52 pages • 1 hour read
J.R. MoehringerThe Tender Bar
J.R. MoehringerNonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 41-43Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 41-43 Summary
Moehringer recounts how he smuggled McGraw out of his grandfather’s house and away from Ruth and bought him a plane ticket so he could return to school in Nebraska. Now the sole target of his aunt’s tirades, Moehringer quickly decided to move, renting a small room from a friend-of-a-friend. Unfortunately, this home was short-lived, as he was required to share the space with a free-ranging parrot and his roommate’s mentally unstable mother.
After crashing at his friend Bebe’s for a couple of weeks, he returned to his grandfather’s house, where he found his aunt Ruth somewhat calmer.
As always, he was reassured by his proximity to Publicans, where he continued to spend much of his time. Moehringer then recounts the tragic death of Steve, the owner of Publicans. He describes how his crowded funeral was full of men who had considered Steve a mentor, father figure, and patriarch. Throngs gathered at Publicans and drowned their sorrows by drinking. Moehringer recalls drinking until he felt sick, stumbling back to his grandfather’s house to sleep and then returning at dawn to the bar to drink again.
Finally, the author watched an old family video his cousin Sheryl gave him, and he realized that all the virtues he considered manly—persistence, determination, integrity, guts—had been personified in his mother all along. The author recalls being ashamed of how “helpless” he had become in life, and he wanted to start fresh. He interpreted the family video as a sign that he should leave his job and New York altogether and visit his mother and father.
Chapters 41-43 Analysis
In these chapters, Moehringer adopts a more somber tone as he reflects on a low point of his young adult life. He remembers how dejected he was when Publicans owner, Steve, one of his idols, confronted him about bad cheques he had used at the bar, telling him, “This isn’t the kind of man you want to be” (334), words that gnawed at the author. Moehringer paid his dues back in full. Repaying the debt left him broke but also meant that the two of them were even, which was what really mattered to him. This story shows how much Moehringer continued to revere Steve and respect his opinion.
Moehringer’s tone remains serious as he reports the tragedy of Steve’s death and points out that he was not the only one who had lost a father figure in Steve. Reflecting on the funeral, he remembers that “every man from Publicans looked less like a mourner and more like an orphan” (337). He explains that many people in the community were grieving, as Steve had been “a father to us all” (336).
Moehringer uses vivid descriptions to set the scene of Steve’s funeral gathering at Publicans, calling it “so packed, so loud, so happy and sad at the same time” (338). He notes that from his perspective, “[t]he barroom looked like Dante’s Manhasset. Eyes bulged. Tongues lolled” (338). He tries to convey the depths of people’s grief, writing that despite people heavily drinking, the “liquor wasn’t working” because they were in a “sea of sadness” (338).
The author confesses his sad realization that Publicans had become a security blanket of drunken distraction that he relied on to function. Moehringer, now 25, knew that he was dependent on the bar and that he was no longer drinking as a ritual or social activity; he was drinking to get drunk. He recalls his fear that, due to Steve’s death, Publicans could close, and he admits that he could not imagine his life or himself without it. These confessions illuminate how Moehringer was feeling in this period and how it took great resolve for him to leave his comfort zone of Manhasset and Publicans, establishing a new life elsewhere.
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