There’s a misconception about why people, especially we older men, like to sit on a public bar stool for a few hours on any given night. We’re not there to get rip-roaring drunk, because we know that the vehicles that brought us to the establishment are the same ones we will be driving home.

A neighborhood bar is a sanctuary for social strangers. I cannot think of another public venue where people who meet for the first time strike up personal conversations over a beer or a cocktail. Personally, I was never a “bar hound” in my younger days. We married men went into pubs with our wives and families and sat at tables where dialogue was limited to our spouses, and once in a while with one of our kids who wasn’t superglued to a cellphone.

When I became a single man by circumstance, and being the social person that I like to be, I found some of the best therapy for repairing a broken heart was surrounding myself with couples and individuals at the Boulder View Tavern in Lake Harmony. There I met some very interesting people, one of whom became a good friend who died last year after a long battle with cancer. Brad sat around the corner of the bar from me, but close enough to exchange a friendly greeting.

You see, once you say hello to someone you don’t know at a bar, it’s different from saying hello at a grocery store or inside a bank. You’re planted on the stool with a drink that you sip for a relatively long period of time. You’re not going anywhere soon, so the initial greeting naturally opens a door to exchanging names, addresses, occupations and the like.

With my friend Brad, we talked into the night about our difficult upbringings and we commiserated about our failed relationships with members of the opposite sex. It’s funny how the ambience of the bottle and glass invite sharing the details of your entire life with somebody you’ve known literally for 15 minutes. No other public place offers this phenomenon that was made popular by the TV show “Cheers” and the ever-loquacious Norm who sat on the same stool every time he was at the tavern.

Another unusual but wonderful dynamic at many watering holes is when a couple strikes up a conversation with an individual patron. Several times I had the good fortune of engaging in interesting small talk with a married man and his wife. Tell me anywhere else that this might happen.

Of course, politics is common bar talk, which is why I like to avoid the back-and-forth bantering about Republicans and Democrats, although if both parties met at a pub for a few hours, they might help unite this country more than they’re doing now.

We common folks tire of talking government after a while and move onto another topic of different opinion. A common subject is their favorite sports teams. All I have to do is wear my New York Mets cap and somebody who likes the Phillies will engage in friendly debate with me.

I met a young man named Josh at BVT some years back, and although I’m nearly twice his age, we found a common ground in the subject of philosophy. We still meet every month or so, and after the customary chit-chat about life and jobs, we move into the realms of the great thinkers and the ideas of existentialism, pragmatism, or the theory of infinite regress that questions if God created the universe, then who created God? Once again, our invigorating discussion is not likely to occur in any other public place.

The stereotypical reputation about bars is unfair and just plain wrong. They are not great places to pick up someone whom you could take home for the night. The reality is that women seldom go to an upscale bar by themselves looking to meet a relationship partner. They’ll come in together or in groups of threes. Once in a while I have seen a woman having a beer or a glass of wine and maybe even a meal at the bar, but she has given off the “I don’t want to be bothered” signal by immersing herself into her cellphone.

The local taverns of Dom and Ali’s, Shenanigans, Riley’s and Nick’s Lake House, along with BVT, are comfortable mixes of the usual faces and the one-time visitors. The regular patrons are eager to welcome anyone who cares to sit and talk a while over a Captain and Coke or a Yuengling Light.

Before the pandemic, you used to walk into any of these well-known venues and find the same bartenders who you knew by name and they knew you by the same. Now, all of these bars and restaurants are working with limited staffs and the bartender you see on Saturday night may not be the one you see the next time you come.

That said, I have been fortunate to find the usual young woman working the bar at BVT. When I sit down, she’ll say, “Rich, rum and Coke, right?” Sometimes she’ll say nothing and she puts the drink down in front of me and I say, “I guess this means I’ve been coming here too often” to the stranger sitting across from me.

Hanging out at the bar doesn’t mean what many who would never do such a thing might think. The drinks are nothing more than excuses to join in some great conversation and enjoy human fellowship, which we all know is so much needed in our world today and not easily found outside the doors of our homes.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.