Tag: #bloodymarys

The Bears Den

The Bears Den

The Bears Den in Naplate, Illinois is a great little dive bar. I mean that in the best sense of the word. It’s an older place and hasn’t been updated in years. On a recent trip back home to Ottawa, we stopped in on a Sunday afternoon for lunch and Bloody Marys. We all should have such a good local place.

Naplate, a town of just over 400 people, probably has more restaurants and bars per capita than any town in America*. They are all small local places. Some more bar oriented, and some more food oriented. All have their devoted fans and regulars from Naplate, or the surrounding area. Over the years we’ve enjoyed several of them, including Casa Mia, Annie’s Hideaway, and of course, The Bears Den.

The Bears Den – It’s Been Around Awhile.

A few years ago, a really bad tornado ripped through Naplate and parts of Ottawa and Naplate were destroyed. Although Naplate restaurants were ordered closed in the immediate aftermath, The Bears Den stayed open providing food for the folk doing the cleanup and damage control. They were giving back to the community in a big way.

A couple of weeks ago we were back in Ottawa to see family and go to a reunion. We spent Saturday night with my sister Tanya and Brother-in-Law Shawn and on Sunday morning were discussing what to do. Cath previously mentioned possibly going to The Bears Den for Bloodies, and we all quickly agreed that was a great idea. It had been a few years since we were able to stop in there and we were looking forward to a good time. Shawn, the smart one among us, checked to see what time the Bears were playing that day. When they are on TV, it’s standing room only at the Den, and we wanted to avoid that. Fortunately, the game didn’t start until 3PM.

We arrived just after noon and easily grabbed a table. Several people were there, but it wasn’t crowded. The Packers were on TV, so there were both cheers and catcalls, depending on what was going on. The waitress came over and we ordered our Bloodies with sidecars. In Illinois (and maybe across the Midwest) a sidecar is a small beer, typically 7 ounces, to go with your Bloody Mary. At the Bears Den, they brought you a can of beer, and a 7 ounce glass. On Sundays, they have “build your own Bloody Mary” for $3, but we opted for the bartender to make ours.

Lunch at The Bears Den with Tanya and Shawn.

Drinks arrived and the Bloodies were as good as we remembered. Our waitress asked what we would like to eat. For me, there was only one thing to order – their Sausage Sandwich. You can have it with peppers, or cheese, or any number of other combinations, but I just ordered it with pickles and onions. It’s like a burger, but made with 1/2 pound of sausage instead. As my buddy Howard says “It rivals the pork tenderloin**as the best area sandwich. The difference? You can order the tenderloin at lots of places, but only The Bears Den has the sausage sandwich.” Shawn also ordered one, while the ladies opted for a BLT and a ribeye sandwich. One of the great things about The Bears Den is they have a decent menu, especially considering the small size of the place and the size of the kitchen.

The food came, and all I can say is, man, I love that sandwich. It was sooooo good. Yea, it didn’t help my cholesterol any, but that’s OK. In fact everyone’s sandwich was good. I think Cath’s BLT was the biggest I’d ever seen, and Tanya’s Ribeye sandwich was great. The table grew quiet for a while as we concentrated on our food. Eventually, we ordered a second round of Bloodies and Shawn had another beer.

Good Food All Around, but Man That Sausage Sandwich!

At some point, our nephew and niece Casey and Ann stopped by with their kids and we were able to catch up with them for a bit, but eventually, it was time to go. Hugs all around in the parking lot, lots of I love you’s, and we headed south to my sister Berta and her husband Jack’s place.

I know it’s a bit crazy to write about a dive bar in the middle of Illinois, when we don’t even live there anymore. Still, it’s good to have things and places you know you can count on. The Bears Den is one of those places. If you are ever near Naplate, I highly recommend it.

