The first incarnation of the bar was called “The Boys”. A couple of gas pumps where farmers could fill trucks and tractors, some food, some booze all in a hand built building alongside a dirt road.  The owners, “The Boys” if you will, were Sherbie Dowell and Pete Grover. FDR was in his first term when they opened for business. And through 12 U.S. Presidents, two World Wars, one police action, a Cold War and a Desert Storm, rivers of beer and bourbon have been served to patrons of the “local bar”.

            In 1936, there were 3 family owned grocery stores in the sleepy little town of St. Leonard, just a “slow down” on the very long drive from DC to the fishing boats at Solomons Island.   The bar quickly became a social center of sorts for the village. It was basically a beer and a shot type of place, where a few residents and farmers gathered to discuss the vagaries of life. Back then the Parran Farm was a tenant farm, largest in the area. On Fridays, the Parrans would load the tenants onto the back of a flat bed truck and drive them into town. The tenants would scatter into the three grocery stores, buying big sacks of flour, cans of lard and other supplies, often “on credit”. In a twist of fate, one of those tenants was the father of a man who became prominent in the local bar and restaurant business. The son, Alan Burke, went on to own The Toadstool, what became Guido’s, the predecessor to Adams Ribs in Solomons and currently Gateway. But never the town bar in St. Leonard. 

            The Boys did little business with the tenants, who couldn’t afford the 35 cents. After all, tenants got a dollar a day, a house to live in, and a cow. But other residents and farm owners made up the clientele. There wasn’t any real minimum drinking age. That was just something the folks in Annapolis dreamed up. In St. Leonard, if you had the money, you got the drink. As a result, many of Calvert County’s current movers and shakers, those 40 and over, had their first taste of alcohol in that bar as a teen, or even pre-teen. 

            For much of its existence as “The Boys”, “D&G” and “Boyles” there was a small “back room” where black people could drink. They could sit and sip on a bolted down bench at a small table. There was a slot in the wall where a six-pack or a pint could be passed back. Individual drinks took too long.The bartender needed to remain up front, serving whites. If you were black, you got your beers in bunches. The back room also had a battered old jukebox, covered in wire mesh and secured with a chain, pumping out “Rhythm and Blues” by Joe Turner and Faye Adams. Meanwhile, the whites out front had Ernest Tubb and Cowboy Copas. It all seemed to work out. 

            You have to remember those were very different times. It was a racially segregated, rural farming community where the population hadn’t substantially changed in 200 years. It was so isolated and out of the mainstream, that President Taft would occasionally use the Parran farm as a Camp David type retreat. Cousins married cousins and several large, interconnected families ran the county. And if you didn’t like it, you could damn well leave. There was very little outside influence, and even less outside oversight.  Most of the roads, including the one through St. Leonard were dirt. The county had fewer than 16 miles of paved roads when “The Boys” opened. There was no Route 4, which was still decades away. You needed a boat to get to St. Mary’s and Charles counties. It was three years before SMECO started electrifying the county. There was one State Trooper for the county, Pat Wahl, who lived in St. Leonard. But one thing they did have in abundance was gambling.

            Slot machines were in nearly every business from grocery stores to gas stations to bars. And “punchboards” were immensely popular. These were cardboard display pieces with little circles cut in them. You would pay the merchant 25 cents, then take a match stick and “punch out” one of the holes. A rolled up slip of paper with words written on it would be forced out the back, and tell you what, if anything, you won. 

            Like the town, “The Boys” stayed pretty much the same. The name was changed to “D&G” but the place was the same. The big change resulted from a fire that burned the place down. Sherbie went off to WWII, and Pete rebuilt the bar without benefit of insurance, and ran it until Sherbie returned from “fighting the Hun”. Local legend holds that the building materials somehow came from the Navy base, since there was a war going on and rationing was in effect. Whatever the details or legalities, things just found a way to get done when it came to the town bar.

            The second building, located just a little bit south of the original location, had a second floor. The site was a forerunner to the mall concept. All the businesses were connected, and you didn’t have to go back out once inside. There was a Satterfield’s Grocery, a Gas Station, radio sales and repair shop, a small pit bar-b-q restaurant, “D&G” and upstairs, a small “apartment” and The Bayside Sports Club. Bayside was legendary. You climbed narrow stairs next to the bar and Gas Station.  And upstairs were the “sportsmen”. Pool, baseball, fishing, fox and deer hunting, racing and cards all were staples of the cigar smoking men who drank and played there. Originally, in the field behind the bar and sportsmen’s club, was a racetrack of sorts. The Buehler family stabled horses behind the grocery store, and worked them out on the track. Horses and hounds would come from throughout Maryland and Virginia and use the open expanse to stage days and days of fox hunts on the nearby farms.  Eventually, the track was turned into a first class baseball diamond, complete with lights.

