“Son, can you play me a memory?
I’m not really sure how it goes
But it’s sad and it’s sweet, and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man’s clothes”
Billy Joel, Piano Man
I didn’t really know my Uncle Billy. Not personally at least. I mean, I knew him; but I didn’t know him. He was more like a character from folklore to me than a family member. The oldest of seven siblings. He was eighteen years old and off to college when my Mom, the youngest of the seven, was just two years old! He had one of those cool bungalows at Swordfish Beach Club. He may or may not make an appearance at Thanksgiving each year. And he owned Magic’s Pub.
Uncle Billy passed away this summer.
In terms of things guys tend to romanticize, owning a bar might top the list – right up there with war and surviving in the wilderness (basically anything we picture when we think about Hemingway). But Uncle Billy actually owned a bar. I’ve always been oddly proud of that fact. Even after he had sold it – I never got to experience it from the perspective of someone of drinking age – I would still point it out to friends from college if they were visiting Long Island. We’d drive through downtown Westhampton on our way to or from the beach.
“That’s Magic’s. That’s where my Uncle’s bar was that I told you about.” Because of course, I had told them about it before. It is an unambiguously cool anecdote. My parents just gave me some prints of paintings depicting the front (Magic’s) and back (Dodger) entrances, and they are now the two coolest pieces of decor I own. The front shows the great bay window, and the iconic red-painted wooden sign hanging above the entryway. The sign is adorned with hand-painted white writing, ‘Magic’s Pub,’ and a cheeky black top hat with rabbit ears sticking out, and a wand on the opposite corner. You can’t see the even more iconic red door, as it’s tucked behind the bay window from our perspective. But it’s the centerpiece of the ‘Dodger’ print, that simply shows the modest entrance and that fire engine red door.
My own lived experiences at Magic’s mostly happened in the 90s – and I was born in 1992. This meant that most visits consisted of my Mom taking my brother Mike and me for lunch on a random weekday. We’d come in through the back, which to me was a perpetually empty space with a large bar, a long bench opposite, Golden Tee or a pinball machine in the corner, and the sweet and tangible smell of smoke infused into the wooden furniture. As we shuffled across the slate floor, our footsteps echoed in the quiet.
Then we worked our way through the short and crooked hallway to the front of the house. We’d stop in the middle to peek in the kitchen on the left if Duke was working. If he was, we’d see him again later when he personally delivered our grilled cheese sandwiches.
The dining room in front was another place I knew as nearly empty or sparsely populated. There was a dark wood corner bar to our left as we came out of the hallway. Most likely it would be my Uncle Jimmy behind the bar. The rest of the furniture was dark wood as well. I remember the chairs. Curved backs and heavy. The table we sat at was right next to the Pacman tabletop console, (if my brother and I weren’t just sitting at the table itself).
We’d play Pacman until Duke brought us our sandwiches – then we played Pacman and got grease all over the joystick and buttons. I think Billy was there sometimes, but in my memory, I can’t picture his face. It’s like he was one of the adults in The Peanuts cartoons, present but mostly a mumbling entity chatting with my Mom.
At some point after we finished eating we would retreat to The Artful Dodger to play Golden Tee or pinball – and if we saved a quarter or two, get some Peanut M&Ms from the candy machine back there. The kind that spits the candy out in handfuls, unbagged. After a while Mom would reappear and we’d head out the way we came.
Uncle Billy sold Magic’s when I was in high school. I remember being sad as the memories of those afternoons suddenly sizzled back to life. At the same time I thought it was cool because as my still young mind understood it, he sold it for a decent amount of money. It’s been a lot of things since then, and I’ve never been to any of them. To me, and anyone who knew it through the latter part of the 20th century, it will always be Magic’s. The same way your childhood home is always yours. You might drive by when you’re older and haven’t lived there for decades, but you’ll still point it out and say, “Look, there’s our house.”
There are studies that show if you really want to get to know somebody, rather than grabbing coffee and having a conversation with them, you should poke around their house or room. They don’t even need to be there. The place that someone builds for themselves gives more insight into that person than they might willingly offer up in a conversation. Magic’s was Billy’s place.
To me, it was a childhood refuge now steeped in smoky, dark-wooded nostalgia. I think for some other folks who spent time there and are reading this now, it was a refuge as well. Maybe it was a financial refuge in the form of a job there. For many, I’m sure it was simply a refuge from the daily troubles of life. Maybe you went there for a drink. Maybe you went there to dance. Maybe you went to watch the Yankee game. And maybe you knew my Uncle better than me. But that’s okay. In my own way, I knew Magic’s, and as a final sleight of hand from the magician himself, it turns out that’s more than enough for me.
Lemmen's Nursery 