The Dutchman
834 Wakefield Dr.
713-691-0228
Wakefield Drive is the dividing line between two venerable-by-Houston-standards subdivisions: the late-'40s, early-'50s developments Garden Oaks and Oak Forest. (In fact, one local wag calls the area GOOF.) Wakefield is one of the very few streets in Houston that lives up to its no-zoning ethos: Mechanic shops abut day cares which are next door to bars which are next door to antique shops which are next door to churches which are next door to more bars.
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The Dutchman, a beer joint, is the granddaddy of all the Wakefield Drive nightspots. Ancient window-unit a/c's struggle to cool the wood-paneled, exposed brick interior, and the classic rock/honky-tonk jukebox passes the Gene Watson-Gary Stewart honky-tonk test with flying colors. At the U-shaped bar, a bearded, shaggy-haired guy in an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers work shirt was bantering with a Mexican man across the bar about whose truck had more rugged tires. It's a very friendly place. Before we knew it, a balding, mustachioed man had engaged us in conversation about the DWI's he'd gotten in the past. As punishment for one, he had been ordered to attend a course on alcohol and automobile safety.
"You shoulda seen the people comin' to that class," he chuckled. "Two of 'em came on bikes, two more came on roller skates and another guy came on a horse."
By and by, the man completed the course. "Yep, I graduated drunk-driving school. By rights, now they should give me a drunk-driver's license."
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TA's Cargo Club
3604 Mangum Rd. #B
713-957-2720
Margie, the fiftysomething co-owner of the Cargo Club, sits at a stool at her own sunken, compact bar, beneath a dropped ceiling that is, oddly, also vaulted. "It's a good thing we just painted these walls," she says. "Maybe that will stop 'em from talkin'." But there's nothing stopping her.
She remembers how she got hired here, decades ago when the place was called Crazy Guggenheim's and hosted doors-locked dirty movie nights.
"I came for my interview at four o'clock," she says. "The barmaid asked me why I was there. I told her I had an interview. She told me I'd better come back another day. I told her I needed a job so I would stay. She told me I'd be better off coming back some other time."
This went on for quite some time, with Margie refusing to budge. "And then from the back room I hear this woman wail, 'Nobody loves me!' and out came the owner in nothin' but a G-string, red-sequined, heart-shaped tasseled pasties and clear plastic high-heel shoes. She asked me why I was there, and I told her I had an interview. She told me to have a seat and she'd be right back.
"Now, I kinda assumed she was gonna go put some clothes on or somethin', but she came right back out with the same ol' next to nothin' on she had when she left me there. I was tryin' to just look straight at her face, but it's hard when those tassels on 'em heart-shaped pasties are wigglin' around. She asked me a few questions, and then she told me to go on over to the bar. 'Here, cut this lime,' she said. I cut the lime up. She said, 'Okay, you start at five.'"
A few years later, Margie bought the bar, sold it back to the old owner a few years after that and then reacquired it not long after that. Along the way, her boyfriend, a former shipping company executive (thus the name, and the vaguely nautical decor), started helping her out with the ownership. "He's my boyfriend, he ain't my husband," Margie stresses. "I'm the happiest widow there ever was. That bastard ex of mine got kilt in a tornada years ago."
The dirty movies and former jiggling owner are gone now (though she still visits), but Margie isn't the only one with stories. The selection of the Gap Band's "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" serves as a Proustian madeleine for the bar's lone Saturday afternoon customer, who drifts off into a spoken reverie of times past...
"This reminds me of when I was a titty bar DJ," he says. "I did that for three years. It gets old, going to bed with a different girl every single night. It wears a man down. It's just like any other job. You have to be their brother, father, sister, mother. And you get sick of seeing naked women."
"Same tits, different day," puts in Margie.
john.lomax@houstonpress.com
