Bartender Scores Strike With North Bowl Crowd

Like a good friend, George Allen is always there for his customers.

A bartender in Spokane for 50 years, Allen is gracious as he welcomes bowlers into the bar at North Bowl, 125 W. Sinto.

Last week some of those bowlers played host to Allen and threw the North Side man a party to celebrate his 80th birthday.

“He tells jokes. He sings. He’s just a part of the place,” said Mariann “Mac” Cooley, a 43-year-old woman who has been bowling in a Thursday afternoon league at North Bowl since 1983.

Allen has tended bar all over Spokane’s North Side: Eddie Murphy’s, Cunningham’s, Jimmy’s, the Brown Derby and the Polar Inn.

But for the past two decades he’s been part of the woodwork at North Bowl, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I would never, never tend bar again at a tavern, not if you paid me $500, $600 a week,” he said.

“It’s not like a bar scene where you have people coming in off the street. Here you have the same people every night, every week. You get to know them,” said Marie Volesky, 43, a bowler who is also a part-time bartender.

“You know they’ll be back the same night next week.”

A rare mix of bartender, lounge lizard and psychiatrist, Allen knows not only what his customers drink but how to comfort them and elicit a chuckle.

“He was always one to take somebody under his wing,” said Allen’s daughter, Roxanne Turnbull, 42.

Some of his jokes can’t be published in a family newspaper. Others are told in limerick.

For his birthday, one bowling team rented a loudspeaker system with an electric organ. They took turns singing jazz and folk songs.

Sue Etter, 53, said she joined a league and got to know Allen as a good friend in two weeks. Both sing, with crisp voices that could pass for professional.

Allen, one of nine children raised in Pennsylvania, said he once was invited to sing at the Grand Ole Opry but had to stay home to help support his brothers and sisters, said his daughter.

As Etter talked, her teammates, Allen’s wife and friends were jumping to the tune of the hokey-pokey and then doing a dance that called for them to imitate a chicken. They all seemed to know the steps.

“He’s always had a particular fondness for this team,” said Etter. “Many don’t come in the bar and drink.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo