{"id":1923,"date":"2021-04-06T16:41:10","date_gmt":"2021-04-06T21:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=1923"},"modified":"2021-04-06T16:41:10","modified_gmt":"2021-04-06T21:41:10","slug":"the-tipsy-pine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=1923","title":{"rendered":"The Tipsy Pine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I was talking to my sister on the phone Easter Monday, and for some reason, the Tipsy Pine came up in conversation.\u00a0 Good God, what a dive!<\/p>\n

We laughed and laughed at each other\u2019s stories about that place.\u00a0 The bar was on the east end of Denison.\u00a0 I doubt it\u2019s still there, and as a matter-of-fact, I know it has to be gone because at one time I lived a block away.\u00a0 During that period in my life, if there was a bar within walking distance, I was in it.\u00a0 Cockroaches eating it to the ground, a leaky roof caused from shotgun blasts, or maybe the broken windows in restrooms, led to the bar\u2019s final demise.<\/p>\n

Pat told me about throwing a beer in the face of someone there.\u00a0 \u201cProbably had too many beers,\u201d she told me.\u00a0 That was a given.\u00a0 No one went into that particular bar unless they had far too many beers to begin with.\u00a0 Nonetheless, in defense of my eldest sister, the recipient must have deserved it.\u00a0 We agreed on that.<\/p>\n

My story, based solely on my sometimes-faulty memory, is a bit more extensive.\u00a0 I was under age, as were most people in there on a late winter or early spring Saturday night.\u00a0 There was a local band playing that night.\u00a0 They sucked, but what the hell, it was live music and the place was crowded and loud.\u00a0 The bar had two doors, one on the south side facing Highway 30, and a back entrance to the north.\u00a0 We parked in the parking lot in the back, facing the street so that we could roll right out if necessary.\u00a0 It became necessary.<\/p>\n

While the music was getting louder and the crowd was getting denser and drunker, someone broke a beer bottle against the bar.\u00a0 A fight was about to erupt.\u00a0 The bartender took a shotgun from behind the bar and fired a warning shot into the ceiling.\u00a0 Well, you know what\u2019s going to happen after that.\u00a0 The police were called.\u00a0 Things didn\u2019t get much quieter until the police actually arrived.<\/p>\n

People were running to the two exits to get out of the bar.\u00a0 Being from Vail, John Devold (who was old enough to be in the bar but rode with me), Mike Ruch \u2013 also a minor, and I ran to the women\u2019s restroom.\u00a0 You don\u2019t go running into the arms of police when they show up.\u00a0 We must have used Plan B more than we ever thought of using Plan A.\u00a0 We broke the window because it was stuck, and one of us went outside (it wasn\u2019t me).\u00a0 We began to help dozens of minor women out the window.\u00a0 The last one was a hefty girl who almost got stuck in the window, and here I am, inside the women\u2019s restroom, underage, and with a large woman stuck halfway through the window.\u00a0 I locked the door.\u00a0 We could hear the cops in the bar and at the two entrances.\u00a0 Pushing and pulling, we finally got the woman through the window.\u00a0 The two of us remaining, kept the bathroom door locked as we got through the window with no time to spare.<\/p>\n

Outside the bar, by the window, the heavy woman was bleeding.\u00a0 She cut her finger on the broken glass lying in the grass.\u00a0 It was a superficial wound, but you wouldn\u2019t have known it from her whining.\u00a0 That\u2019s when she tells us that she needed a ride home.<\/p>\n

We crossed the street and waited for things to calm down.\u00a0 We snuck up the other side of the street behind houses and came out of the darkness a block north.\u00a0 The four of us strolled down the street as though we had been out for a pleasant walk on such a beautiful starry night.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure we fooled the police.<\/p>\n

We piled into the Green Latrine and I slowly coasted it out of the parking lot.\u00a0 It was a 3-speed manual transmission, but the 1st<\/sup>, 3rd<\/sup>, and reverse gears didn\u2019t work.\u00a0 Second gear was the only gear that worked in that wonderful car.\u00a0 I did have overdrive, so I could get up to 50 or 60 mph in second gear without hearing the engine work hard.<\/p>\n

I was driving and Mike was in the front passenger seat.\u00a0 John and the woman were in the back, John directly behind me and the woman sitting behind Mike.\u00a0 She lived on a farm with her parents between Denison and Vail, so we took the gravel back roads home.<\/p>\n

Her parent\u2019s farmstead was at the bottom of two very steep hills.\u00a0 It was also on the vehicle\u2019s right side, the side in which she was sitting.\u00a0 When we were coming over the crest of the first hill, I told her that because the car had only second gear, I might not make it up the other hill if I have to stop, \u201cso I\u2019ll slow down so that you get out while we\u2019re barely moving.\u201d\u00a0 BOOM!\u00a0 The door opened and she jumped out.\u00a0 \u201cNot now!\u201d\u00a0 I yelled.\u00a0 Too late.\u00a0 John could see her rolling in the ditch.<\/p>\n

John or Mike \u2013 maybe both \u2013 yelled for me to stop.\u00a0 \u201cI will at the top of the hill,\u201d I assured them.\u00a0 However, if I had stopped at the bottom or anywhere on the way up the next hill, we were going to have to spend the night between those two hills.<\/p>\n

We did make it to the top of the next hill and I shut off the car.\u00a0 Someone yelled down to her: \u201cAre you all right?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cYes,\u201d she answered.\u00a0 We found out later that she made a perfect stunt woman roll into the ditch and wasn\u2019t even stiff the following day.\u00a0 I guess her finger was okay, as well.<\/p>\n

We continued on the way back to Vail, and at some point, in the next few minutes, the story of The Green Latrine<\/a> was born.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t read my first blog<\/a> in this 3-year series, this is a good time to read it, or refresh your memory if you have read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was talking to my sister on the phone Easter Monday, and for some reason, the Tipsy Pine came up in conversation.\u00a0 Good God, what a dive! We laughed and laughed at each other\u2019s stories about that place.\u00a0 The bar … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[608,330,846,845],"class_list":["post-1923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-denison","tag-iowa","tag-the-green-latrine","tag-the-tipsy-pine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1924,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions\/1924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}