The Tender Bar

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 2005

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Symbols & Motifs

Publicans Bar

As the place where all the men he idolized spent their time, Publicans itself came to stand for a kind of father figure to Moehringer. Publicans was where he could connect with his Uncle Charlie and his friends Bobo, Joey D, and Colt, as well as numerous other men with whom he bonded by visiting the bar. Because his own father was absent from his life, Moehringer felt that his connections at the bar were the father figures he needed.

Regardless of his age or situation, Moehringer could always turn to Publicans to connect with a man he admired. The author remembers, “They taught me how to grip a curveball, how to swing a nine-iron, how to throw a spiral, how to play a seven card stud. They taught me how to shrug, how to frown, how to take it like a man” (95). Over the many years of Moehringer’s childhood and young adulthood, these characters and voices amalgamated in his mind, turning Publicans itself into a paternal presence. Moehringer explains that “[a]t some point the bar itself became my father, its dozens of men melding into one enormous male eye looking over my shoulder” (8).

The T-Bird

Throughout Moehringer’s childhood, his mother’s car, which they called “the T-Bird,” was an important part of his relationship with his mother. Because he and his mother had to live in his grandfather’s dilapidated house with numerous other relatives, they used the T-Bird to escape on long drives with only each other for company. The author’s mother especially liked to drive around the wealthier parts of Manhasset, to imagine living in a nicer home one day. In the T-Bird, Moehringer and his mother could share their thoughts and feelings away from their other family members and fantasize about the future.

Because it was one of the few places where they shared their feelings and dreamt about better days ahead, the T-Bird came to symbolize Moehringer and his mother’s dreams of escaping their life at Grandpa’s house. The car brought them closer to each other and to the places they wanted to live, providing a necessary escape from their difficult reality. Moehringer understood how important the car was to his mother, writing, “I communed with rocks and trees and especially the T-Bird. Like a horse whisperer I petted its dashboard and begged it to keep running. If the T-Bird broke down, I worried, my mother would break down” (28).

Yale University

In The Tender Bar, Yale is more than just a school; both the author and his mother envisioned Yale University as Moehringer’s gateway to a prosperous future as an educated, enlightened man. Moehringer’s mother impressed upon him that he was destined to go to either Harvard or Yale University, which Moehringer calls an “outrageous” dream, considering her low income and lack of prospects. His mother deeply resented not being able to go to university herself, and she told Moehringer, “You’re going to get the education I didn’t [...] Harvard or Yale, babe. Harvard or Yale” (33).

Throughout the text, Yale is referred to as a place that has the potential to transform Moehringer’s life and identity. While Moehringer worried that Yale is only for the wealthy, Bill and Bud assured him that he could get in and that Yale would make him a “renaissance man” (119). Reflecting on first visiting Yale’s campus, Moehringer described the university as having a “hallowed aura” and envisioned it as “the more peaceable world for which I’d been longing” (121-122). He admits that his romanticization of the university came from his “explosive mix of poverty and naivete” (121). Seeing Yale as his only possible salvation, he imagined a bitter future in which the university rejected him, and he would languish in bars and agonize over his lost future. While he did not admit it to anyone else, he felt as though admission to the university was what made his life worth living. His and his mother’s speechless joy at receiving his acceptance letter further demonstrates what an immense victory it was for them both, and the promise Yale symbolized for them.