The Tender Bar

Moehringer recounts how he smuggled McGraw out of his grandfather’s house and away from Ruth and bought him a plane ticket so he could return to school in Nebraska. Now the sole target of his aunt’s tirades, Moehringer quickly decided to move, renting a small room from a friend-of-a-friend. Unfortunately, this home was short-lived, as he was required to share the space with a free-ranging parrot and his roommate’s mentally unstable mother.

After crashing at his friend Bebe’s for a couple of weeks, he returned to his grandfather’s house, where he found his aunt Ruth somewhat calmer.

As always, he was reassured by his proximity to Publicans, where he continued to spend much of his time. Moehringer then recounts the tragic death of Steve, the owner of Publicans. He describes how his crowded funeral was full of men who had considered Steve a mentor, father figure, and patriarch. Throngs gathered at Publicans and drowned their sorrows by drinking. Moehringer recalls drinking until he felt sick, stumbling back to his grandfather’s house to sleep and then returning at dawn to the bar to drink again.

Finally, the author watched an old family video his cousin Sheryl gave him, and he realized that all the virtues he considered manly—persistence, determination, integrity, guts—had been personified in his mother all along.