In St. Louis, everyone goes to Mark's

By Joe Holleman
Reprinted from: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
January 18, 2001

Mark Pollman has been behind the bar at the Fox & Hounds tavern at the Cheshire Inn in St. Louis for some 16 years.

He is regularly gruff, always opinionated, often stubborn and sometimes vain. He is one bartender who does not hesitate to lecture, reprimand, prod, challenge and even sometimes insult his customers.

Could that be why everyone likes him so much?

Pollman -- who describes himself as a mid-50s, old-hippie liberal -- has written a book about alcohol, been in the Air Force, bicycled through the United States and Europe, broke his back twice and now rescues dogs from bad homes. He was raised a Catholic but has a house full of Buddha statues and directs visitors to rub their bellies. He cusses like a truck driver with a bad tooth but makes men get up from their barstools and give their seats to ladies.

Is he an expert on drink? Well, he does own more than 3,000 books on the subject. He's been elected to the Bartenders Hall of Fame, has graced the covers of industry magazines and has spoken numerous times on the liquor and hospitality industries.

Pollman also is working on his umpteenth class of know-it-all college kids who sooner or later hear about the Fox & Hounds bartender who "knows all this stuff."

Pollman's quizzes have become famous to the denizens of the lounge. Like an old tommy gun, he can rattle off trivia questions about any number of subjects. And if you're good enough to get a couple right, he'll then try to scramble your brain with one of the quizzes, puzzles or riddles he keeps in an accordion folder behind the bar.

Along with the Young Turks, who eventually find their ways to trendier places for a while, Pollman holds court for older young people, the middle-aged, the late middle-aged, the younger old people, and some old people.

In the movie "Casablanca," everyone goes to Rick's. In St. Louis, everyone goes to Mark's - at least once.

Catholics, coal and karmaBorn right after World War II in Breese, Ill., Pollman is a true working-class guy. His father owned a shoe store and his grandfather was a coal miner.

As a young boy, he made money by hauling coal into the small taverns in and around Breese. One of his prized possessions is an old autographed photo of John L. Lewis, the legendary founder of the United Mine Workers.

After attending Breese Mater Dei High School, he set off for Benedictine College in Kansas but decided after a year or so that "13 and a half years of Catholic education was enough for me."

Then comes a list of jobs, all of which one can picture Pollman holding. He sold bread, he taught school, he sold cable television when it first started. He was in the Air Force and worked in meteorology.

It was while in service to Uncle Sam that Pollman picked up his proclivity for philosophy, and it helped save his life.

"I was messing with some things that I shouldn't have been messing with, and an Army master sergeant who I had become friends with picked me up and got me drunk for three days," Pollman said, in quieter tones than one normally hears from his mouth.

"Then he stood me at attention and told me to repeat the following sentence 10 times: 'I can not afford the luxury of even one negative thought.' "

Pollman becomes quiet for a moment and then directs this reporter to "write that down. You probably won't ever get any better advice. By being a bartender, I try to take negative people and make them positive. But if I can't, then I have to stay away from them. I simply can't be around negative people."

Pollman said when he needed some life readjustment he found it in an eight-month bicycle trip around the United States and Canada.

"I had to find out what I really believe in. Get back to the basics, Life 101," said Pollman, who also took two wheels around Europe. That trip, he recalls, allowed him to almost drink the "circle route," a bus line in London with a pub at each of its 28 stops. "I made it through 27."

Pollman has never been married and says only that he has had several special relationships with women, including a girlfriend who now chides him for not getting his cable television service fixed.

"It's been out for a couple of weeks, but I find I really don't watch the damned thing that much," he said.

"A right livelihood"

A bartender is a curious creature, much like a barber. There is no easy way to define a good one, but it sure is easy to identify the bad ones. Whether it be a loquacious sage such as Pollman or a flirtatious young woman, every customer knows that the best bartenders - regardless of race, color, creed or leg shape - are the ones who seem to be having a good time along with their customers.

"I tend bar because I get a great amount of joy out of it," Pollman said. "The minute I work one evening and I don't have any fun, that's the night I quit."

Pollman said his work location is perfect for him. "With the Cheshire Inn hotel, I get travelers, out-of-towners. But I also get a lot of locals. The room is geared maybe more to a middle-aged crowd, but being so close to Wash U., I get a lot of college students."

He said college kids have two things going for them, or more accurately, going for Pollman.

"Number one, they keep me young because I have to stay open to new ideas. And second," he says, with impeccable timing, "they don't know all of my old jokes."

Pollman said the students come in to stump him with their jokes "and most of the time, I can give them the punch line well before they're done."

