Mark Mourer
It ain’t that we can’t push away from the table,
Or the bar or the tailgate or the ‘fridge in the stable
In the barn where the cattle will drink from a trough.
Hell, we mix honey with whiskey to undo a cough.
We enjoy a good drink ‘round here most of the time.
Some even knock a few back while making words rhyme.
This ode aims to capture what a lot of you’re thinking:
In Fort Worth, we take us some pride in our drinking.
That “drinking” and “thinking” align often in verse
Is a linguistic coincidence and not really a curse
Of the struggling poet, or the freelancing writer,
Or the Strait-like troubadour who’d sing an all-nighter
When fueled by Firestone and Robertson’s TX,
Or the Martin House Saison that’s brewed with wheat Chex.
No, the moons will align in Fort Worth over booze
More often than other locations you’d choose
Because Jacksboro Highway has spilled more whiskey and gin
Than burgundy swirled at the Italian Inn.
And a lotta them joints that served hussies and dicks
Would start pouring at lunch for those eating at Rick’s
On the Bricks, which personified most of us good Fort Worth folk
Who, not long ago, voted out all the smoke
In the bars and saloons and the booths at Old South,
Where bacon and pancakes would hit the mouth
Of coeds leaving The HOP or The Pub
Before dudes headed west to the Alta Mere hub
And Illusions, or Sinbad’s Oasis of Delight.
Or Rick’s Cabaret, nee New Orleans Nights.
We drink ‘round here to make ourselves much more interesting,
And to make Irish Travelers more tolerable as they’re grifting.
Fort Worth would drink thirteen months out of each year
If the good Lord would grant us three more weeks of the steer
Sales and rodeos that kept the Anfins and Ben E. Keith folks alive,
Along with the Miller brewers off of I-35.
Before the Near Southside was so hip, cool and trended,
Hemphill Street bars served those whose shifts had just ended
At hospitals, warehouses and – of course – the newspapers
Along with those still looking for capers
To appease the frontier-like thirst and mentality
That’s blessed (perhaps cursed) our fair burgh with the reality
That there’s always time for one more bloody final
Longneck, shot or double. Or a glass for the wino.
The good stuff at Shady may be preferred over the harder
Stuff that flows fairly common ‘round Amon G. Carter,
Where TCU has won more of late than they’ve lost,
Letting Frogs drink at games for a reasonable cost.
We’re more common and humble than our friends to the east.
Not lesser in stature, and – of course – not the least
In wearable couture or the latest of fashion.
But Fort Worth intends to drink with a passion
Conveyed often with toasts lead by a testimonial
Following dozens of cocktails knocked back at Colonial
In May every year when we dress to be sure
We resemble the golfers on the PGA tour.
Celebrating Fort Worth for its obsession with drinking
Means nothing to the officer who’s counting our blinking
On the side of the road, where this ode finds its close
With a lesson that many an old barfly knows:
Call a cab, an Uber, a friend, or a Lyft
After crushing your cold ones, as we’d hate you to drift
Left of center, or off of Nine Mile Bridge Road
Where life’s debts have been paid and some souls have been owed
To the heavens, or even the devil. Who knows?
In Fort Worth, sometimes that how drinking goes.
