When we—Teddy Nichols, Peter Gow and assorted others—were 17, we frequented a ramshackle bar called the Holland House on, I believe, Michigan and E. Utica in Buffalo. Our age never presented a problem, because the owner, a jovial woman whom we called Mrs. Jackson, didn’t worry about New York State’s drinking age laws. She’d come through the bar with her gospel-like sing-song, “Everybody here 18?” and we’d answer, “Amen,” as if we were parishioners in her church.
But that rite of passage, bein...
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