Remembering Max Allen, bartender extraordinaire.
We’re drinking my friend to the end of a brief episode
So make it one for my baby
And one more for the road
— “One for My Baby” (Johnny Mercer/Harold Arlen)
Maxwell E. Allen Jr. was a certified legend.
His name used to come up often during beer-side conversations at the Public House, but now he’s been gone for 22 years, spirited away by heart disease in March of 2000 at the ridiculously young age of 60.
These days only the older bar regulars might recall meeting him. The problem is that too many of these patrons are no longer with us, either.
I found myself thinking about Max after mentioning his name amid a consideration of folkways, foodways and beerways. If a high resolution image can be found, I’d love to honor his memory with a framed photo somewhere in Pints & Union.
Knowing that on widely scattered occasions, I can be a stubborn cuss when compelled to plant my heels in the primordial muck of our Falls of the Ohio flood plain and defend the proposition that we can’t know where we’re going without some idea of where we’ve been, it ......
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