LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Every morning around 8:30, Rick Wessling arrives at a serenely quiet Barret Bar, makes some coffee and gets to work. There is money to count and books to balance, but mostly there’s a floor that needs mopping.
Not just any floor. It’s a terrazzo floor, poured when the bar was built in 1947, and Wessling has mopped it nearly every morning for the last 50 years. It’s a relationship at this point, and even his mop has a name: Alice.
“I love mopping my floor,” he said. “I know each and every little crack and bobble in this terrazzo.”
The history of the Wessling family and the Barret Bar is a love story, pure and ongoing. It’s one of Louisville’s oldest bars but, more impressively, has been in the Wessling family since 1949 while all of its contemporaries have changed hands many times over.
Wessling, 58, will have run the Barret for more than 40 years come April. He was initially a partner with his father, Jim, before buying it outright in 1986. Jim bought it from his brother, Leroy, who owned it from 1949 through 1957.
Wessling’s son, Gordon, now runs the kitchen and his wife, Brenda, is a steady presence doing whatever’s needed. She and Rick had a standing date before they got married: Sundays were for cleaning the bar while shooting pool and listening to the jukebox.
Wessling said he never considered another career after the bar got its hooks into him when he was 7 or 8 years old and he watched mailmen and deputy sheriffs crowd the bar for a lunch of steak sandwiches grilled on a two-foot flat top.
“I just thought it was the coolest thing,” Wessling said. “I went to school for a lot of years, knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but I knew always what I wanted to do. I knew it was a special place even then.”
You feel the Barret’s history when you walk in, the overwhelming amount of Wessling family sweat equity lending the place an indefinable yet palpable aura. The ancient but gleaming bar and the pressed metal ceiling makes it feel warm and lived in, welcoming and familiar. It feels adored.
If the Barret Bar were a person, it would be an old Hollywood character actor with stories about getting drunk with Errol Flynn and Betty Davis. Like most vintage Louisville bars, it once hosted its fair share of gambling back when Louisville politics routinely got done around a card table.
The Barret has evolved from a shotgun bar to one three times its original size with a full kitchen, a large patio with an additional bar and six pool tables. For a while in the early 2000s it boasted its own music club, Barretones, which welcomed the likes of The National, Drive-By Truckers and My Morning Jacket to the bar’s basement.
It’s a regular stop for casual drinkers, serious pool players, dedicated motorcyclists, musicians, and a rotating cast of people from the neighborhood. Ages range from college kids to retirees.
Bob Cambron, 80, has been coming to the Barret for nearly 25 years. He came to shoot pool but eventually found that the bar was getting under his skin and began doing odd jobs. He still comes in to maintain the pool tables, including one that hasn’t moved since it was installed in 1947.
“I’ve done every job here from bartending to pulling stuff out of the toilet,” Cambron said on a recent Friday night while shooting stick. “The attitude of this bar has always been different from anywhere else. It’s so laid back. It’s a fixture, I guess.”
People who drink at the Barret often end up working there. Mack Thompson became a regular, then a bartender, then the manager of Barretones. John Campbell was a beer rep who came in to talk about adding new beer lines and somehow wound up as general manager.
“I tried a lot of other places but none of them had that feeling,” Thompson said.
“That place has a heart and soul of its own,” Campbell said. “There’s something weird and magical about it. I can’t really put it into words - it’s just its own thing.”
“I knew always what I wanted to do. I knew (Barret Bar) was a special place even then.”
Wessling has the words. He can talk about the Barret all day once you get him started.
“I truly believe it’s a living entity and I’ve always described it to my bar staff as such,” Wessling said. “We just listen to what the old girl wants us to do and then we try to do it.”
Neither Thompson nor Campbell still work at the Barret but they each drop by once a week to visit with Wessling over a few cups of morning coffee. Campbell said that few people ever really leave the bar.
“Once someone gets hired there you’re family,” said Campbell, who has never stayed at a job longer than the five years he spent with Wessling. “I’m still not sure it was a great idea to leave.
“I still have my keys,” he added, laughing. “I tried to give them back and he won’t let me. I think he thinks I’ll come back.”
The Barret is a neighborhood bar with a neighborhood that now reaches far beyond its immediate address. Not a small portion of Louisville nightlife has revolved around the bar, which is to say that it has revolved around the Wessling family.
Rick still practices what he was taught by his father, Jim, also known as Bubba: Use patience, common sense in all things, and keep the bar clean. When Jim died in 1987, his son already knew the bar inside and out but Bubba apparently wasn’t sure. He kept checking in.
“I have a ghost,” Wessling said. “I know it sounds weird but it’s my dad.”
When Bubba was alive, his way of showing his boy approval for a job well done was to calmly rest his hand on his son’s shoulder.
“My dad had these really big, thick, meaty hands - a size 14 ring finger - and one of his shows of affection was to put his left hand on my left shoulder, and that hand was a very discerning fact that my dad was behind you,” Wessling said.
In the year’s since his father’s death, Wessling has felt that hand on his shoulder many times, and always in the bar.
“Maybe it’s just fond memories of my dad and best friend,” Wessling said. “I don’t know. It’s a very comforting feeling for me, but it hasn’t happened for years.”
Maybe Bubba doesn’t feel like his kid needs any more help. The old girl is in good hands.
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Information from: Courier Journal, http://www.courier-journal.com
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