Tommy Lancaster Restaurant
1629 E Market St
New Albany, IN 47150
(812) 945-2389

“Since I’ve started here, some of our customers are probably third and fourth generation now, so you’ve known their fathers and their mothers and their grandparents and her brothers and sisters and so forth. A lot stays the same, and a lot of it changes.” – Larry Morris

Tommy Lancaster opened his namesake restaurant in New Albany, Indiana, in 1953. A blue-collar town, New Albany has been home to mill workers, construction crews, and many who commuted to jobs across the river in Louisville. When folks finished a long day at work, a cold beer was waiting for them at their neighborhood watering hole. Larry Morris was one of those people. With a job across the river, Larry would belly up to the bar at Tommy Lancaster’s to have a drink and a bite to eat, and to cash his paycheck. One day Tommy, who knew that Larry came from a long line of bartenders, asked him if he wanted a job. Larry started mixing drinks at Tommy Lancaster’s in 1960, when Martinis were sixty-cents, beer was a quarter, and women weren’t allowed to sit at the bar. After forty-three years of making cocktails and pouring beer, Larry finally retired in 2003. But he didn’t stay away for long. In 2007 he was back, selling five-dollar Martinis and three-dollar beers in part of what is today considered the Greater Louisville Metropolitan Area.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

Subject: Larry Morris, bartender
Date: January 16, 2008
Location: Tommy Lancaster Restaurant
Interviewer & Photographer: Amy Evans

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Amy Evans:  This is Amy Evans on Tuesday, January 15, 2008; I think it’s probably a little after 7:00 in the evening; and I am with Mr. Larry Morris at Tommy Lancaster’s Restaurant in New Albany, Indiana. Mr. Morris, would you please say your name and your birth date for the record, please, sir?

Larry Morris:  Larry Morris, born August 10, 1937.

Are you a native of New Albany?

Yes.

And what year did you start working here at Tommy Lancaster’s?

In 1960.

And we were talking a little bit about your history at the bar here before we sat down to record this, and you were telling me that you came from a long line of bartenders. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Well my uncle [Ernie] owned a bar in New Albany [Ernie’s], and then I had several uncles that tended bar; and my father tended bar for a short period, and I also had a brother [Victor] that tended bar here at Tommy’s for a short period.

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So how do you think all these men in your family tree turned to bartending?

I have no idea, just kind of fell in place.

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So would you say that you learned anything from them, growing up, about bartending?

No, not as far as tending bar. It just seemed kind of intriguing to me…just the atmosphere and just being around people and learning the drinks, the art of tending bar, which has changed over the years quite a bit, but it’s still basically the same.

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So tell me what it was like and how you got the job here at Tommy’s.

I was just a patron here that came in and drank, eat, and cash my payroll check, and the owner just asked me I if I’d like to try behind the bar, being he knew me my uncle owned a bar and different things. And so I just gave it a try and kind of enjoyed it and stuck with it.

And you told me earlier you were working in Louisville before?

Yes, I was working in Louisville, after I got out of the service, for a short period of time at an audio-visual company; and I didn’t particularly like the day work, and didn’t like the commute back and forth to Louisville.

So do you remember what it was like, your first few months behind the bar, kind of how you learned on the job?

Well, I’d sit in here and watch for a while, so—quite a while—so I kind of knew what it was like behind the bar but it was—at the time, Tommy just stuck me behind the bar and said, “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” but he didn’t come back for a few hours, so I had to learn real fast.

And what kind of drinks were you were serving then; what was popular when you started?

Mostly, it was just highballs and beer, not too many cocktails or anything; in fact, we didn’t even have any fresh fruit to garnish any cocktails with when I started here. It was just more of a neighborhood bar. And just regular customers and you knew what they was going to drink when they came in the doors.

So can you share a little bit of the history of the restaurant itself, and tell me about Tommy Lancaster and who he was?

Well, Tommy was formerly a liquor salesman, and his mother-in-law, I believe it was, owned the building, and when the former owner of the bar—when his lease run out on the building, Tommy took it over and started his own from his mother-in-law and started renting from his mother-in-law and got into the rest—the bar business and eventually got into the restaurant business. But he took it over in 1953, and it consisted of the bar side and one small side and then, eventually, we took over two more adjacent buildings to put in dining rooms and then tore down the other little side and made a bigger dining room on the other side, so we actually have three buildings, plus an additional half-building now.

So it started out as mostly a bar that served food and then evolved into a larger family restaurant, is that what you said?

