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Interviews and photographs by Amy Evans.
Check’s Café
1101 E. Burnett Ave.
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 637-9515
I started coming in this great place of Check’s in about 1957, when I was still in college and illegal, but I still came in. – Bill Tinker
I love it here. I like the people. I know everybody. It’s great… How many bartending jobs can you get where, honestly, if I came in at five o'clock in the afternoon and said, ‘I got a date tonight at ten o’clock,’ everyone that walks through the door would say, ‘Oh, great, Bill, man. We’ll be out by 10:00.’ – Billy Reynolds
In 1935, just after Prohibition came to an end, Check Sumpter opened up a tavern in Louisville’s Germantown neighborhood and called it Check’s Café. After nine years in business, he sold the place. The new owner, Joe Murrow Sr., ran Check’s for the next thirty-six years, until his death in 1980. In the three decades during which Joe was behind the bar, he gave Check’s the reputation of being a neighborhood joint where anyone was welcome and everyone was a regular. Today Joe Murrow’s grandson, John, operates Check’s. And while there have been some cosmetic alterations to the place over the years, not much else has changed. Not even the neighborhood regulars.
Bill Tinker has been a regular at Check’s since 1957. He grew up in Germantown and started frequenting the bar when he was in college. Bill is a walking encyclopedia of Germantown history and stories from his days at Check’s. He organized the Schnitzelburg Walk, which is an annual night of progressive tavern-hopping in the neighborhood. In 2007 Bill Tinker was elected Schnitzelberg’s Number One Citizen.
As a young boy, Billy Reynolds listened to the stories his grandfather would tell about Check’s. When he was eighteen, Billy was a player on the Check’s softball team and visited the tavern for the first time. In 1994 Billy noticed a “Help Wanted” sign in Check’s window, applied for the job, and has been working there ever since. Today he’s one of Check’s most beloved bartenders. Billy never forgets a face—or a drink—and he always has a good story to tell.
The interviews below offer a portrait of this neighborhood tavern, the bartender who keeps the tap and the stories flowing, and the regulars who call it home.
*It is with great sadness that the SFA shares news that Bill Tinker passed away on December 4, 2010.
NOTE: Two interviews, Bill Tinker (regular) and Billy Reynolds (bartender), are featured on this page. Jump to Billy Reynolds interview.
What follows is a portion of the original Bill Tinker interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
Subject: Bill Tinker, longtime regular
Date: January 17, 2008
Location: Check’s Café
Interviewer & Photographer: Amy Evans
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Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans on Thursday, January 17, 2008, for the Southern Foodways Alliance. I’m in Louisville, Kentucky, in the Germantown neighborhood at Check’s Café with a regular here, Mr. Tinker. And, Mr. Tinker, would you say your whole name and your birth date please, sir?
Bill Tinker: Well, let’s see. It’s William W. Tinker, Junior, born two, fifteen of thirty-seven [February 15, 1937]. I will be seventy-one years old a month from now. I’ve been a full-time resident, since 1941, of the Schnitzelburg area [a neighborhood considered part of the greater Germantown area], and I started coming in this great place of Check’s in about 1957 when I was still in college and illegal but I still came in. [Laughs]
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Well tell me about your first time or two here in Check’s and what it was like back in the day.
Oh, back in the days—that was about 1957—and after a few times you get in and the owner [Joe Murrow Sr.], well, sort of took a liking to me, I guess you might say. And being a poor kid, struggling, trying to work his way through college, come in and have a few beers and the first thing he would say is, “How you doing in college?” “Doing great.” Happy for one of the kids in the neighborhood, he’d say, “You need some money? You sort of short?” I said, “Yeah, I need ten dollars.” He said, “Okay, here’s ten dollars, pay it back to me.” Well the next Friday I’d come in, and he’d say, “You got that ten dollars you owe me?” I said, “Here. Here’s your ten dollars.” Later on in the evening he asked me, he said, “You short?” “Yeah, I’m short.” “Well how much you need?” I said, “Ten dollars.” “So here’s the ten dollars. Pay me back.” This went on for several years, and I got him up to $20.00 when I was a senior, which sort of made me happy but it was just—it was place that I don’t know what you would say—basically, you had all types of people that came in there. Your Friday nights were big nights because it was fish. The place smelled like a fish market. And the place was crowded and a bunch of really—people in the neighborhood that enjoyed the—really the company and so forth of the neighborhood at that time. These were my first big expressions or impressions of this tavern when I first came in. And I liked it so much, I’ve been coming back ever since.
And so was Mr. Murrow the owner when you started coming here?
