Mark George
Google
The Circle…The Way I Remember It…
The Circle Towne Tavern, or The Circle for short. It’s located in an alley, and it doesn’t have a sign, no indication that it’s even a bar. Half the mystique of the place is that lack of signage, the other half is discovering it and, once you’ve been there, keeping quiet about it.
It’s the first place I really drank alcohol, so of course I have fond memories of it. I discovered it in the Summer of 1983, I think someone drug me over there after we had been at Mac-n-Joe’s. To get into the bar you had to climb a short flight of concrete steps that were barely noticeable when you went in, but could become a real obstacle upon your egress.
The jukebox, yes, an actual juke box that played 45 rpm records, had a wide variety of music on it, including Jimmy Buffet and Billie Holiday. The proprietor, Jay Harris, hand-picked those 45s from his own collection, and he was usually on hand, drinking his usual diet coke and rum.
I only remember a couple of the crew from those days. There was Chuck, with his smartass empty pitcher remark, and Lonnie, who was drop dead gorgeous, but tough. The manager always kept the happy hour shifts for himself. Good money, that. Then the second tier was always the women bartenders. They do make more money. I can’t tell you the number of times someone would come through the door with a big smile on their face only to have it turned upside down when they saw that the bartender on duty was a guy. I bartended there years later, and I never made much money in tips, but I was always Johnny-on-the-spot.
At that time, back in the 80's The Circle was as close to a public house as we’d get here in Oxford. Of course, you don’t see real families coming in to the bar, but the regulars are a family of sorts all their own. More than one family in Oxford has found itself playing second fiddle to The Circle. I remember it as a melting pot of souls. The regulars were mostly blue collar during happy hour, but later the mix began, locals in the early evening and college students later at night.
A lot of the regulars were in construction, and the first stop after work was The Circle. Elwood P. Dowd said it well before Tom Waits; “No one ever brings anything small into a bar”. That’s not to say that the regulars were sad sacks, no, far from it. They were eccentric, and sometimes surprisingly stereotype shattering. Take Mose for instance. He was all about men’s sports and betting, but who would have guessed that he had a soft spot for figure skating? Mike, who managed to somehow get a DUI “on a bicycle”. Eldo Beal, oh Eldo Beal… Legendary, well, mythic at the very least. Ms. Holiday, whose favorite line was “If I’d wanted a flipping lemon I would have asked for one. Give me a lime, damn it.” P.D. who could go on for hours with stories and a smile.
I learned to play darts there. Yes, it was the place to play darts, unless you count The Balcony, but I’ll leave that story to be told by one of you, dear readers. Jeff Georgiady taught me to play darts, and introduced me to the term “dart oil”, you know, for the elbow. Okay, so it’s just alcohol, but it works.
Smoking in the bar. Can’t do that anymore. It was a staple back in the day. I miss that cigarette machine they had. You never knew if it would work, or if you would end up getting a mystery pack, you know the one, not the one you bought.
Roll Call: If you worked there, chime in!
