This week I’d like to share something adjacent to what I’ve been writing lately, with a small look into a pillar of the Los Alamos community.
Doug says a lot of things.
He always has a story to tell and never lets the truth get in the way of a good story. But the day he told us he had a big-ass tumor in his neck, wrapping around arteries and eating away the vertebrae, there was a tone. It wasn’t fear, but it was earnest.
He thought he had a pinched nerve, something simple to be fixed at the health club where he spent the morning soaking and massaging. “Mr. Osborn, you have a big-ass tumor in your neck. We are going to have to refer you to oncology,” the hospitalist told him. The term he used may have been different, but the result was still the same. Doug had broken his body in more ways than the rest of us at the Tub combined; the seriousness was not lost on him.
I was led to Bathtub Row Brewing Co-op before we even moved to Los Alamos. “They have a great patio space, and I thought you would like the sunflowers.” My husband smiled and pointed to a spot on the Google map. It reminded us of the brewery we hung out at in Carrollton, near our home in Georgia. A microbrewery was on our shortlist for wherever we decided to land. Los Alamos checked several boxes, but we had no idea what this place would do for us.
I started working at the Tub two weeks after we moved. Sitting outside on the Back-40 with a pint of Canyon Rim Rye, I was directed to a large man captivating the attention of several others. I brought him my resumé, which he would later lovingly tell me he didn’t give a shit about, and he asked why someone who put time spent in church leadership on their resumé wanted to work at a bar. I felt I had made an impression.
From the first moment, something was different. Summer season placed patrons shoulder to shoulder in the taproom and every blade of grass, or outside table, was covered with people. “Dog season and kid season” I would later come to call it: the moment when the cool air lifted on top of The Hill and people emerged from their homes with urgency for the sun. Now the summer was in full swing, and I was thrown behind the bar with either blind confidence or trial-by-fire, I’m not sure which. I was intimidated by the ease in which the bartenders moved with each other, a dance that could only be learned, never taught. Steph, the tall, tan woman who showed off an inked turtle band around her arm commanded the space. She made every step with purpose and shouted audibles as she moved with grace behind the others. Albert, the one who directed me to the GM initially, knew everyone’s name and addressed them as they came to the bar. Although he worked at a steady pace, he still managed to look each one in the eye and ask about what had progressed since their last conversation.
Michelle, I bonded with instantly. She had blue hair and laughed at my jokes and didn’t make me feel poorly for being the new kid. No one did. There was an expectation, palpable, but I wasn’t able to name it yet. Antonio endearingly left the faint smell of green wherever he went, and spoke odd bits of Italian and French. Frances taught me on my first night now to scrub a toilet with a pumice stone, something I didn’t know was an actual thing, and later how to hold myself accountable.
My husband and I were still looking for a place to live. We moved with the promise of a lease at a newly built apartment complex, but were told a week before our move date they wouldn’t be completed in time. On faith, we moved anyway, and spent our first month in New Mexico living out of a Motel 6. Each night after I worked, I drove the thirty minutes down the hill to the motel in Española, singing loudly, fuzzy from office bourbon and exhausted from movement. For three months, the bartenders and managers spread the word to patrons and others in the service industry that we needed a place to live. LANL labbies offered leads and made phone calls to friends, asking each time I saw them, “Did you find a place yet? I have a friend, I’ll give him a call.” When we did finally find a place, fellow bartenders and their partners took turns moving us as the sky spit flurries in mid-October. Three months isn’t that long, but by that time, I felt like part of the family.
Doug became a mentor as much as a boss. He and Rob, the Assistant GM, spoke with all of us on a personal level, asking about our lives and how they could help us succeed. If Doug brought people in and made them feel special, Rob was the one who made sure they had a place to be. Rob’s collectiveness created a foundation that was easy to overlook if you weren’t paying attention, but without him, the foundation would certainly crack. Doug suggested books to read, discussed philosophy, and dreamed big with each one of us; Rob organized events, collected concerns, and made sure we all had a check at the end of the week. On the rare occasion a conflict occurred, Rob never took sides. He always managed to bring the truth to the forefront, but only when staying silent no longer felt like an option.
The Tub is an anchor to the community, a place where everyone filters through at some point, either to drink, eat, or give money. A few patrons hold office hours on Thursday evenings, and others hold baby showers on Sunday afternoons. We put on golf tournaments for Ukraine, hosted the Democrats when the governor came to visit, and contended for Family-Friendly Business of the Year in the Chamber of Commerce Business Awards. The Tub sells only beer, but it’s not unusual to see smoke from a grill somewhere on the grounds. Billy is a patron with two PhDs who bakes bread with spent grain. Even if meat was his first language, he always made sure people like Nic, Albert, and myself had something to share. One Christmas party he made vegan posole that could have burned the skin off my face, but my heart ate until I was full. He brought top-shelf bourbon and hugged me even when he looked visibly uncomfortable. He and other board members like Connie, Cat, and Grant would wash glasses while we fought through the weeds. They tipped us more than was reasonable, and joined us when we needed to “focus on our appearance.” Don’t ask me to explain it.
Jim and Gus would come in 6 days a week and sit at the end of the bar with limes they brought from home. Gus was loud and once grabbed her vagina as she yelled “No shave November,” while Jim would play chess and haul spent grain to the horses on North Mesa. Gus had worked at the Tub years before and Jim had wired the entire back-of-the-house.When Gus suddenly died just before Christmas in 2022, my family and I were visiting family back in Georgia. I cried for this woman I knew no better than from behind the bar, and took soup to Jim at their house, along with the others from the Tub. When Gus’s family held her memorial a few months later, the Tub was packed with family and friends for which we had no words. They placed her ashes on the bar next to a glass of New Mexi Lager, and leaned her chair against the edge. Eventually we received the golden plaque etched with “Gus’s Seat” and screwed it into the back of the chair where she always sat. We cried again.
After Gus died, I started paying attention. The two years my family had been in Los Alamos suddenly felt like they stretched deeper into our past, our DNA aligning more with where we were than where we had been. Every one of the people in our lives, in one way or another, stemmed from one of two places and the Tub was at the top. Rubbing the scales from my eyes, I watched as the Tub revealed its magic. It was alive and called to those who needed it, leaving the rest to choose.
Once this place gets a hold of you, it's hard to let go. Even when you leave, a part of you remains like a beacon ready to bring you home. “All good children come home,” Doug would say. Mags returned each break during her PhD program to work any shift she could take; when Michelle and I left for grownup jobs, we lobbied to work events and pick up shifts when it made sense. Previous employees came back to serve on the board, host parties, eat, drink, and be merry. Even those of us who worked there could still be found close by on our days off, along with partners and kids. “Best staff ever!” we cheers with rounds of nickels. When my family would travel back to Georgia, old haunts didn’t feel the same. Nothing was wrong with them, they were exactly what we needed then, but it feels different when you find something real. Especially when you didn’t know you were looking for it.
Adam and Em brew beer infused with the joy and love they take wherever they go. Antonio grows grass and hops and sunflowers in ground that should never have grown anything, as if he dared the soil to reject it. When it snows, he comes in the morning to shovel the sidewalk; when it's warm, he waters the grass and tends to the flowers. He and Gerald built a deck to line the extra taproom disguised as a shipping container on the Back-40. They dug trenches, built fences. Gerald worked for the Tub before he was on payroll, showing up and putting his hands to whatever needed attention. We didn’t know we needed him, but the Tub did. Jason continues to look for excuses to celebrate together, an ambassador of fun, bringing a record player and sharing food from a crock pot to open Sunday mornings. Chris and Nic, well, they remind us not to take ourselves too seriously.
From behind the bar, we’ve watched couples meet, fall in love, get married, have babies. Strangers tell me there’s something special about this place without any provocation. Travelers find their way to drink from our taps and camp in the back. We’ve watched our own staff, fellow Tubbies, grow into doctors, parents, changed and happy, healthy people. We hug one another, we cry together. We go on trips, hang out, and support one another. We genuinely love each other. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Before Doug left for his final surgery in Phoenix, we all wore baseball jerseys emblazoned with the Tub logo, a nod to Doug’s early baseball career. Below our names on the back, we each sported number 13- Doug’s number- as if we all planned to join him in spring training. In one of the few ways we knew how, we united beyond our current staff to old, new, and honorary, to pass along the hope we had in one another, and the belief we have in the home we share.
The Tub grows people- something in the water, the ground, no one really knows. Doug always said this was a magic little corner of New Mexico, but Doug says a lot of things.
Beautifully written. Doug does indeed say a lot of things.
Two blubbering babies over here love you so much. You are beautiful. I won’t forget the day that I turned to Albert and Antonio and said “Sam has always been here”. I love you!