Yes, Joe Murrow [Sr.] was the owner. I’ve got a little history here I’d like to give you if that would be pertinent…But this building—and you’ll notice you have your steps here—this building was built in two parts. It was built in 1911; the front end was built by John Knable and his wife, Mary A. Knable, and the front was a grocery store in 1911. The back part we’re sitting here discussing the situation is that—this was the living quarters, which you’ll notice here, and there was a little door from the tavern. The people lived in the back end, and we’re sitting in the living room and the small room over here was a bedroom. And you had steps which would take you upstairs into what they called a camel-back house here in Schnitzelburg, which you had bedrooms upstairs and then on the door to your—my left, your right—was the kitchen. And your bath—your bath and your bathroom was back there. So this was what it was for years. In 1928—in 1928 the—the building was leased to a Quaker Maid, which was the forerunner—forerunner to the A&P Stores. Well they kept those until about 1932, and it was right after Prohibition or at the time after Prohibition and—let me look at my notes here [Laughs] so I’ll tell you—see what I can find I’ve got here on this particular—. In 1928 the properly was housed to Quaker Maid.
And it operated for a number of years until a fellow named Check Sumpter established a tavern here in 1935. Now he ran the tavern until about 1944. At that point Ray Dillman and Joe Murrow [Sr.] purchased the operation from Check Sumpter. Now, at the time, Joe Murrow had another tavern in the neighborhood called Mary’s Tavern, which was Mary—which was named after his wife. So between 1944 and about 1965 he sort of spent some time at Check’s and some time at Mary’s Tavern. And then at that time in 1965 he assumed—purchased the building and assumed full control for his operations. At that time, the place was fairly run down, and he proceeded to clean the place up plus establish a good clientele. And the other nice thing about it is, when he purchased the business, he still did not have ownership of the building. But he still ran the thing for a number of years, and then in 1980 he purchased not only the building, the front and the back, but he assumed the control of the whole building. Now at the time, two of the heirs, which were old maids, lived in the back end. And he guaranteed them that to the day that they died they could live in the building.
Well, ironically, the house next door became vacant and in a period of time he moved them over into the house next door to this tavern here—free of rent until they died. And then, from that particular standpoint, he converted this back end into this dining area here, improved his kitchen, et cetera—so forth and so on. But Joe was just—he was a great—from my standpoint he was a great person, and that’s all I can really say for the man. I mean he’s a humanitarian.
Unfortunately Joe died in 1980—June 13th—and one of the things from the Courier Journal here in Louisville was [Reading] “A wreath of white carnations hung off the green door of Check’s Café last night. And the heart of the Louisville Schnitzelburg community the sign simply said ‘Closed in memory of Joseph Murrow. Open 6:00 a.m. Monday.’ Joe Murrow, 67, died yesterday at Suburban Hospital. For the people of Schnitzelburg, a rich and special part of life in Germantown is gone. Since 1944 Murrow has operated Check’s Café, the home of the 20-cent bowl of bean soup, the dollar dinner and on Wednesday special 55-cent chilidog. But friends and long-time patrons tell of the special allure of Check’s was not just the inexpensive meals; it was Joe himself. Last night many of his friends gathered at a local tavern [Old Hickory Inn] down on the street on Lydia and swapped memories about Joe and his café. Central themes emerged—his generosity, his trust, his ability to make people welcome, his 14-hours a day, and his ability to listen. Joe was a bartender’s bartender; he had the ability to put you at ease by spinning a yarn or listening to your problems. He was a goodwill ambassador; he was a common regular guy who worked 12 or 14 hours who loved his business and spent his whole life behind the bar. Everyone agreed that Check’s is also special because of the diversity of the people—” which I was trying to talk about a little while ago in this conversation. “He was special because of the diversity of the people; he attracts Fort Knox soldiers, bricklayers, Brown & Williamson executives, lawyers, football players, elderly couples, jockeys, Mayor William Stansbury, truckers and even Billy Carter.” These were some of the individuals that have come through here, which I thought was pretty special.
My first recollection of Check’s was back in 1953. The night bartender was a fellow named Bill Zack. Bill was one of many soldiers stationed at Fort Knox during the War and fell in love with one of the local girls and married and made Louisville his home. He was also the brother-in-law of a friend—of a friend of mine, a boy named Ray Rotlmann. Ray along with myself and other friends, Bob Heines and Kenny Mattingly were either sixteen or seventeen at the time and thought we were the cock of the walk. We came back to Check’s at night when business was slow and not very many patrons around. We could ask Bill to sell us a bucket of beer—about 40-cents worth of loose. Now loose is something that comes out of the tap and goes into a bucket and runs—it’s called loose. After several conversations and being under-age, the consequences of being caught, he would tell us to leave and minutes later it would be sitting on the side steps, which we would take off and off we would go. [Laughs]
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Basically, 10,000 words couldn’t describe this man. This is Joe Murrow, the owner. Ten thousand words couldn’t describe the man and his association with many customers. My experience dates back to late [nineteen] ’57 [Laughs]—some of us talking about struggling students and so forth, blah-blah, I’d come back, blah-blah. Joe—Joe got several calls a month from a—the Priest in this neighborhood church over here, St. Elizabeth, who would send homeless victims looking for a free meal. Joe would always have a bowl of bean soup and a cold glass of water to feed these people. The bean soup was always Joe’s featured item on the menu and told me one day, “If the price of beans ever go, up I will always keep my price at 15-cents a bowl and raise the price of everything else.” And that really was my recollection of Joe.
