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February 23, 2008 07:37 pm
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Photos
Kevin Ellis/The Norman Transcript
Kevin Ellis/The Norman Transcript
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Small-town gathering spot not just a bar
Tavern's owner and sole employee carries on family tradition.
By Julianna Parker
CNHI News Service
NOBLE, Okla. — It's 8 p.m. and the main thoroughfare in town is almost empty. A neon sign flickers “BEER” over the door of the bar on Main Street. The establishment’s name is painted on the window: “Friendly Tavern.”
The place doesn’t look friendly at first. The dimly lit bar is tiny, but with enough room for several arcade games, a jukebox and a dart board. Stools are pushed up against the bar stretching across the north wall.
Judy Back finishes pouring her coffee behind the bar and then looks up to greet the new arrivals.
“How’d you end up here?” she asks, with a little bit of Oklahoma in her voice. She’s the owner and sole employee at the Friendly, 120 S. Main St. in Noble.
There’s no one else in the bar Thursday evening. Back says some of her regulars are staying in because of the weather — they’ve worked outside in the cold weather all day so they just want to stay at home.
Three young men come in through the back door.
“Hey, Judy,” they say to the bartender with neatly styled silver hair. She knows what beer to pull out for each, except this night they’re throwing her for a loop and switching from Busch to Bud.
“You boys are confusing me,” Back says.
Back has been at the Friendly since the late 1980s, she said as she admitted she’s fuzzy on dates. The tavern has been around since the late ’40s or early ’50s.
“This little bar was here long before you went to a convenience store and bought beer, so everybody came here and socialized,” Back said.
Back’s mother, Joyce Bennett, started working there in the late ’60s and bought it a few years later. Back took over after her mother died in 1995.
“It’s basically the same way it was when Mom was here,” Back said.
Back knows most everyone who comes in. They come for a beer, or a soda, but mostly just to see a friendly face, she said.
“Most people who come here don’t come to get drunk," she said. "They come to socialize.”
And that’s good, because it’s hard to get drunk at the Friendly. Back said she can’t get a liquor license because state law says she’s too close to the Baptist church. So she serves soda and coffee and 3-point-2 beer. The cash-only bar sells beers for $2, draft beer for $1.50 and pitchers for $5.
But despite the edge of bitterness in her voice when she says she can’t get a license, Back seems to appreciate the different atmosphere that results.
“This little bar is as much like Cheers as you could want it to be,” she said. “Basically, it’s family. Everyone knows everyone.”
The Friendly is like a snapshot of small town life decades ago, and Back knows it.
“Noble’s 20 years behind times in everything,” she said. “I don’t know if it’ll ever catch up.”
From behind her bar at the Friendly, she’s seen several generations of Noble residents grow up.
“I call it the twilight zone of hell, but it’s home,” she said, quickly adding that if an outsider called it that, she wouldn’t be the first one to jump him.
But people who aren’t from this central Oklahoma community still appreciate the bar. Hank Gillis, Ronnie Hornbuckle and Brian Hargiss visited for a while Thursday evening. They live in Noble now but aren’t originally from the area.
“We came in here one night just to check it out and were like, ‘She’s cool,’” Gillis said of Back.
He said he likes the “wallet-friendly” aspect. Two songs on the juke box are only a quarter. Upon arrival, the men almost immediately went to the jukebox to pick out some country tunes for their time at the Friendly. Then they borrowed Back’s darts and started a game.
“It’s friendly — no fights, everybody gets along,” Hornbuckle said.
The bar appeals to people of all ages — as long as they’re 21 and over, Back said.
Some customers come in when she opens at 10 a.m. They drink coffee and Back reads the days headlines to them, she said.
Back stays at the bar until closing, which can be as early as 10 p.m. or as late as 2 a.m. if she has customers. The Friendly is closed on Sundays, but other than that, Back puts in long days and doesn’t take breaks.
“It’s not easy, put it that way,” she said.
The straight-talking woman doesn’t gush about her job.
“I kinda got stuck with it,” she said. But it's a living, she said, so she’s stayed.
“I can’t go anywhere or do anything, but I can pay the bills,” Back said. But her job also creates close relationships that do help her out, she said.
“If I’m sick," she said, "almost any one of my customers can work the bar.”
Julianna Parker writes for The Norman (Okla.) Transcript.
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