Joe Lawrence Thompson was a virtuoso bartender, he was seldom seen not grabbing an exhausted mug left on the bar or table and watching him handwash each mug in the most meticulous and methodically way was like watching a veteran and you felt like you would never get Typhoid fever or some infectious disease consuming a frosty mug of your favorite brew. His hygiene toward those mugs was impeccable.
Joe was a huge man and an adequate boxer, I saw him knock poor drunkards out with one punch and saw a few poor sots sent to the hospital, the rumor or validity was that Joe once killed a man with his fists and I never found out or followed up with a questionnaire. My friend Donnie Cross before he died told me he did, so I left it at that, why bring up something so unpleasant and shocking into the light of some dark tragedy?
Winters in Kentucky were long and cold, back in those days they had heavy snowfalls, school closings were frequent and often, yet, I could manage to get out of our driveway and to work rather easy even though in those bitter snowy days the county road crews were few and far between to find, they only kept the main roads clean from ice and snow, the backroads not that much. But, Joe’s Place always had a full house of drunks even on blizzards, quite an amazing feat to see barflies risking their lives for a drink but alcoholics would climb Mount Everest if that was the last domain on earth where the last drink of alcohol was placed.