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Another one of my fond memories—and these were back in the years not from the time in your conversation with Bill [Reynolds, a bartender at Check’s] because his were probably from later years. Darling Bertha Ash, she was another lovely patron of the tavern who had a penchant for Falls City Beer. On many of college nights students from U of L [University of Louisville] or Bellarmine University would challenge Bertha to chug-a-lug contests. Bertha would wetten her hand and shake a small amount of salt on that hand, and then she was ready to go. To this day, I don’t remember a soul who could beat her. She was so good she was a member of the St. Aloysius Payne Street Chug-a-Lug Team. As Bertha grew older and moved into senior citizens homes downtown, her visits to Check’s lessened but seemed always to make Check’s on the meeting nights of the All Wool and Yard Wide Democratic Club, which is also down the street.
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Of all the bartenders here that worked at Check’s, probably one of the most unusual and favorite was Eddie Spayd. He was employed at [Puritan] Cordage Mills in Louisville, and when the company moved to Georgia, Eddie and his family followed. Upon his retirement, he returned to Louisville and shortly after the return, he started to work part-time at Check’s as a favor to Joe. Eddie worked at Check’s for years until he retired; his retirement party was a grand day for Eddie. It seemed that half the city of Louisville came to his party.
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Can you explain the Schnitzelburg Walk?
Well Schnitzelburg Walk basically was set up it was sort of a pre-Derby-type thing, just something that, you know, everybody is having a party or something like that around Derby time. And these tavern operators, at that time they were more united in the one than they are at the present day. They decided to have a walk and the only thing you did is if you were a regular customer at Check’s Café or a regular customer of Ole Hickory Inn or Flabby’s or something like that, you met there and they blew the whistle. And all the group took off and they walked to visit the next tavern and spend maybe twenty minutes or a half an hour in the next tavern and drink a few beers and shoot the bull, and they’d blow the bullhorn again and you’d go to the next tavern. And this repeated in almost a circle until everybody made the ten taverns or twelve taverns at the time, if they were capable to make all of them. And the other thing about it, they advertised the thing as the Schnitzelburg Walk, and they had a common logo, which they used for years, and on the back they had each tavern that was represented in this particular walk. Now each tavern at that time had their own colored t-shirts. One of them would have blue; one of them would have green, red, et cetera so forth and so on like that. It was just a night of fun. And the thing was is that it was, hopefully, to bring in outside people outside the neighborhood to see, you know, just what we’ve got. Because we’ve got some good publicity, you know, about the taverns and the food, so this was the start of this thing. And it ran pretty good until a lot of the old owners [Laughs], partially the old owners sold the businesses or something like that, and you got some young pups in there with different ideas and then you had some of them that wanted to gouge the the outside customer and raise the prices of everything, you know. And a lot of the ones, they balked, so it’s sort of a split right now.
So you don’t do that anymore, the Schnitzelburg Walk?
We still do that. We still do that because every [Laughs]—we still do that because every year I send a flyer out to each one of the taverns and I also have one of the breweries who will make me some flyers, and I go personally to each one of the taverns and invite them to a meeting. Now young John [Murrow] just took over this operation [at Check’s Café] probably about a year ago. I told him, I said—the first meeting we had was at another tavern, and I took him with me to introduce him to these people. [Laughs] So the next time we had a meeting, I set it up here and—because I thought I was trying to help the kid out, you know, get a little bit of business in here at the time because it was very slow, and we’ve had the last two there. And all I do is set the meeting up and tell them this is the meeting, now you all go kill each other. I don’t care. But see if you can come out with something, you know, that everybody can live with and—.
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Great. Well and you’re a beer drinker. How have you had to change your beer that you drink over the years?
Well, started out drinking Sterling Beer; Sterling Beer was one of the local distributors here in Louisville, and we drank Sterling Beer because when I was in my twenties up to the day I was forty—well, about graduated from college—about twenty-two years old and I played softball until I was about forty years old, and Sterling Beer was one of the sponsors. They’d pay our franchise fees, they’d buy our softballs, and they’d give us a real nice t-shirt with Sterling Beer on it. And I drank Sterling Beer all those years, and it was always draft beer. And then Sterling, the original brewer sold out to another group in Evansville, Indiana, where it was brewed, and they had a problem with cleaning of their barrels and stuff—the beer just tasted so bad it was just—you couldn’t drink it. So at that point I went to Budweiser, and I’ve been drinking that probably the last twenty-five or thirty years, and it’s always Budweiser, and it’s not out of a bottle. It’s out of the draft. And I’ve just done that. [Laughs] And I don’t really change—maybe—oh, maybe when I’m on a trip or something like that I may try, you know, a dark ale or something like that, or when I go to Las Vegas I try several of the mini-breweries out there and drink the brews that they have there, but it’s been Budweiser all those years.
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So tell me how a small neighborhood like Germantown can keep eleven taverns going all these years.
