Getting Carded at the Happy Landing

I'm going to write about something that's been stuck in my craw for over forty years now.

Tom Tierney wrote to me today and told me how he enjoyed finishing the graveyard shift at 7 a.m. and going to Smelterville and dropping in the Happy Landing Tavern for some beers and then to Kellogg to the Sunshine Inn for breakfast with a slight buzz on.

I don't know if Tom was nineteen when he went into the Landing after graveyard shift or if he got served underage.

Here's what I do know.  In the summer of 1972, Stancil Whittaker, Craig Comer,  and other guys my age I worked with in the cell room, but didn't really hang out with outside of work, invited me to go have some beers and shoot pool at the Happy Landing after our shift was over.

They were all eighteen and I was eighteen and the drinking age in Idaho was nineteen, but they'd been going to the Landing all summer after work so it sounded fun to join in.  I hadn't really started drinking much at that point in my time at the Bunker Hill and this seemed like as good of a night to get going on that.

We walked in, headed to the back of the bar, got situated at some tables near the pool table and first Stancil went to the bar and came back with cans of Lucky Lager for everyone and I enjoyed having a cold one after a sweltering afternoon shift.  Someone else, maybe Craig Comer went up next and came back with a round and we drank those and then Stancil said, "Hey, Bill, your turn.  Go get us some beers."

I had never ordered beer in a bar, but I'd seen my dad do it plenty of times and I thought, with a little anxiety, that I could do that.

My old eighth grade flag football coach,  tavern entrepreneur, slowball softball pitcher, and local king of gambling Lloyd Finley was tending bar.  Once I heard someone say that if Lloyd Finley saw two kids playing catch, he'd try to find some one to bet with him on which kid would drop the ball first.

I ordered a round of Lucky Lager.

 Lloyd carded me.

He carded me.

I couldn't believe it.  He'd been serving my other eighteen year old friends over the last hour and they'd been coming in and drinking beer all summer.

And I got carded.

I had no defense.  I tried the "I left my wallet at home" gambit, but I was so nervous and ashamed for being eighteen and looking eleven that I didn't say it with much conviction and I slunk back to my friends.

"Woolum!  Where's the beer?  It was your turn to buy!"

"Finley wouldn't serve me."

"The hell?"

"Yeah.  The fat asshole carded me."

"Well, shit," Craig Comer said, "Guess we'd better get you home, then."

Lloyd Finley's dead now.  I saw him a lot the next summer after he carded me when I played slow pitch and when I went into the Happy Landing, legally, but I never asked him why he wouldn't serve me that night.

I mean there was State Law.

And then there was Silver Valley Law.

I thought Silver Valley Law let kids who worked the Bunker Hill drink, no matter what their age.

Not that night.

Lloyd Finley had no reason to embarrass me that I knew of.  Had my Dad given him shit and he took it wrong?  Did he just want to yank my chain?  Did he think I needed to be cut down to size?  Or was he just being ornery, something he was good at.

I'll never know.

But it still sticks in my craw.