It is probably no coincidence that two of Buffalo's favorite works of home-grown literature - Tom Dudzick's play, Over the Tavern and Verlyn Klinkenborg's social history, The Last Fine Time - both focus on nostalgic views of East Side drinking establishments of a bygone era. The idea of the friendly bar where "everyone knows your name" is particularly well-suited to Buffalo, "City of Good Neighbors."

The Last Fine Time tells the true story of two generations of the Wenzek family - Polish-Americans who own a bar on the corner of Sycamore and Herman on Buffalo's East Side. Thomas Wenzek opens the bar in 1922 after immigrating to Buffalo from his native Galacia. 1922 is an odd time to open a bar anywhere in America; prohibition is in full swing and it is illegal to sell beer or other alcoholic beverages. However, like many Buffalo bars, Wenzek's survives by selling non-alcoholic "near beer," serving Friday fish fries and other light fare, and offering a welcome locale for neighbors to meet and hang out. In 1947, with WWII finally over and Prohibition a fading memory, son Eddie takes over the bar and upgrades the menu to include fancier fare, such as fried shrimp. Like his father before him, Eddie and his family live in the apartment above the tavern.

Readers expecting to follow the lives of the Wenzek family, or to learn more about events taking place in post-war Buffalo will be disappointed. Author Verlyn Klinkenborg is much more interested in capturing a moment in time than in telling a family history. Klinkenborg is a former Harvard University English professor who also happens to be Eddie Wenzek's son-in-law. He is known as a "literary journalist" in the mold of John McPhee and other writers who use precise language to find deeper meaning in mundane things. To Kinkenborg, Wenzek's tavern serves as a metaphor for that "last fine time" when ethnic neighborhoods still flourished in urban America.

As such, readers of The Last Fine Time will either love it or hate it. Using dense, poetic prose, the author lovingly describes every aspect of daily life in 1947 Buffalo, from clanking radiators to the practices of beer company "advance men." The writing is beautifully evocative, but it is a bit like a seven-course meal of nothing but rich desserts. It also requires the reader to keep a dictionary close at hand; Klingenborg's vocabulary is prodigious and he's not afraid to use it. Nevertheless, it is a fairly short book and those with the patience to stay the course will come away with a deeper understanding of a way of life long gone. And in the brief moments that the author does dwell on the Winzek family itself, whether describing Eddie's first date with his future wife, or patriarch Thomas's post-retirement years playing cards with cronies in the tavern, he succeeds in capturing what it was like to live during that last fine time, when Buffalo was still a vibrant, growing city.

The Last Fine Time is shelved on the basement level of the Library at call number F129.B89 P75 1991

Michael Lavin wrote this Monthly Book Spotlight.