Bunch of Germantown drunks. [Laughs] No, basically is it—you just sort of built a cult from that particular standpoint at that time, you know. This place here, basically, a lot of his [Joe Murrow Sr.’s]—a lot of his people probably came from Mary’s Tavern when he first started. He had a good fried chicken, he had a good bowl of bean soup, he had a good bowl of chili, he had a good chilidog, a good hamburger; he had good food at a very cheap and reasonable price. Well he was interested in quality and not quantity. His theory was give it to them and give it to them at a good price. We survived, and he made his money on volume, you know. If it’s good, they’ll come back and see you. The other thing is everything was on an honor system, and I mean you just came in and ordered what you wanted, and he wrote it on a piece of paper and sent it to the kitchen and they came out yelling your meal. Never worried about getting paid, but 95-percent of the people that dealt would pay on that particular system. That’s what made this one successful. The other one—that was—let’s take old Flabby’s; Flabby’s was the situation there where the guy that had the place was a retired bricklayer and his son was a bricklayer, so he had a lot of bricklayers so forth and so on like that. He had an outstanding—he had an outstanding roast beef sandwich, roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy. He had a lot of hunters. People would bring in fresh kill, fish, so forth like that, and he’d cook it up and give it to the customers free. Always had Limburger cheese, yuck. But he just had several really featured items, plus they had a real good fried chicken up there. It was just several featured items that kept these people there, plus you sort of had a base. Across the street, these were a lot of young pups, a lot of the younger guys. Flabby’s never had a liquor license, but the guy across the street from him had a liquor license, plus a packaged carryout, so that built that trade, basically. The guys would come in and say, “Well I’ll go across the street, but I can't get me a shot of—shot of whiskey,” so that built his trade there. Now down the street it was a little bit different; at Ole Hickory’s—I mean at Hillsman it was called at the time, they had a different type clientele. And then you went to Germantown was probably built around the same time—no, it was built about 1891 and this thing was the same family continuously owned that thing for, God knows when. But I remember when I was a kid, eighteen or nineteen years old, you could always get yourself a good bowl of chili there—a good bowl of chili and an RC Cola for about 40 or 50-cents.
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Well tell me about your friendship with your bartender here [at Check’s], Billy [Reynolds].
The sports nut. [Laughs] Well basically, as I’ve aged naturally I’m—unfortunately I’m divorced after twenty-five years and, really, my children have all moved out. All of them are not in the city of Louisville. One of them is a captain in the Navy; he’s a doctor and right now he’s in San Diego. My other two sons, one’s a lawyer in Lexington, Kentucky, and the other one is really a pharmaceutical representative in Lexington, Kentucky, so basically pretty much by myself. I do have a girlfriend. But we were talking about various trips, and he [Billy Reynolds] had mentioned a trip about three or four years ago about a three-day or a four-day trip at—to Chicago, so I said, “Yeah,” you know, “I can go.” Retired, semi-retired, whatever you want to call it. So we went to Chicago and had a good time. I said, “I’ll go,” I said, “but somebody has got to push my wheelchair because I can't walk very far.” So he pushed my wheelchair. The next thing I know he said, “Hey, I need somebody to go to a football game, the University of Kentucky.” I said, “Okay,” I said, “all right, I’ll go. You’ve got to push me.” So this is—later in this particular situation it—usually, we go to Lexington, and I drive my car because his, I don’t know that it would make it. But we’ve been Lexington a number of times, and we just got rid of the wheelchair last night and gave it away to somebody else who needs a—needs a wheelchair and I got me a new one. But we’ve put mileage on it to Chicago, University of Kentucky football games; we’ve been to Nashville, Tennessee, to several ball games there; went to Atlanta last year to watch the basketball—the SEC tournaments and we went to Georgia—600—not Georgia, but Arkansas, 600 miles from here, to watch Kentucky play Arkansas. And this was sort of a thing—this sort of gotten together but I’ve known him for all these years because I think I was probably one of the first people sitting at the bar that—when he came in. And I told a couple racist jokes in here one night [Laughs], the first night on; I told the guy that I was telling the joke about—I went over and slapped him on the back and I said, “You know, I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything but—.” He said he liked to have fell off the bar—fell off the back and said, “Who is this old man?” But in that situation you get to sit there and you talk and you—you get into sports and some of this back-stuff years ago that a lot of people don’t know about. I don’t have a—I got a pretty good memory of the old things; of course, sometimes I don’t know whether I’m chewing gum or walking but [Laughs]—with the current things—but back, the old trivia and so forth like that, a lot of that I remember. And that’s how I met him; I met him at here and forged a pretty good relationship since then.
What follows is a portion of the original Billy Reynolds interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
Subject: Billy Reynolds, bartender
Date: January 17, 2008
Location: Check’s Café
Interviewer & Photographer: Amy Evans
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Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans on Thursday, January 17, 2008 in Louisville, Kentucky, for the Southern Foodways Alliance, and I am in Germantown at Check’s Café with Billy Reynolds, the bartender here…And Billy, would you say your name and your birth date for the record, please?