            Among other things, like carnivals, the local male members of Bayside ran big, regional baseball tournaments on the diamond Pete Grover built “in the back”. Top ballplayers from Prince Georges, Anne Arundel and the three Southern Maryland Counties were invited to play. The athletes looked on it as an honor to be selected, and the games were played at high levels. The people rooted fiercely for their favorites, sometimes coming to blows over what happened on the field. That wasn’t a surprise, because money rode on these games. The bets were paid off in the Bayside Sports Club, over a frosty one. Sports and the town bar always have been intertwined, even to the current day.

            But more went on “upstairs” than just planning the next baseball game. Important deals that literally shaped Calvert County took place in swirling cigar smoke as prominent developers and landowners tossed back a drink “upstairs”. Most local women avoided the place, but those who were strong minded and independent had no problem going into “D&G” or Sportsmen’s. At least 3 women and two black men were employees at various times. And every now and then an out of town woman would be invited by the Sportsmen to pay a  “friendly” visit. 

            In spite of the second class citizenship for most females in the county, there were some remarkable exceptions. A woman doled out the slot machine take. Every Tuesday, a large truck would leave St. Leonard empty and return that afternoon filled with bags of coins taken out of area slot machines. The driver carried a pistol, the rider a shotgun. And upon return, this strong-minded matriarch, Bertie Buehler would divide the take into small bags, and parcel out who got what. Bertie was a Wood, until a handsome slot machine salesman Frank Buehler came down from Baltimore, won her heart and changed her name.  Bertie may have been a tiny woman, but she was not someone to be trifled with. She was all business when it came to things like counting up the slot machine money. Suffice it to say that people never complained about their share. Eventually the counting table was moved from her house to the bar, another irony because Bertie once worked there as a bar maid and waitress.

            There were occasional brawls at D&G, some still the basis of current legends. It was a rough and tumble place for most of its first 45 or 50 years. And very much a “closed society”, with a small coterie of regulars. If you happened to wander in from, say, Broomes Island, there could be a problem. 

            Then around 1961, the “D&G” burned down one night. Flames could be seen from Long Beach and firemen had all they could do to keep it from spreading to Buehler’s Grocery store. Lost in the fire were the sports trophies kept upstairs in Bayside Sports Club, the pictures and mementos. In fact, more local legend and lore was burned that night than any other evening since the British breezed through here in 1812. 

            The bar was rebuilt slightly south of its original location, and without the “upstairs”. Harvey Wood purchased the bar, then sold it three years later. This was when it became “Boyles” for new owner Tony Boyle, who purchased both the building and the bar. Boyle eliminated a lot of the rough edges and free wheeling attitudes of the '30s and '40s, but not right away. However, the outside world was beginning to notice sleepy St. Leonard, and change it. Boyle eventually eliminated the “back room”, but when black people came up front, it was a mixed blessing for them. They no longer got a six-pack or half pint. Buying in bulk was out. They had to buy it one beer or drink at a time, like everyone else. As more people moved down here, construction began on the nuclear plant, and Route 4 opened, St. Leonard was no longer the preserve of a few families who had always been here. Now, there were “strangers” and paved roads, and the need to become slightly more civilized. 

            The evolution of the bar into what it is today began in 1983, when a man named Denny McNew and 12 “silent partners” purchased the building and the bar, keeping the name “Boyles”. Within a year, they sold off the Gas Station/garage that was attached to the building.  At the time, the bar filled two whole storefronts, extending north into an area that later became a pet shop, a barbershop and is now the Bayfront Trading Post. That north section of the bar was known as “The Annex”. It featured a large dance floor, and live or recorded music on weekends. Two DJ’s alternated on weekends, Dr. Rocks and Dr. Rolls. Dr. Rocks still works there behind the bar, pulling a regular day shift, doing inventory and overseeing the premium beer department.  The Annex also hosted large private parties. In 1990, the building itself was sold to Bill Kneesi, with a lease arrangement for the bar. They changed the name from “Boyles” to “The Tavern”.

            From the start, McNew and his fellow owners tried to recast the place to appeal to new residents who were beginning to roll into Calvert County. They discouraged attendance by the rowdier red necks, fixed up the interior, and began to try “things”. The first was “Halloween Night”. They hired a customer, Sydney “Skip” Smith, a St. Mary’s College grad with an extensive background in Theater and Show production. Smith turned the bar’s interior into a world class Halloween fright palace, and the staff dressed up in costumes. The public loved it. Halloween became the second largest grosser of the year. St. Patrick’s Day was number one, of course.

