags of Troyer Farms puffcorn, and red pistachios that would leave our fingers dyed for days. The tavern’s regulars, treated us like queens of the castle while we played at working. When the familiar sound of the ice-cream truck began to grow louder as it cruised down the street from Broadway, they would hand my sisters and I a couple dollars so we could buy swirl cones. As an adult, I suppose I might have judged these men for frequenting a bar in the middle of an ordinary Wednesday and perhaps I might have questioned their relative level of sobriety, but as a 7 year old I saw them only as kind, thirsty men who found us beguiling.

My grandparents lived and raised two daughters in a small apartment above the tavern. During the day, they took turns working the bar. My grandmother opened it at 10 a.m. and my grandfather closed it at 2 a.m. They were always together and yet not. Their flat consisted of a small, eat-in kitchen, two minuscule bedrooms, one bathroom, and a living area with a sofa and my grandfather’s coveted recliner where he would sit and do word search puzzles. Their laundry was done in an attic accessed via the bathroom. The attic smelled of laundry soap, clothes drying on lines, and old wooden beams. It was laden with all manner of past family treasures waiting to be discovered. My mother and her sister shared a bedroom barely big enough for the full size bed they slept in. Their room was off the living area and was made private only via a flimsy, accordian-style vinyl curtain that closed with the distinct click of magnets. Although there was a side entrance to their upstairs apartment, there was also a “secret” entrance, which my grandparents used. This was the most enchanted thing of all. In the room with the pool table, there was one wall that hid the same stairwell you could reach from the outside entrance. To gain access, you pushed hard on one side of an unmarked wall panel. It would swing in to reveal the metal-edged stairs leading up and the door leading out to the side yard. When the door swung shut again, you would be concealed from the outside world and heading into my grandparent’s secret lair. Tell me what child would not be bewitched by that spy-novel-level sorcery.

Although the Hop Inn was torn down decades ago and now only a grassy plot of land remains where it once stood, I am grateful for my time spent there when visiting with my parents or spending an overnight with my sisters in the tiny room where my mother used to sleep. My grandparents worked hard and weren’t wealthy but, oh, how they spoiled us in any and every way they could. If orange chocolate and Slim Jims were currency, I’d have quite the investment portfolio now. I may not have gone away to summer camps or family cabins or taken any holiday trips to Disney or the ocean, but most of my happiest early memories originated among the lingering cigarette smoke and spinning barstools at the Hop Inn, where I was both an indispensable, part-time, pretend employee and an adorable and cherished granddaughter.

**As an aside, perhaps it isn’t surprising my favorite television show of all time was Cheers.

Woody: “How would a beer feel, Mr. Peterson?” Norm: “Pretty nervous if I was in the room.”