Billy Reynolds: Billy Reynolds and it’s October 18, 1959; I’m old—fat and old. It’s sad.
Are you a native of Louisville?
Yep, whole life, born and bred in the neighborhood.
So when was the first time you darkened the door of Check’s?
Funny story: I was eighteen years old, and I was a pretty good ball player; I played on the Check’s Softball Team. But at eighteen, you couldn’t drink. So the guys brought me in; they were a little older than me. And we sat at the bar, and the guy that made the place famous, a man named Joe Murrow, and he always remembered—he could remember names like nobody I’ve ever seen in my life. So my buddies ordered a pitcher of beer and this was, you know—this—this was a while ago; this is [nineteen]’75—he brings, they bring the beer over. He walks over and he said, “Are you old enough to drink?” And I went, “No, sir.” I was trying to be a good boy, you know, I’m eighteen, fresh-faced and honest little young man. He looks at the guys with me and he goes, “Well don’t let him get drunk.” The funny part of that is, I came back in right when I was twenty-one-and-a-half. He looks up there from the bar and goes, “Billy?” And I went, “Yeah.” And he goes, “Man, you’ve gotten fat.” [Laughs] Now that’s wild because it’s been three years before I came back but that—that was the first time, and then I—you know, once a year. Maybe. Until I came in one Friday night and there was a sign that said “Bartender needed.” And I thought, “Well, you know, I’ve done this for a long, long time; this seems like a nice quiet place.” And it was almost fourteen years ago, and here I am now. [Laughs]
So tell me a little bit more about the history of Check’s. Do I have it right that Mr. Murrow was not the original owner; that he took it over at some point?
Yeah. Tinker knows the whole spiel, but the parts of the story I know is that the first guy was named Check [Sumpter] that owned it, okay. And…he had to sell the place. So he sold half interest to Joe [Murrow], and that’s the way I get the story and that was—I think Joe bought it in [nineteen] ’50-something but that was ’37 or ’44 somewhere in there.
So you say Joe made it famous—Joe Murrow. What do you mean by that?
He was the guy that knew everybody and met them. Like I said, he never forgot a name, so people love to hear their name. People would walk through and this place, in those days, there would be lines to the door. There would be fifty people in line with nowhere to sit, but he would stand up by the register, and I can remember this when I was just a littler kid—where he would—he would holler back at the people at the end of the line who looked like they were getting frustrated, “Oh, calm down Harry” or “Calm down Leon,” and everybody just loved to hear their name. Well, back in those days, they didn’t take your money when you ordered your food. And it was just Joe that took the money. So you would order your stuff. There was a hole in the wall, basically. It wasn’t a hole. It used to be an entrance way, and if you come in and ordered a brat [bratwurst]—you get the soup here [at the counter], but if you ordered brat and fries he just leaned back, hollered through the hole, “Brat and fry,” okay. And then when you left, you came back up and stood in line again to pay. And when you came up, you told him what you had, but you better tell him the truth because he never forgot. And you paid him then…Everybody that’s come in has told the same story the whole time I’ve been here about how amazing it is, how no one ever skipped out. This was an innocent age in the world…But, like I said, that’s how he operated. Everything was in a cigar box or a bowl of money; there was no high-tech registers…But that was pre-me; this is just me coming in when I was a kid and hearing my grandpa talking and hearing the old people here talk.
So tell me about the clientele here today and this being a neighborhood joint and who all comes in.
All afternoon long we get older people, retirees. It’s a German—Germantown it’s called but it’s—it’s more a Catholic—it’s a Catholic neighborhood, so we got a church across the street. It used to be a bakery across the street. We have an older clientele, but at lunch we got businesspeople from downtown that have come here since their older businesspeople brought them down, so lunchtime it’s a suit and tie crowd. They leave and then the factories start to let go, which ones are left, and their people come in after they get off work. Well we’ve had guys, as long as I’ve been here, that show up everyday between 4:00 and 5:00. They sit and have a beer, some of them have a shot; they watch the news. Everybody talks about the news, and then at 6:30 or 7 o'clock they all teeter off into the night and go on home. And this is just the way it’s always been here. Now we do have people that stay later at night to watch the ballgames or hang out, but as a general rule of thumb for—what’s considered a bar—I call it a restaurant, but for what’s considered a bar and a restaurant we’re closed eleven o'clock every night of the week, if you was to average I out. We have a liquor license until 4:00 but, to the best of my knowledge, it’s only been used three times. It’s just what we do, but it’s just you come in, you have, you know, beer, shot, and then you watch the news and talk about the news and then teeter on home to the wife and the kids, and this is the way it’s been here as long as I can remember.
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And so what kind of schedule have you maintained over these fourteen years that you’ve been here, and tell me about your other job that you had before all this.
