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East Side, Best Side

Continued from page 3

In contrast to St. Louis, where even the most chi-chi bars have a tube or two tuned to ESPN, non-sports programming reigns supreme in the sticks. At the Palace it was Roseanne reruns. And at the Meppen Tavern, a mossy A-frame near the Batchtown cutoff that stands as Calhoun County's answer to the Nutrock, the TV's tuned to Jaws 2, while conversation among the predominantly female clientele is dominated by the latest plot turns in Days of Our Lives. A short drive down the road at AJ's Bar & Grill in historic downtown Brussels, where a big-ass Confederate flag flies out in front of the mayor's office, all eyes are on the Martin Lawrence vehicle Nothing to Lose (why Tim Robbins signed on to play the sidekick in this crappy buddy flick remains one of cinema's all-time head-scratchers).

AJ's is where Big Red begins his daily rounds. A corn-fed twentysomething whose metabolism has yet to get the best of him, Big Red announces to his half-dozen or so fellow bar patrons that his goal for the night is to "get some pussy." When talk in Big Red's circle quickly turns to tractors, a mustachioed gentleman a few stools down polishes off his 75-cent draft and announces that he's going to go home, lie on his couch and "turn the heater up to 90."

Red reappears a few blocks away at the Wittmond Hotel, a circa-1847 gift shop/bar that ceased functioning as an inn a few years ago. Here he regales a slightly younger, livelier, more feminine crowd with a boozy tale of how he's "been on a 21-day bender," while the bartender bitches about how similar the new Diet Pepsi and Pepsi cans are. At the other end of the bar, probably the prettiest girl in town in town gossips about how one of her betrothed friends was more than a little receptive to the advances of a strange young gent at the Argosy Casino in Alton the other night.

"Who was hittin' on who?" a pudgy middle-aged eavesdropper halfway down the bar inquires, to no avail. Glory days; well, they'll pass you by.

The one establishment in Calhoun County that actively seeks to eschew the television-as-afterthought format is Straight Home, a Hardin sports bar that serves its beer in NASCAR-themed "Rusty's Last Call" glasses and shares a parking lot with Billy-Bob Teeth's world headquarters. By Calhoun County standards, the relatively new Straight Home (not to be confused with the Granite City establishment of the same name) is a yuppie bar. It's also family friendly, as evidenced by a preadolescent girl playing Big Buck Hunter while her father fires down a Beam and Coke.

Must be Dad's weekend.

Stuffed with the prime rib at Mel's Riverdock at the other end of town, much of Hardin retires shortly after sundown. But where there's a Kingdom, there will be characters, which explains why the Corner Tavern just south of the Page Bridge is just beginning to generate steam around eight-thirsty on Saturday. Here the same pool players from the Michael Tavern pass under a giant woodworked set of tits above the front door, intent on continuing the day's hustle.

And as a succession of Kelly Clarkson power ballads dins from a set of speakers behind the bar, a couple of mainlanders take their leave for the night's final ferry, lest they be stranded in a Kingdom not their own.

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