There was a time when a neighborhood bar was either next door or no more than two streets away for residents of Wheeling Island, and Kathy Fry and Gary Maxwell Sr. visited most of them during their younger years in the 1970s.
Fry, whose maiden is Mowder, was usually on foot when trekking from place to place since she grew up on the north end along the back channel of the Ohio River, but Maxwell, who now owns and operates Bernie’s Bar in Clearview, navigated one of the only Exit O’s in the country when he’d stop by joints like the M&K Lounge or Mr. Z’s.
A draft? 25 cents. A bottle? 50 cents. A quart? 75 cents. A mixed drink? Maybe a buck, according to Maxwell.
“Quarts were pretty popular back then, so if you had a bar, you had to have quarts available at least for the Budweiser and Miller drinks,” he recalled. “But everything was much cheaper for the bar owner back in those days. I would sell quarts for 75 cents and buy them for 50 cents apiece. That was pretty good back then.
“There’s a lot more involved nowadays than there was back then,” Maxwell explained. “The machine money wasn’t split with the state then, you didn’t need so many permits for everything you do inside the bar, and bar hopping isn’t something people do anymore. Those things have made it tough these days.”
That’s why, Maxwell believes, so many of his old haunts are only memories today.
“Everyone wants to open a bar, and everyone thinks that because they have had drinks at them for years, they can operate one,” Maxwell said. “But too often, once some of those folks get involved with it, they figure out that they can’t operate the business the way it needs to be. They have great ideas, but if they aren’t business people, they’re going to get in trouble usually sooner than later.
“It’s all financial, and that’s why we see turnovers all of the time like what’s happened on Wheeling Island. Now, in some cases, bars were successful, but they closed because there was no one left to run it after the parents needed to retire,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of good places close because their kids had to move away from the Valley for a better job somewhere else.”
Harbor Lights
Kathy (Mowder) Fry
“When I was a kid growing on the Island, that place was Gasber’s, and I remember going there for a fish dinner, and it was only $1. Can you believe that? Well, they had turkey dinners on Sundays, too, and that was only a dollar. You got turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and cole slaw, and Friday nights it was the fish, French fries, and cole slaw, and again, for just a dollar.
“That was back in the mid-’60s if I’m remembering correctly, and then the place became Harbor Lights after I had gone to West Liberty State College in the early1970s. When I graduated in 1971 from Wheeling High School, it was still Gasber’s, but when I came home from school on some weekend I really didn’t go into Harbor Lights because me and my friend went to other places. I may have gone in there only a few times.”
Gary Maxwell
“I went into Harbor Lights from time to time, but it wasn’t a regular stop, and I have no idea why. Every time I would go in there, it was a great time with a lot of people I knew from some of the other places. Harbor Lights was a classic neighborhood bar for the people who didn’t care to go into the Merrymint because of the crowds and the noise.
“The Merrymint was right next door where Abbey’s is today, too, so those people took up most of the parking spaces, so the owners of Harbor Lights really did depend on that walk-up traffic. It was a bar and not a place where they would have those kind of dinners like what Kathy is talking about.”
Mac’s Holiday
Fry
“I didn’t spend much time at Mac’s because, at that time, there weren’t a lot of people my age who went there. On the few occasions when me and my friends did go there, it was to eat, mostly.”
Maxwell
“Oh, I remember Mac’s Holiday on Wheeling Island because I bought Mac’s on 16th Street in 1972 from Mac and Amy McGinley. Mac’s Holiday on the Island did very well, and it was a great place for a lot of years. They had great food, and terrific people went there from the neighborhood, sure, but also from all over Wheeling.
“It was really a great neighborhood bar, and those two did it with help from their kids as long as they could. Mac and Amy really took care of their customers, too. I know a new place (Eden Family Restaurant) has opened at that location (135 Virginia St.), and I wish them well, and I hope they have better luck than some of the bars that have tried it there, especially with this interstate construction. But these guys are concentrating on the food, and I believe that’s a good thing.”
Tom’s Finish Line
Fry
“I think I may have gone into Tom’s Finish Line once, and that was because the people on the north end of the Island tended to stay on that end while most of the people from the south end did the same thing. I’m not sure why that was, but I remember one of the reasons why was because not many of us had cars we could drive.
“We were mostly on foot, and there were times when we would walk over the Bridgeport Bridge so we could go to some of the bars over there.”
Maxwell
“I did go to Tom’s Finish Line, but I have a lot more memories from inside that building when it was The Lightning Rod. That was Chucky Joseph’s place, and he named it that because he was struck by lightning inside Wheeling Island Stadium when he was a football coach.
“When Tom Salem owned it, and it became Tom’s Finish Line, I don’t think much changed on the inside except for some of the stuff hanging on the walls. Now, I have no idea how long it has been that Godfather’s place, but the most fun I had in there is when Chucky owned it.”
The VooDoo Lounge
Fry
“The VooDoo Lounge is where me and my friends would go on Sunday nights, and, to this day, I don’t know why it was always Sunday nights, but it was always a lot of fun. There were great bands, and it was a great place to see other people. All of my friends went there, too. It wasn’t Friday or Saturday nights like a lot of people would expect. It was always those Sunday nights even though we either had to go back to school or back to work the following morning.
“When I was in my early 20s, I spent all of my time downstairs because that’s where the bands were and where we would dance for hours. The bar was against the back wall, so that opened up that large room, and you could go to the VooDoo back then all by yourself and run into a bunch of friends.”
Maxwell
“I’m not going to lie … . I went there for the dancing and the chicks. I don’t remember it being on Sunday nights, but who knows at this point. Maybe a few times it was Sunday nights because me and my friends knew some girls who were going to be there.
“I couldn’t tell you about the food that they served back then because we only went there, again, for the dancing and the girls. The VooDo was a really popular place back in the 1970s, but I haven’t been in there for a long time, but I understand they don’t use the basement like it used to be used.”
The Tropicana
Fry
“I went to The Tropicana mostly for the great breakfasts that the place served and because of the banquet rooms that they have on the second floor of that building. We would go there sometimes after being out for the night, and sometimes it was in the morning, but the food was great no matter what time I ate there.”
Maxwell
“I do remember drinking there, of course, but most of my memories focus mainly on the wedding receptions that I attended there. It was a very popular venue for those kind of events.
“I don’t recall ever getting the late-night food because me and my friends usually went to the Swing Club, Howard Johnson’s, or Elby’s back then. That was a thing a lot of people did in Wheeling back then. Go out, drink a bunch of beer or mixed drinks, and then go get the breakfast buffet before heading home. It worked out well.”
Mr. Z’s
Fry
“The owners of Mr. Z’s were wonderful people, and Mike and his deceased wife, Donna Fedczak, were great friends of mine for a lot of years. My middle sister, Sara Jo, was the flower girl in their wedding, in fact.
“Once they had Mr. Z’s, they got really busy, and I didn’t get to see them very often, and I think I only went there a couple of times because of the stage of my life back then.”
Maxwell
“Mr. Z’s was a great bar, and I was good friends with Mike, too, and I tried to stop over there pretty often. At that time, I was owning bars, too, but I would go there to see Mike because we became friends.
“They had pool tables in the back room and pool was really big there, and that’s the only part of the bar that’s still standing. I had good times there; that was a good bar.”