All right. Well the real job, I’m a butcher in a grocery store. I’ve been a butcher in a grocery store for thirty years this year, so not the proudest moment. I’m always one of those people that—I went to college to be a writer, and then life sort of happens to you: married, kids...But the bartending thing at Check’s it’s always been Friday nights are mine, so I love that because—. But Monday, Wednesday, and Friday has been most—most of the time I’ve been here. It’s been every Wednesday and Friday for fourteen years; it’s—it’s really kind of funny, though. I say this kind of modestly: they’re the two busiest nights of the week because—I’m entertaining, but I’ll stay to watch the ballgames. And, you know, everybody likes to watch the ballgames, so they come and watch the news, and we watch the ballgames and normally speaking the teams in our neighborhood okay, UK [University of Kentucky], U of L [University of Louisville]—they play Wednesday night, so Wednesday night and Friday night, which is high school night, but it’s the day before—you know, Saturday, duh—but that—so everybody comes in to talk about the game. So this thing revolves—my part of it has always revolved around sports because I’m a sports junky. So the guys come in, and we shoot the breeze about the game and fuss and argue because some like U of L and some like Kentucky; very few like Indiana here but, you know, we just—everybody talks about this, talks about that, and—but mine has always been three nights a week and started doing it—extra money, you know. The—had little kids and the wife wasn’t going to work. We was going to have that American dream. Well then when the—all the American dream blew up, then you worked to pay child support, but all the way through, I liked this better. It—I’m the—the oxymoron of life: I love being a bartender more than I like my real job because I like people, I like shooting the breeze. I like doing this. Throughout my life I’ve heard, you should have been a salesman, you should have been a politician, you should have been this, should have been that, but you got to have a real job. I’m a bartender that doesn’t like to work late at night, and how insane is that? You know, to have this kind of life, this kind of thing, but that’s pretty much the way it’s been for me.
Well what about all the relationships that you’ve cultivated in this job and, specifically, Mr. Tinker out there? I mean do y’all hang out after working hours? Like today, y’all are going to a game. Tell me about that.
Well, since I’ve been doing this, I can truthfully say, you know, it’s like your job, and the people you meet at your job are your friends. Well here at Check’s, you know, I’ve always hung out with guys that are older than me, but I consider all these people my friends. And I’m going to burn up your tape here, but I’m going to use this as an example. My house burned down, okay, and this was something—didn’t have insurance; I was a goofy guy, you know, and everybody does their stupid thing but I—you know, rent—do all this but all my stuff got burned up. Well my favorite movie is It’s a Wonderful Life; it’s the goofiest shit in the world, I know. Every—I lived every cliché in that movie you can possibly imagine, from people coming up and saying, “Hey, do you need this, do you need that, this.” You know a prideful guy, you always say, “Nah, nah; I’m good. No.” Because you know they’re your friends, but you don’t like to take stuff from your friends. Everybody is this way. But the best example I give for this is the fact that I know all these people. I say hi; I’ve been to more funerals since I worked here than in my entire life. I grow attached to these people. I see them; I like them; I enjoy it more than you know. Well I, like all big sports junkies, I have lots of memorabilia: posters, magazines, pictures on the walls. I had my little Kentucky room, only it was a big Kentucky room. It was—it was like a running joke amongst my friends how much crap I had on the walls. You could tell a single guy lived there. Well, like at any big establishment, you’ve got lots of people that you know and talk to everyday, and then you’ve got people that you just see and they go, “Hey, how you doing?” They come in once a week; they shoot the breeze. I could not tell you their last name. Went to their funeral, still—I don’t pay attention to names; I know their first names. The guy’s first name was Ben. Ben shuffles up to the bar—he’s an older gentleman—and he goes, “Hey, Bill,” you know, “I heard about your house. Sorry about that.” And I said, “Oh, that’s—you know, I appreciate it Ben.” He goes, “We’ll keep you in our prayers.” “Thank you, Ben.” They go to eat. He comes up later on and he goes, “Bill, all that stuff your friends are always up here bragging about, all your UK stuff, did all that get burned up?” I said, “Yeah, Ben, every bit of it, unfortunately.” I said, “But you know, I didn’t get burned up.” That’s a big miracle to me; that’s why you can stay in a good mood about this. He says, “Oh, that’s—that’s horrible.” Two or three weeks later they come back in; like I said, they were a very old couple. He shuffles up to the bar with a big stack of stuff, and he sets it on the bar. It’s all of these bags. And I go, “What you got there, Ben?” And he goes, “Well me and the wife were talking, and my kids are older, and they don’t really appreciate this kind of stuff the way I do and I’m—the way I’m sure you do. So here you go.” I started looking through it. He gave me better UK pictures, posters, magazines than I ever had. It was just truly an amazing thing. So, you know, I thanked him and I’m—you know, we talked about all the cool stuff he give me, and it’s all kind of cool. The guy dies a week later, but he got to do a good deed, and I got be a cool thing but—. That was just the—the best example of all the good things that happened to me from your house burning up. That’s kind of wild.