            Then came the “Beach Parties” on Memorial and Labor Day Weekends. Both Boyles and The Toadstool (on the north edge of St. Leonard) had experimented with beach parties. Boyle covered the floors with sand, and even had live crabs running around the place. Oops, watch your toes, dancers. The new owners built on this tradition.  For the Beach Parties, large amounts of sand were trucked in to cover the floor. Sand dunes were built on the sidewalk at the front entrance, decorated with palm trees, surfboards and full size, working beach buggies. One time a  working, 40-foot oyster boat was carted up from the Bay and deposited outside. They got some complaints about that one, so next time; they built a smaller, homemade tugboat on the sidewalk, and placed the DJ inside the tug to spin the records.  The people sipped Buds and danced their buns off in the sand. It was a scene that would have made Jimmy Buffett weep for joy. 

            The Beach Parties raised money for Jerry’s Kids, the State Police clubs and other charities. But they took a minimum of 3 months to plan, and lots of labor-intensive last minute work to put together. The Parties eventually became too much, and were dropped. 

For years, the 10-ounce Bud was king of the bar. The new owners tried to change that with at least 4 unsuccessful attempts to bring high scale draught beer into the place. With the help and cooperation of the distributors, the bar kept trying to expand its base. In the early Nineties, sales of imported bottle beer began to rise slowly. They tried a keg lineup of Lowenbrau, Miller Light, Budweiser and Molson Golden, then added Harp and Guinness.  And, finally, it worked.

Since then, they have slowly upgraded to the point where they may have the best variety of Premium Draught beers of any town bar of its size in America. In fact, you won’t find the equal to their current six taps of micro and imported brews in most big city bars. 

            There was one pool table in the place at that time, but it became the birthplace of The Calvert County Men’s Pool League. McNew eventually added the current back room and filled it with pool tables, where coed leagues still play the game every week. 

            Quiz night started February 20, 1997, after a British expatriate named Nick proposed the idea to McNew. In the beginning, the lack of attendance was stunning. The pool league members in the back used to make jokes about the paltry few “quizzers” in the front. Now, more than 300 quizzes later, it is one of the County’s most popular Thursday Night diversions.

            You may have noticed that several of these things bubbled up from customers to an ownership smart enough to listen, and to give new things a try. The ultimate “bubble up” came right as the millennia were changing. In 2000, Captain Wayne McKnett, perhaps the bar’s longest running patron, purchased The Tavern from McKnew, who had gradually bought out all of his partners. McKnett goes way back in bar history. He actually was a character witness for Tony Boyle at the ABC license hearing. 

            McKnett was a veteran charter boat Captain who was in charge of maintenance and instrumentation at Columbia Gas Company at Cove Point. For years, he and other charter boat Captains used to sit at the first table to the right as you entered. They would swap fishing stories and buy each other drinks. They formed the core of what was known as “The Cider Heads”, a good time group of fun lovers who have been mentioned in several books and articles. 

The Captain, as he is called by everyone, set out with his wife Pat and his two sons Kevin and Wes, to keep The Tavern a place where people came to enjoy themselves.

They started by improving the kitchen service, hiring better cooks and expanding the menu. The best bar burger in the county, clam strips, home made soups and chili and daily specials.  Now, the place pulls in a good lunch crowd and feeds the customers on pool, quiz, and karaoke nights, and weekends.  And if there is a sporting event worth watching, it is on one, or all, of the four sets. 

            Through the last two decades of changes in owners and customers, there remains one constant, Hattie Kaplan. McNew, and one of his partners, Jimmie Bliss, scouted “Miss Hattie” when she worked at a bar in Waysons. Now, 20 years and two “retirements” later, she still pulls a Monday shift at The Tavern. 

            She worked at the posh DC “ International Club” after migrating here from North Carolina. “But that doesn’t mean I fell off the watermelon truck”, she says of her rural roots. Definitely she knows what she is doing, having cooked the world’s best fried chicken in the kitchen, done the payroll, ordered inventory, and managed the bar when need be.  She is 100% no nonsense when it comes to protecting the owner’s money and license. Miss Hattie will card anyone if she thinks they might be underage, a far cry from the bar’s early days. She will put loud and obnoxious talkers “in the window”. That’s one step from the door, and being thrown out. 

            Miss Hattie has helped define The Tavern, but she almost wasn’t hired. Her husband, Mel Kaplan, was a job corps instructor (painting). One of his fellow job corps instructors was Jimmy Bliss (plumbing). It was Bliss who sold his partners in the bar on the need to hire Hattie, and who talked Mel and Hattie into making the move. Otherwise, this history would have been different. 

            There is, of course, no ending in sight for this story. The legacy of this little town bar is still being written. Like the town it anchors, it has evolved into a totally different place in its nearly seven decades. The dirt road and closed society have been replaced, and The Tavern has become a social center where people from all walks of life do the “meet and greet”, and good times are easy to find. We are all better off for it.