The grilled cheese with bacon and tomato at the Bay Hill Club, giant lemonade optional.

I could eat 4 of them.

Tim Shea

The men’s lounge at what was then Emerywood Country Club was a great and open room, hidden away by not only a private entrance but by a large bar, which separated it from all other other parts and rooms of the club. It was damned hard to see who might be in there … and that’s the way it was supposed to be, I’m sure.

There was a large (for that time) TV blaring the noon news and then one of the soap operas. (There wasn’t much else to watch. Remember: there were only three networks, there was no such thing as cable, etc. And no one was really watching anyway, unless there was a news bulletin of some kind: a Kennedy shot or a space launch or something.)

The half dozen to 10 club members who might be there each day – of which my father was almost always one – ordered from the menu, but it’s likely none of them ever even looked at it. The guy who served the lounge knew what food and – just as (if not more) important – what drink to serve them. There was lunch, and, as you said, a few frames or boxes of gin that might stretch into a few more into the afternoon.

As far as I could tell (I was too young to actually go into the men’s lounge), no one actually won or lost, and no one ever paid off. The score pad was just tucked away in a drawer to be brought out again the next day.

What’s lamentably missing now, I think, isn’t just the men’s lounge, though many have gone the way of so much that’s not “politically correct.” No, it’s not just that it doesn’t exist, though I agree every private club worth its Softspikes should have one.

What’s missing today even in the clubs that still have a men’s card room or private area, and what I’m a bit nostalgic for in reading your post on the topic, is the regularity, the familiarity, the deep and loyal friendships among the regulars who used to frequent the men’s lounge.

I’m sure it’s more a romantic than a realistic notion, but I’d like to have experienced what my dad and Howard and Pinky and Joe Brady seemingly experienced every weekday of their lives back in those days. They seemingly never said “Hi” or “Bye” to each other. They just knew they’d pick up tomorrow where they left off today.

And in that way maybe they didn’t like the weekends so much.