Reflections: About A Bar In West Allis Named Luddy's

Everyone has a childhood story to tell about hanging out with their Dad; I must have a hundred, but here's one about a Saturday visit to a bar in West Allis, WI in or around 1958. The bar is long gone, but not the memory. 

It smelled like grease and graphite like some giant machine that I imagined being made next door at the Allis Chalmers West plant. I could imagine old Allis himself sitting up on one of them bar stools and guzzling Schlitz while fifty men stood in line to see him shit grease and belch up them grindings. 

Hell, their ain't no such person as Allis Chalmers, Luddy says to me and pours me another orange soda. KitKats went to a dime, forget that one, not much for your money, better off with warm nuts in the fancy white cup from the machine that sits on the bar, bet they didn't make that machine in Milwaukee. 

I saw the Old Man break an egg into his beer, climb up on a bar stool and jump down with both feet, pounding the floor, shaking the place like a mighty wind that blew down our neighbor's barn once a long time ago on a day so gray that it too must of been the same color as my imaginary machine. 

I always wondered what he did when he was young, never saw him in anything other than a suit or maybe the pants from an old suit along with a slightly worn shirt that was almost always white or maybe sometimes light blue, can't imagine he came here, drank beer and hung around with the likes of Luddy, or worked next door on those machines. 

What'cha do that for Dad? I asked still thinking he was drunk or lost his mind. Bet you wouldn't find any of these guys jumping off their bar stools, but nobody seemed to notice or mind. What'cha do that for dad? I asked again a little louder….. 

Break the yolk! says Luddy.