Magazine

Cartoons and Bourbon

The boy who grew up in a bar returns to find his dad

My dad brought me home from the hospital on Sept. 19, 1960. I was five days old. On the way, he had to stop at an old hotel bar. If you were from “The Bottoms,” outside of Pittsburgh, you knew of this place. It was an old saloon, now long torn down. I remember Dad telling me that he facetiously baptized me by dabbing his thumb into a shot glass of bourbon. He made the sign of the cross as I whined, then stuck that thumb in my mouth.

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