Tide Inn.

When I was a kid I went to a private high school that drew its students from all across Westchester County and the more benign  precincts of the Bronx. As a consequence it wasn't at all abnormal to live 15 or 20 miles away from friends.

This "disaggregation" as we would call it today, led to some logistical problems. Where could we find middle ground where we could get drunk off our keisters and not have too long a drive home?

I should add that until fairly recent times, the drinking age in New York was a more reasonable 18. You could, after all, be sent to die in a Vietnamese jungle at that age, it stands to reason you should also be able to enjoy a Schaefer, Ballantine's Ale or Rheingold at the same age.

Having been born in December, I was almost always the youngest of my "age cohorts." In many cases I was a year younger than my friends. Fortunately, I had an older brother who gave me his defunct draft card (in those days IDs didn't have photos) and this aged me up 21 months, putting me on par with my friends.

One of the places we drank was a cavernous bar in downtown New Rochelle, a place called "George's." Not only was it virtually equidistant from nearly everyone, it allowed my friends to escape their parents' house by saying "I'll be at George's." Their parents unaware that the bar was seedy at best.

Not far from where I lived was a crappy little shack of a bar called "Tide Inn." Before the post-War suburban explosion widened roadways and paved over marshland, I suppose it was near the murky waters of the Long Island Sound. Hence the name.

When I was a kid, however, that had all changed. A Toyota City had opened in the late 60s and by the mid-70s when I left Westchester for good, it had engulfed, as the Japanese car industry was engulfing the American, nearly a quarter of a mile on each side of the Boston Post Road. Tide Inn, a rickety place with walls that seemed to be made of old driftwood planks was directly across from Toyota City. It was doomed.

I took the lyrics to Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi," and rewrote them for our circumstances.

Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell

They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

They took all the trees
Put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em

I rewrote that, thusly:

Oh they tore down Tide Inn
And put up a Toyota City.
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone.
They tore down Tide Inn
And put up a Toyota City.
They took all the bars
Put 'em in a bar museum,
They charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em.

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone.
They tore down Tide Inn
And put up a Toyota City.