(PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The MOST popular evening at the Alpha was always Thanksgiving Eve when folks would grab bar seats as early the 11 a.m. opening and be wall-to-wall for hours. The same took place in 2019, but what about this year? If so, there’s a brand new, masked environment to encounter when entering this famous – and infamous – address.)
I grew up in Woodsdale about four or five blocks away from Carmel Road. That’s where the Minute Market was, and the colonel’s confectionary, too, and for those from the area Lorraine Terrace, we usually used the “the path” to travel to the intersection with Elm Street.
That was a time when a mother could send her son to a store armed with two one dollar bills and a note that read, “Please sell to my one son one pack of Tareyton 100s. He is allowed to use the extra quarter for a bottle of Coke.”
On the way to the Minute Market, you had to pass the Ye Olde Alpha, an establishment that had a bar through one front door and a restaurant through the other. You could smell the burgers from the outside, and on occasion you could sneak a peak of the retirees bellied up to the bar while faking to use the pay phone just outside the tavern’s glass door.
Right of Passage
The Alpha remained a popular place for more than 80 years, and for the kids who were raised nearby, it was where you planned to consume your first legal beer.
The Millers owned the Alpha until a sudden death forced the family to place the property on the market. Once it was purchased, the menu was expanded and the chili was changed, but the place remained a mainstay in the city’s social scene.
Thanksgiving Eve? If you wanted a seat at the bar, you had to be there when the Alpha opened at 11 a.m. The same was true on Christmas Eve, but you had to leave at 6 p.m. so the employees could be with their families.
Those traditions continued up until it was shuttered by the Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department in January. Soon after the property was purchased at auction by Wheeling Coin, plans were in place for the necessary renovations to correct issues with standing water, odor, and sagging floors.
I walked in the day after the former owner walked out, and that is when I learned – and reported – the new owners encountered much more than they anticipated. Not only did all the plumbing and electrical infrastructure need replaced, but inspectors also discovered an old tree stump had been assisting with stabilizing the structure.
Oddly Barren
Not long after the assessments of the buildings were completed, decisions were made, but something called COVID-19 conquered the world, or so it seemed, and caused the extensive construction to move along at a slower pace than expected. Pre-pandemic there was a possibility for an end-of-August opening, but the date was delayed a few different times.
During my initial visit, the Moose was gone and so was the jack-a-lope and the other taxidermy. The cabinets that once featured those Elvis Presley whiskey bottles were gone and so were the barstools, tables, and pool tables.
It felt buck naked.
The tables were taken from the dining room, too, and that’s when I notice there was torn and frayed carpet in several areas, and the same was true in the banquet room, as well. The historical framed photos of the Woodsdale neighborhood were leaning against the walls, and Susie or Fran weren’t running from table to table.
And that was weird, too.
My second visit, though, amazed me because the bar at which I sat for more than a pair of decades was gone and a backhoe had dug down to the surface of the planet below Ye Olde’ Alpha.
Walls were gone; floors, too; and you could see what you never had before.
Gone for Good
Yes, seriously, a backhoe.
I’m not sure how the workers got the machine in there, but the moment I saw the absence of the bar where I had my first legal beer, my mind went directly to the Bob Miller-era cheese sticks and beer mustard. Those six battered rods of mozzarella gooiness slathered with that spicy condiment were my crack snack after 11 p.m. in the 1990s.
All of the abandoned, grease-layered kitchen equipment had been dismantled and trashed by mid-March, and the kitchen’s floor was being removed. The old, wooden wall/railing that had separated the bar from a high-top dining area had been stripped down to the framing, and the tile on which patrons had played pool for years was badly cracked and missing in places. The majority of the ceiling tiles had been extracted along with most of the electrical wiring, and temporary lighting was in place.
The Alpha as we once knew it is gone for good, but what is new is pretty special, too.