We had a limited amount of food, mostly just some soups and sandwiches and businessmen’s lunches during the daytime. Then they got—Tommy got into running the—at that time, what they called smorgasbord and—which is actually a buffet, but it was just a small buffet, and now we do a deluxe buffet on Friday and Saturday nights. We also run a lunch buffet now and a night buffet on Mondays and Wednesdays and then the deluxe buffet on Friday and Saturday evenings, plus a menu of deluxe dinners and soups and sandwiches and so forth—seafood, steaks, just about anything.

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So was Tommy interested in becoming a restaurateur, or was the bar business so good he just wanted to expand or maybe a little bit of both?

Well the story has it that when Tommy was a liquor salesman and called on people, and he was telling somebody that he was going into the bar business and a bar owner said, “I don’t know too many bar owners that—that are rich, but I know some restaurant owners that are pretty prosperous.” So he eventually got into the food end of it and got into the catering, which at one time we was one of the largest caterers in the area, and we still do quite a bit of catering.

So what kind of person was Tommy? I assume he’s passed, is that right?

Tommy has passed. He also had three sons that eventually came into the business with him. And they built another restaurant on Grant Line Road in New Albany, and two of his sons went to that location, and then Mike Lancaster stayed at this location to manage it, and finally the split the corporation, and Mike Lancaster obviously ran this operation up until about three years ago, when he sold out due to ill health.

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Okay, so he sold it to Wade and Angie [Brown].

Sold it to Angie and she was married at the time and since—since that time, Angie and her husband has got divorced, and Angie has remarried Wade, which Angie and Wade own it now.

And but Wade has worked here for sometime also, right?

Yes, he worked as kitchen manager….Wade has worked here twenty-three years.

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So you were saying that you retired, but then [Wade and Angie] brought you back?

Yes, I retired fully about four years ago and then I’ve been back about one year now…Little longer than I thought I’d be back, but it’s something to do two nights a week.

So tell me about the old days when you first started working here and what the energy was like in this place and the clientele and all that.

Well all of the laws have changed so much that it’s hard to really say back when I started, and women weren't allowed to sit at the bar. And, of course, you had to have either a waitress permit for a female, or a bartender’s permit to go behind the bar. And now anybody can have a bartender’s permit, as long as they pay the money for it…But, like I say, male/female can tend bar now.

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So what would a Saturday night have been like here in the ‘60s in the early days of your working here?

It would be hectic. But at first you weren't allowed to stand and drink, or you weren't even allowed to move your drink. If you were sitting at the bar and having a drink, you weren't allowed to move your drink from the bar to a booth. A waitress would have to move the drink for you, but you weren't allowed to stand. And eventually, they changed that law where you could stand. So when they changed that, especially after ballgames—local ballgames—you’d have them standing everywhere, drinking and celebrating or crying in their beer or whatever. But then, at that time, we’d have to work three and maybe even sometimes four bartenders behind the bar, where now it’s—it’s down to one bartender now that can take care of it on count of the—the—the POST screen [placing orders via computer] operation of ordering the drinks and so forth. It used to be all the waitresses ordered their drinks verbally and you had to be—had to be pretty sharp to register them all in your mind and be able to take them out, especially when you had five, six, seven that were ordering all that same time.

That menu you showed me, about what year would that be from?

That would have been in the probably middle [nineteen] ‘60s, when hamburgers were fifteen cents.

And a martini was sixty cents?

Yes, I think beer was a quarter, at that time

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Obviously a lot of locals come here, but tell me about New Albany. It’s a working class town?

Yes. In the ‘60s we had a lot of veneer mills that were fairly close, and we’d get a lot of production workers from them, and we also started getting a lot of construction workers from some projects here in town. And then Pillsbury moved their operation from Louisville to New Albany, and we got a lot of their employees.

And then when the bar expanded to a bigger family restaurant-type place, did it become like the going-out place for New Albany?

Yes. It was a going-out place and, like I say, we did a lot of business after ballgames, especially.

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So how about New Albany’s relationship with Louisville, then and now, because now it’s considered part of the greater metro area of Louisville, isn't it?