Now me and Tinker [longtime Check’s regular, Bill Tinker] are doing things I’ve gone—used to go with—with all the—like me and the bartenders that I used to work with, we’d go out places and we’d do this and we’d do that. Well, you know, everybody—as you go through life you’ll kind of notice—because I like to go places and like to do things. Tinker won't hear this, will he? Okay, because this is—I don’t want to make him mad but how we started doing this—Tinker, it used to be when he was a young guy, got to go do stuff. Well he got old like all these old guys, and his friends died off. Well Tinker don’t walk too good, so he really can't go many places because he doesn’t walk too good. So anyway, he was in here one night, and I was talking about going to the game or something, and I had an extra ticket. And he goes, “Well I wish I could go. But I can't get around good.” And I’m like, “Well, Tinker, hell you—we’ll go, if you want to go.” This is how Check’s works; this is the coolest part. This is how Check’s works. These people were sitting out there who were regulars. They’re every weekers. I talk to them about every—everybody in the area knows them. It’s the Fisters. Everybody knows who they are; they’re like the nicest people in Germantown. One of them walks up to the bar, and they said, “Well, Tinker, if you can't—you know, we know you don’t walk too good but our mom—.” Miss Fister’s mom passed away. She said “Well, we got a wheelchair in the garage. You can have it.” And I—and I go, “Well Tinker, they bring us up a wheelchair, hell, we’ll go to the game tomorrow.” They walked it back up in the rain because they get couldn’t fit it in their car—walked it up in the rain. It’s four blocks. And dropped it off and me and Tinker have been going to the ballgames ever since. I bet we put 1,000 miles on this thing because, basically speaking, I hope when I get to be old and can't go around that somebody realizes I’m dying to go, but I can't quite get there. So that’s how me and Tinker started running around. And the crazy part of it all is now it is just the most assumed thing in the world that me and Tinker are going. And everybody will say, “Oh man, can I go?” And it’s really turned into the neatest thing humanly possible, and that’s pretty much how I started—because you know, Bill is one of them guys you talk to at the bar but, you know—like you talk to everybody. But since we’ve been going to games, hell, I consider him to be one of my better friends now. It’s—it’s really wild. I’d have never dreamed it when I first started working here. I’d have never dreamed it would end up me and Tinker hanging out like this. But it’s kind of a neat thing, so that’s how me and Tinker started off. [Laughs]
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Well tell me about—I mean you have an obvious rapport with everyone here and a great personality, but what about like service behind the bar; because the nights that I’ve been in here, you know, like Donny comes in and he’s barely through the door and you’ve got his—you’re pouring his pitcher and putting his glass on the bar and handing me a club soda before I even sit down. And—and tell me about that kind of service that you do.
Well, like I said, I’ve been doing this a long time. What is the point of being a regular, if you have to say it every time? That’s the way we do it here. To be honest with you, I know—I know—I learned what people—I learn what people drink before I learn their name. I’m not like the Joe-guy; I don’t remember everybody’s name. I never forget a face, so I put a face with a drink, and then I know. But that’s just—that you know—I’m sorry. I see them—everybody likes that kind of personal stuff. What—what gets me is everyone kind of knows I’m bad with names. But I never forget a face. Like I know them, and when I remember the name I’m really good. We got a guy that comes in here everyday; he drops his daughter off at gymnastic practice, and he comes in here everyday. Somehow or another I started calling him RJ, don’t ask me why. But I was proud of myself because, like Donny and Coach Dave and all the guys, he walks through the door, I pour his beer. I got it waiting for him. And I say, “Here you go, RJ.” This goes on for almost a year. And while he’s standing there, somebody walks past him and goes, “What’s up Junior?” “What’s up JR?” And they call him these names when they walk past because we’re crowded. I walk out and I go, “Your name is JR?” And he goes, “Yeah.” I go, “Why have you let me call you RJ?” He goes, “I don’t really get a chance to talk to you; you put the beer in front of me so fast that I just figured, hell, I’m getting a beer, why not?” There you go; that’s the downside of putting people’s stuff in front of them. [Laughs]
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You sell mostly beer but you have a full bar also; do you sell many cocktails other than shots or anything like that?