Addendum:

  • The “Bears Den” has no apostrophe in it, and I have written it that way throughout this blog.
  • * My friend Howard Johnson notes that Naplate was a factory town (the former Libby Owens Ford, now Pilkington,). The shift workers all converged on the Naplate bars when their shifts ended, keeping them busy 24 hours a day back in the day. That’s a big reason such a tiny village has so many bars.
  • ** One of the great meals you can find in the corn-belt of Indiana, Illinois and parts of Iowa is a breaded pork tenderloin sandwich. They are crazy good and something that many people who move away from the area crave, and always have when they return to Ottawa. If you are closer to Chicago, or in Wisconsin, an Italian Beef Sandwich is just as loved.
Pork Tenderloin Sandwich at The Court Street Pub in Ottawa.
  • The Bears are having a rough stretch in football lately and lost 14 straight games before beating the hapless Commanders last week. The Bears Den remains crowded for their games. In general, the fans are still loyal, but getting restless. One of my buddies, Mark, a diehard Bears fan, sent me this meme after I mentioned we were at The Bears Den for lunch:
Heeheeheehee

Planes, Buses and Automobiles

Planes, Buses and Automobiles

A Day in the Life. (Or, How I spent Fourteen Hours I Will Never Get Back.)

Ever think about the things you do, in order to do the things you want to do? After a wonderful vacation in California over New Years, payback, in the form of a long as hell travel day, happened on the return trip to DC. I freely admit this might be a boring blog, but something compelled me to write it.

The day started around 5:30AM with a wake up alarm. I didn’t fall out of bed, or drag a comb across my head, but I did find my way downstairs and drink a cup (of coffee). I finished packing and then loaded the luggage into Bonnie’s car. I grabbed my day bag and jacket, and climbed in the backseat, leaving the front seat for Cath. By 6:15AM, we were on the road.

Anderson Valley looks a bit different when it’s still pitch black. You don’t see the vineyards, wineries or scenic hills. Instead, all of our eyes were glued to the road ahead, following the twists and turns. There was also a slight fog reducing visibility. The hilly, winding trip out of the Valley to Highway 101 usually takes 45 minutes, but with the darkness and fog, it was 7:15 before we made the highway.

Bonnie had a 9:00AM appointment in Marin County that morning, so she was happy we were along, allowing her to take the HOV lane. In any case, she was a good driver, or we were lucky and traffic was light, or both. We made the Larkspur bus terminal for the Marin AirPorter about 8:35. Hugs and “I love you”s all around, and then Bonnie departed for her appointment. We had the joy of sitting, masked, in a small terminal by ourselves for 40 minutes. In fact, we would be masked for most of the next ten hours.

Masks, masks, everywhere a mask

The AirPorter bus runs directly from Marin County to the San Francisco Airport (SFO). At 9:15AM the bus arrived right on time, and at 9:20 we pulled out. The bus was about 1/3 full, and everyone was masked (required). Traffic remained relatively light, and I’ll be d@mned, we pulled into the United Terminal at SFO right on schedule at 10:30AM. Outside the bus, we took our masks off briefly while collecting our luggage. Then, masks back on, we entered the terminal.

The Marin AirPorter is actually a good way to travel

With Covid going on, United recommends people arrive three hours early at the airport, due to security concerns, longer check in times, and general complications with masking and so on. I figured two hours was enough time, but you never know. Arriving at 10:30, there were two hours and forty five minutes till our flight. Plenty of time. Almost tooooo much time.

Although we already had our electronic boarding passes, we still needed to check one bag. Baggage “self check” was something of a cluster, but 15 minutes later, the bag was gone and we were walking to security.

At security, no one was in line! The checking of tickets and IDs went quickly, but there was a back-up at the final Security screening point. Only one line was open, and it appeared either the gear was malfunctioning, or a new crew was working the line. We just stood in place for several minutes, with no one advancing. Eventually, there was some movement, we were X-rayed, and finally on our way to the gate around 11:15AM. We hadn’t eaten anything yet, and stopped at the first restaurant we came to.