(Speaking of jokes, Pollman loves those of the lawyer variety: What is an attorney's ideal weight? Four pounds. Including the urn.)

With his powers of persuasion, Pollman would have seemed destined for a sales career.

"You know what? I liked sales, I really did. But I love bartending," he said. "People go to bars to have a good time, and I want to help them do that."

Pollman does have three rules for running a good bar: Number one, the bartender is always right. The next two rules refer back to Rule Number One.

"Really, it's the truth. A bartender has got to be allowed to run the bar they way they want to. You have to have the final word. My job basically is simple. Make people good drinks, get people talking and make sure everyone is having a good time.

"I enjoy doing that. It is what the Buddha described as a person finding his 'right livelihood'."

One of Pollman's favorite lines is that everyone who walks into a bar with money enough for a drink is equal - until they open their mouths."

And open mouths delight Pollman. "I'm different than most bartenders in that I welcome discussion on any subject. I don't care if it's politics, religion, sex, whatever, let's talk about it.

"But it has to be a civil discussion, and everyone gets their turn to say their piece. I don't like people who point their fingers when they talk because then it's not about your opinions, it's about your damned finger in my face. And I don't shy away from disagreeing with a customer. If they don't like that, I tell them to stay at their country club where the bartenders are paid more to keep their mouths shut."

Beneath that gruff exterior

Bill Benson, who has been at the Fox & Hounds twice as long as Pollman, plays the piano and sings at the lounge five nights a week. He may know Pollman as well as anybody. The feeling is mutual, as Pollman describes Benson, who is blind, as a man who sees far more than he does.

When asked to describe Pollman, Benson chuckled.

"I'm not sure anyone can describe Mark in one sentence, or one paragraph, or one story. Obviously, he is well-read on any number of topics and can intelligently discuss them with anybody. That's what makes him a great bartender.

"But what makes Mark a great person is that, deep down, he cares about people - even if he seems gruff at times," said Benson, who told of a regular customer whose mother recently died.

"Mark not only called me to let me know, but he also asked if I would call the guy and express my condolences. And that's Mark, he's genuinely concerned about people," Benson said.

Pollman also doesn't shy away from offering advice to customers who ask him for it.

"Although I always preface it by reminding them that free advice is worth exactly what you paid for it, and then I tell them the truth as best I know it," he said.

If one wants to get to the truly mushy side of Pollman, then let the talk go to the dogs. Two of them, specifically. Both Doberman pinschers who have Pollman wrapped around their paws.

During a recent interview at his home near the old Arena site, the two dogs were never more than an arm's reach away. The queen of the household, a 65-pound, 5-year-old named Indy, snarled when attention seemed to focus on her running mate, a massive 110-pound, 2-year-old male called Harry.

Both were rescued from less than ideal circumstances. Indy was found running on an interstate near Kansas City, and Harry was taken away from a man who had beaten him with a baseball bat.

"I'd never owned a dog before in my life. I mean, there was always a family dog when I was growing up, but I had never had one on my own," he said. Then he got involved with Doberman Rescue of Kansas City. The group finds homes for abused, neglected and unwanted Dobermans.

Pollman still mourns the passing of Elsa, his first Doberman, who helped him recover when he broke his back a few years ago. Elsa was sick when Pollman was off work for more than five weeks with painful back spasms. Elsa suddenly got better while Mark was laid up. When he was back on his feet, Elsa died.

Although this happened in 1996, Pollman's eyes became misty as he talked of her.

"You know, I've got this rose bush in my front yard that hasn't done worth a damn. I wished I would've spread Elsa's ashes around it because I know it would have thrived," he said.

It's in the book

In 1998, Pollman wrote "Bottled Wisdom," a collection of quotes about drinks, drinking and drinkers. It contains more than 1,000 quotes. Copies are sold at the Fox & Hounds. Now, Pollman's collection of quaffing quotes exceeds 25,000.

He also is a serious collector of alcohol-related literature. Among his thousands of books, he has more than 3,600 that deal with alcohol - including an 1824 edition of Samuel Morewood's "Inebriating Liqkuors."

But even if Pollman never writes another book, one can be sure he will keep telling stories.

Maybe that's what good bartending is about. Telling stories.

"It's always been my opinion that if cops, bartenders, beauticians and morticians told just one one-hundredth of what we knew, we could bring the world to a stop," Pollman said.

And speaking of mortician-like subjects, the dramatic Pollman has even scripted his Last Call.

"When it's my time to go, I hope I'm behind the bar at the Fox & Hounds and I'm telling a long shaggy dog story.

"And then I drop dead right before I get to the punch line."

*article reproduced with permission of the author and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.