Fridays we have—this is mostly guys off work, guys in to watch a ballgame, but Friday night is football night. And like I said we’re big down the Street and Saint X [Saint Xavier] is the neighborhood team. It’s the fifteen-time State Champion; it is one of those—we’re lucky that they’re down the street, but they play at the stadium down the street and they’ll have 10,000 people for a high school football game, where in Kentucky a normal crowd for a football game is 1,000. But they’ll have 10,000, and they all come here. So it’s the night that you bring the wife out that—believe it or not, in Germantown that’s considered a night out. You take them out, take them to the football game, take them to Check’s to eat and drink, and you can actually get away with calling that date night when you’re old and married in Check’s, which is, once again, one of the cooler parts of Check’s. But the ladies like drinks, but there’s nothing fancy here. It’s always, you know, beer—beer, sometimes there’s shots but—. A friend of mine came in—him and his wife—before she got married and she come up to the bar and ordered a daiquiri or something, and the old man that was bartending back in those days—I couldn’t tell you who it was—it was way before me—looked over top of his glasses and said, “Can't do it.” She ordered a different kind of drink, and he looked over his glasses again and said, “Can't do it.” So the third time he pulls his glasses down the end of his nose and goes, “Honey, we sell beer and we sell bourbon; do you want beer or do you want bourbon?” The reason I tell this story is I met this guy; he come in here to watch the ballgame. So I go by his house, typically, somebody I ended up going to ballgames with. I go by his house, and I meet his wife. So I walk in the kitchen waiting for him to get ready and say hi to his kids because, you know, once again, I meet these people. They’ve got kids; I go watch their kids play Little League. I can go to the Little League down the street; I’ve not had—I’ve never had a kid play Germantown Little League. I know everybody. It’s—it’s a strange life I live. Anyway, she looks at me and she goes, “I went there before we got married. I don’t like it.” And I said, “Well you ought to come back.” So here one Friday night they show up to go to the ballgame. She walks up to the bar and orders a drink, and I couldn’t resist. I pulled my glasses down at the end of my nose and said, “We’ve got beer and we’ve got bourbon; what’s it going to be?” She got madder than hell until she realized it was a joke. [Laughs] But nope, it’s just mostly that. I may be the only person that works here that knows how to make a drink but—because I actually did work at different places before. But no, here it’s something with a Coke in it or club soda and lime. [Laughs] That’s considered a mixed drink at Check’s. [Laughs]
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Tell us about Bud and Laverne who come in on Friday night.
Oh, they’re the best. This is what we strive for in life. Everyone wants to be Bud and Laverne. Everyone. If not, then you—you should go—you should bat for the other team, as they say in [the television show] Seinfeld. Bud and Laverne have been married now seventy years. When I first started working here, they’re some more of the people that you put the drinks up when you see them because, you know, they order the exact same thing…he has a draft beer, and she has the lightest bourbon and Sprite known to man because neither one of them are five-foot tall. Neither one of them can weigh 100 pounds. When I first started working here, they came in with an old couple, so it would be two old couples. And I always thought, man, that’s pretty cool: two old friends meeting up here. Then I found out that the couple they were with was their—their daughter and her husband. They’re both probably [in their] sixties when I met them, so—. But anyway, Bud and Laverne have been married seventy years. If—anybody that walks in the door says hi to them, but if nobody shows up, they’ll sit over there and talk to each other all night long and laugh and giggle and cut up. If all their friends show up, they’ll sit there and laugh and giggle and cut up all night long. But I want to, once again, point out the fact that, if nobody shows up, they will sit there and talk all night long after seventy years. I can't get anybody to listen to me straight for seventy minutes; Bud has found a woman to listen to him for seventy years. It’s the most amazing thing in the world. That is, to me, the American love story. That’s what you want; that’s what you got to have.
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Well Billy, how long do you think you’ll be bartending here at Check’s? For the long haul?
Yeah, I love it. I love it here. I like the people. I—I like the way I do things. They treat me like a king here. I know everybody. It’s—it’s great. You don’t make a ton of money here, but you make enough to—it’s not like working a place because you’re not as busy as a real place and, there again, how many bartending jobs can you get where, honestly, if I came in at five o'clock in the afternoon and said, “I got a date tonight at 10:00,” everyone that walks through the door would say, “Oh, great, Bill, man. We’ll be out by 10:00.” How crazy is that? I mean most places would pout and whine and cry. But my saving grace, I’ve never yelled last call here—never. If they want to sit here, I’ll sit here. Our liquor license is until four o'clock. If they want to sit here, as long as there’s more than one, they can sit here all night long. But I am absolutely and confident in the fact that if I walked in and said, “I really want to leave early,” that everyone in the place would say, “All right, man. Can I help you clean up? Can I help you do anything like that?” Once again, there’s very few places in the world where you could do that, but I guarantee you I could do it here. I could do it here on the busiest night of the week and just raise up when the place is crowded and say, “Hey, y’all if y’all don’t mind, I kind of need to leave in an hour.” And they would finish up their stuff without complaint and clean their table and bring it to me. And I would never do it in a million years. It would take an act of God. But I like it that much and I—I think that they like me that much. And that—it’s pretty—with great respect comes great responsibility, so I’ll never let them—never let them down. If I don’t work—when I take vacation, it’s Armageddon. It is the biggest pout-fest you’ve ever seen. So I try never to miss my night. Well, you’ve been here a few nights, and I’m glad you’re here tonight. “Well are you working tomorrow?” Now I have not worked a Thursday night in this place in—well, I don’t think ever. But every Wednesday night when the guys get up and leave, they look at you with that look going, “Are you working tomorrow?” Like, “Oh, I hope so.” And—and it makes me feel good. And I’m—I’m sorry if that sounds kind of boastful, but it makes me feel good that they miss me when I’m gone.
To download entire transcripts in PDF form, please click here for Billy Reynolds and here for Bill Tinker.