Miraculously, two seats were open at the bar and we grabbed them. A plexiglass divider separated us from the kitchen crew and waitstaff, along with little plexiglass dividers for every couple of barstools. The waitress slid us menus under the plexiglass, we removed our masks and took a look. It was the airport after all, so nothing was cheap, and you knew it wasn’t going to be great. Still, at $17.25 the Yankee Breakfast (bacon and eggs, hash browns, and toast) was a better deal than the bagel and lox at $19.50, so we both became Yankees for the morning. And since it was the last day of vacation, what the hell, we ordered Bloody Marys as well. At $12.50 each, they were practically a bargain. The Bloodies tasted pretty good, and the breakfast itself wasn’t half bad – for an airport, it was actually pretty good. We contemplated a second Bloody Mary, vetoed the idea, and asked for the check. $66, plus $15 tip later, we remasked, and resumed our walk to the gate.

A brief (and expensive) stop at the airport restaurant

It was now about 12:30PM. Fifteen minutes later, they started boarding the plane. For some unknown reason, we had a small bit of luck and had been moved from boarding group 4 to boarding group 2. We boarded early, and settled in for the flight to DC.

Waiting for takeoff…

The plane took off only about fifteen minutes late and the pilot was pretty confident we would make the time up somewhere over the Midwest. I stayed masked for the entire flight, except when sipping on a club soda. Everyone else on the plane stayed masked as well, and no crazies were yelling at the flight attendants about their rights. I did some reading, some writing, but no ‘rithmetic, and then watched Matt Damon in “Stillwater” (which I recommend, if you haven’t seen it). A bit more writing, and we were finally descending. It turns out the pilot was right, and we landed about 8:45PM, 15 minutes early. Amazing!

Let’s all crowd together to get off the plane!

We walked to baggage claim, where a large, crowded mob was waiting for their luggage. All were masked, but there was zero distancing. One guy actually knocked me out of the way, with no “excuse me” or any other words, to retrieve his bag. Then it turned out it wasn’t his bag, and he knocked a couple more people out of the way putting the bag back on the conveyer belt. The serenity prayer* briefly flashed through my brain. Eventually, our bags arrived. We gathered them up, and proceeded to Section A of Parking Garage 1 and our Subaru. Once outside, and in the garage, masks came off.

The drive home was pretty easy, even though a raging snow storm occurred the day before. Major highways were clear, but the local roads, although plowed, still had some snow and slickness to them. We arrived at the Farm at about 10:40PM, approximately fourteen hours after we woke up in Philo that morning. Carmen, our dog, greeted us with a wagging tail, and little yelps of pleasure. We stayed up another hour to relax a bit, and finally went to bed around midnight.

Here’s the thing. It was a looooong day, but it wasn’t a bad day. That is, no bad things happened. The bus arrived on time and didn’t break down on the way to the airport. Our flight wasn’t one of the 20,000 flights that have been cancelled since Christmas Eve. Since we were on a direct flight, we didn’t miss some connection at O’Hare airport in Chicago due to weather. Our flight arrived arrived on Tuesday, January 4th, the day after some people were trapped in their cars for over 26 hours in the DC area, due to a snowstorm. Despite Omicron racing around America, we didn’t catch Covid.

No, it wasn’t a bad day. Still, it was fourteen hours, approximately ten of them masked, we’ll never get back. The trip to California at the start of vacation was of similar duration. It too happened flawlessly. So the price of a wonderful ten day vacation in California? In addition to the dollar cost for the plane and bus tickets, two of those ten days were consumed entirely by travel. In the big scheme of things, a pretty cheap price to see loved ones.

Addendum:

– Yes, Planes, Buses and Automobiles is a play on the John Candy/Steve Martin movie “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”.

– And yes, the opening title, “A Day in the Life” and the line “I didn’t fall out of bed, or drag a comb across my head, but I did find my way downstairs and drink a cup” were inspired by the Beatles song, “A Day in the Life”.

