Shocking personal disclosure: I didn’t do any drinking in college. It just wasn’t my thing. But I fell in love with a bar my freshman year at Millsaps.
To call the Cherokee a “dive” is an understatement. The décor is not hipsterish faux-decay, such as booths with gently worn canvas, mildly rusted signs, tattered artwork. The decay in the Cherokee is genuine—real holes in the Naugahyde, sports pendants fraying from age and cigarette smoke, a slight film ensconcing the tables. And I loved it. I loved every gross, slightly greasy stitch of it.
But I didn’t drink. However, if you take one look at me, it’s easy to see what my vice is: I eat.
A lot.
And the Cherokee catered to this as well as it did those who imbibe. The sausage and cheese plate is just that: smoked sausage with barbeque sauce, cheese cubes, and a few toothpicks. During poorer times for me, an order of their Comeback dressing and a basket of crackers would suffice. While my friends would down beer after beer there, I’d content myself with a cheeseburger and an order of fried green tomatoes. The roast beef blue plate remains a favorite, the hamburger steak dinner fills me to the point of food intoxication, and the buffalo wings are incredible. I have to stop writing now because I’m getting hungry and don’t want to start gnawing on my keyboard . . . but if I had some of their homemade ranch dressing . . .
But it’s more than the food. It’s always more than the food.
Bars are weird places for the nondrinker. I’ve had bartenders snub my order for a Coke or water because, frankly, the sober don’t tip as well as the tipsy. But not the Cherokee. When I frequented the place more than once a week, Lance (my favorite bartender, featured prominently in Ken Murphy’s picture of the place) would often pour me a water as I walked in, then hand me a menu without asking. Occasionally at parties on campus, I’d feel a little odd without a bottle or cup in my hand. At the Cherokee, though, I never felt out of place, even if the building itself was reeling from a collective beer binge that would make Faulkner himself blush.
When I heard that the Cherokee was moving from its original State Street location to its current Old Square Road one, I swatted down complaints from my friends that “it just wouldn’t be the same.” Nonsense, I’d say. And I was right. The new building might have fancy embellishments, like walls that are plumb or level surfaces, but it’s still the same. I have it on good authority that the cooking grease was moved. Even if this is legend, I’ll still buy it. And I’ll keep buying the burgers, the fried mushrooms, and now that I’m older and wiser, a beer.
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