Yes. Well, actually, we used to get a lot more client—lot more patrons from Louisville because we had K & I [Kentucky & Indiana] bridge, which ends right here at the end of Vincennes Street. But that’s been shut down for several years; we used to have a lot of people that come from the Portland area and right straight across the bridge to Tommy’s because it was closer to come across the river here, then to go to the outskirts of Louisville to go to a nicer restaurant. So they shut that down—shut that bridge down. And because the railroad owns it and they had some maintenance problems with it, and it was a toll bridge and so it wasn’t paying for the—the toll wasn’t paying for the maintenance on the passenger car sides of the bridge, so now they have to come from the Sherman Minton Bridge or the Clark Bridge or the Kennedy Bridge, when they’re coming from Louisville to New Albany. So we’re kind of in between the Kennedy Bridge and the Sherman Minton Bridge, so we still get customers from Louisville but not as many as we used to.

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So you’ve been here long enough to witness kind of some trends in drinking and some cocktails come in and out of fashion or tastes change…Can you talk about that a little bit?

Well they’re probably drinking more cocktails now than they used to. It used to just be a bar—beer and highballs and then you got into the Vodka Collins, Tom Collins, the whiskey sours and martinis and Manhattans. And now they’ve added so many different drinks, because a lot of the cocktails are the same cocktail but different names because of the—what I like to say is basement bartenders, somebody will go down in the basement and—at their bar and fix a drink and give it a name, which actually might have been a cocktail you knew but by a different name, so it’s just some of the cocktails are the same but just by different names. And a lot of the cocktails now come with pre-mixes, where you just add your liquor to the pre-mix and—and mix it and serve it. And in fact, we’re pretty well known for our Manhattans, and we got to the point we were making so—serving so many of them that we got so we made our own recipe and we pre-mix our Manhattans now, so all we have to do is pour them out of a bottle, and that way they’re consistent no matter who is behind the bar and—and easier to make, easier to serve.

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So what would you say makes a good Manhattan?

Well I’m not going to give you that recipe but it’s basically two parts vermouth and to one part bourbon. And of course it’s diluted a little bit when you mix it with ice and with the few dashes of Angostura bitters. And that’s basically it.

So do you pour a lot of bourbon drinks here?

It used to be a whole lot of bourbon drinks. It’s kind of changed over to lighter liquors anymore, vodkas and so forth.

What about with Kentucky's history with bourbon; does that factor into anything that you make here?

I think it factors into a lot of it, but not as much as it used to because now you’ve got a lot of popular blended whiskeys and not the bourbon whiskeys, and a lot of people used to go for the stout stuff, bottled and about 100-proof, but they go for the—the lighter 86-proof or even the 80-proof and not as much for the 100-proof.

Do you serve many Old Fashioneds here?

Serve a few Old Fashioneds, but not quite as many as you used to.

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So what do you think makes a good bartender?

A good listener and just being able to make—not really to make conversation but to carry on a little conversation about different things then when somebody asks you a question, being able to at least give a little bit of input.

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Over the years that you’ve been here, has the restaurant cycled through a lot of other bartenders or have the other bartenders who have worked here stayed here a long time also?

Most of the bartenders in the company have stayed, but in the last few years a lot of them have come and gone, but most bartenders that come here stay here for a good while.

Well it sounds like pretty much everybody who comes here to work stays for a good long while. What do you attribute to that?

Good employers and just, usually, they’re nice to work for and treat your right and if they treat you right, you’re going to give back to them.

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What do you like about working here and bartending?

Well, I’ve always enjoyed it. It’s just been my life now. I kind of stuck with it so—just meet a lot of people that you like and meet a few that you dislike, but you just have to turn the other cheek sometimes.

What, over the years, would you say you’ve learned about bartending or about people or interacting with people?

Oh, that’s hard to say. They’re all basically the same. It’s just—like I say, just old ones mellow and pass on, and then you get this new generation. Since I’ve started here, some of our customers are probably third and fourth generation now, so you’ve known their fathers and their mothers and their grandparents and her brothers and sisters and so forth. A lot stays the same, and a lot of it changes.

You must have quite a following after all these decades in the business behind that bar?

Yes, quite a bit—quite a bit. I got one lady sitting there at the bar now that I went to school with her father and her mother works here, so a lot of it it’s been family.

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So you said earlier that if the day does come where you do retire, and you’re not behind the bar, that you’ll still come in?

Oh, yes. I’ll still come in. I’ll still come in. Just working two nights a week and usually, I’m in here four or five nights a week, counting the two nights I work, so I still come in and get me something to eat and drink two beers and go back home.

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What do you attribute to your longevity in the business here and at this one establishment?

Just enjoy doing what I do…Easy as that.

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So are you going to stick with it for a while longer?

Probably not too much longer. I’m seventy years old now, can't handle it like I used to

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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