* The Serenity Prayer is a prayer written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. It is usually quoted as: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

The Jetty – A Place Where our Dog Carmen and I can Both get a Drink

The Jetty – A Place Where our Dog Carmen and I can Both get a Drink

I’ve never ever heard someone say “Man, I can’t stand The Jetty”. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It’s one of those places that has found a way to appeal to old locals, new locals, people passing by, and tourists. As a bonus, dogs are allowed on the outdoor deck, which makes it one of Carmen’s favorite places as well. Every town should have a place like The Jetty Restaurant and Dockbar, but many don’t.

Cathy and I have been stopping at the Jetty for the last ten years. It’s on the way to our house at the Bay, and a great place for lunch. Two hours from home (and about 45 min from The Bayhouse), it’s the perfect stopping point.

The first time we went to The Jetty was with friends Pat and Bob, and Becky and Jim. Cathy mentioned to her girlfriends we were going to the Bay, and maybe we could meet them for a drink along the way. Becky said to Cathy “What about meeting at the jetty?” Cath answered “Becky – which jetty? There must be ten jetties in that stretch along the water.” Becky answered “Not a jetty, THE Jetty – it’s a bar”. And so we were introduced to this wonderful beach bar.

The Jetty has a great location on Kent Narrows.

Located in Maryland, just over the Bay Bridge on the Eastern Shore, the bar has a great view overlooking Kent Narrows. In the spring, summer and fall, the outdoor tables on the deck stay full, while in the wintertime, the indoor bar and restaurant fill up. With all of the glass “garage type doors” for the bar, the view from inside is almost as good as sitting outside.

With all of the roll-up windows, The view from inside the deck bar, is almost as good as from outside.

When stopping for lunch, we know a nice selection of cold beers, excellent Bloody Marys or tasty Crushes are there waiting for us. The food is decent, and this being the Eastern Shore, the crabs in the summertime and oysters in the winter are always excellent. Good burgers, fish sandwiches or tacos, a great Crab Cake, and excellent salads are all on the menu. This is bar food at it’s best… If you are looking for something more substantial, there’s always several wonderful seafood dinners on the menu as well… As a bonus, dogs are allowed on the outdoor deck, which also makes it one of Carmen’s favorite places. They always bring her a bowl of water, and if you are inclined, you can order special doggie “meals” off the menu for your fourlegged companion (we don’t). She always enjoys barking “hi” to the other dogs on the deck.

The mental transition to vacation mode starts pretty quickly when sitting on the deck, looking at the water and relaxing with a drink. A beer, or two, along with a sandwich makes that last 45 minutes of driving time to Tilghman pass pretty quickly.

Getting in vacation mode….

I’ve seen bikes, motorcycles, cars, trucks, and one year on St Paddy’s Day, a bus parked outside. Many folk also arrive by boat, docking in one of the slips.

We’ve also met friends there for drinks, or for dinner. It’s not a bad way to while away a few hours on a sunny afternoon. On weekends, they often have a band. Our friends, Pat and Bob live just three or four miles from The Jetty – in Pat’s words – “The Jetty is practically our every Friday happy hour go-to bar. Such a beautiful setting, especially the gorgeous sunsets.“

Every town should have a place like The Jetty, but many don’t. The water and view certainly help, but the way they appeal to everyone, local or not, is what makes the difference for me. I’m glad it’s on our list of local watering holes and places for a meal. If you happen to cross the Bay Bridge on Route 50 heading to the Eastern Shore or the Atlantic Ocean, make sure and give The Jetty a try. If you’ve been making the trip for awhile, you probably already knew that.

Addendum:

– Thanks to our friend Pat for reviewing and providing input for this blog.

– Note – this isn’t an advertisement for the Jetty and I was provided no money (or drink) in exchange for writing this blog! It’s a local bar/restaurant we just really like.