In Florida: Have a Drink, for Heaven's Sake

By Gregory Jaynes

Years ago, before St. Henry's Roman Catholic Church was built in Pompano Beach, they had a sort of circuit-riding parish in this part of Florida. Mass was celebrated in whatever shelter could be secured, and there was one odd period when the priest said Mass at the Pompano Park Harness Raceway. Then, ten years ago, the diocese found 4 1/2 acres along the Cypress Creek Canal, in an area of warehouses--Waterbed City is just across the street--and a little church was constructed. It has a coral pulpit.

In 1980 the Rev. James Reynolds, a Brooklyn product of Irish parents, was given charge of the church. "I was amazed there was a church here," he recalls. "It seemed to me a wacky place to put one. No residential community. Surrounded by warehouses. The diocese almost apologized. It was just the only reasonable property available." He chose to look brightly upon his charge, musing that "a small church can have a lot going for it. You're closer to the altar, closer to each other and maybe closer to God." One night, however, during a social affair, when the bar was set up in the only commodious spot, right by the confessional, the priest decided they might be carrying closeness too far.

What this parish and its 950 families needed was a parish hall. With a separate facility for bingo, dances, the women's club, the men's club and other functions, the church could get rid of its collapsible chairs and pray from the proper seat of religion, pews. Providentially, in the collection plate on Reynolds' second Christmas at St. Henry's was a check for $20,000. "I had never seen a check for $20,000," he recalls with wonder. He wrote its author, the president of a cement company, a note of gratitude. Four days later (the tax deduction-minded might want to consult a calendar about here, cynics that they be) another check arrived from the same cement baron, bearing the same amount. Suddenly the building fund had feet.

And the priest had a vision. "I wanted to have the lives of the families revolve around the parish, their social lives as well as their spiritual lives. For example, if a young person was presented with a red-hot temptation, I wanted him to turn to the parish and not have to ask, 'Well, what has the church ever done for me?' " Reynolds wanted a building that would be used night and day, offering something to everyone. And somewhere along the path of his Irish cogitations he paused at a friendly village pub, a place that draws people away from their television sets at night and gets them talking about themselves, their politics, their religion. The new parish hall at St. Henry's Roman Catholic Church would have a very special corner then. It would be called Henry's Hideaway.

The idea was a smash hit with the parishioners, many of whom consider themselves too old to take strong drink comfortably in a public place of young guzzlers. Widows--any South Florida parish embraces a preponderant number of widows--were particularly fond of the notion. Even the Archbishop of Miami, the Most Rev. Edward McCarthy, went along. "It seems to me," he wrote Reynolds, "you are pioneering in something that may prove very effective pastorally."

A friend who was closing down a restaurant donated the formidable bar as well as all the stainless-steel hardware that goes into the mixing of liquid fortitude. Some of the parishioners argued, when it came to decorating, that pictures of parish picnics would be nice, beaming up from beneath the epoxy on the surface. "No, no, no!" cried Reynolds. "We're going professional. No Mickey Mouse. No Coney Island." He hired a decorator and paid him $5,000. He hired a professional bartender, Bill Me Nichols, a man with 30 years' experience in the trade. And he applied for a liquor license, "pleasantly surprising" the state. Today the lights dance on the martini glasses.

Henry's Hideaway opened without a hitch. Parishioners paid $5 each for membership in the private club, a card that says on the back, "Many people make Henry's Hideaway a happy place by coming. Others by leaving," and the privilege of purchasing beer or wine for $ 1, mixed drinks for $1.25. Father Jim, as Reynolds is called, anticipated the puns, so the first drinkers had to endure the priest's own pre-emptive patter: holy water on the rocks; Blue Nun; we specialize in Christian Brothers. The bar rolled merrily along until midsummer, when a sorehead entered the equation.

A letter went out to Archbishop McCarthy, quoting the Living Bible, Proverbs 23:29-32: "Whose heart is filled with anguish and sorrow? Who is always fighting and quarreling? Who is the man with bloodshot eyes and many wounds? It is the one who spends long hours in the taverns, trying out new mixtures. Don't let the sparkle and the smooth taste of strong wine deceive you. For in the end it bites like a poisonous serpent; it stings like an adder." The archbishop responded evenly that Henry's was an experiment, an attempt to provide a wholesome meeting place outside commercial bars. Saying the arrangement involves some risk, McCarthy said he nonetheless expected "that an atmosphere will be created of adult Christian responsibility similar to that in a good Christian home."

Reynolds says the letter writer, who was not a member of the parish, threatened that the press would hear about Henry's if Henry's was not closed by July 1. The first week in July, the Miami Herald showed up: "Henry's Hideaway is no ordinary, run-of-the-mill bar. In addition to Scotch on the rocks or plain cranberry juice, the thirsty can get a few holy words from the proprietor." Then came the television crews. Dare not to be novel in the dog days of summer, the parishioners quickly learned, getting a little testy. By fall the thing had blown over.

The bar is open now on Saturday nights. Sports and sitcoms illuminate the color TV. Lizards skitter down the screens on the porch, and alligators slither down the canal just beyond. Now and again someone will have a go at the organ, and Father Jim will sing in his tenor, "No more will I go all around the world,/For I have found my world in you!" There are 630 members of Henry's Hideaway.

"The pastor here is a doll," said Catherine Castle, sitting at a table with Al and Viola DuPuis. "We're about to go to dinner, and this is just the nicest place to stop for a drink. The DuPuises are taking me.

I'm a widow."

John Smith, former president of the men's club, and his wife Ann looked in on the bar. "I don't drink," said Ann, "but I love it here. I have a cousin, the shyest person in the world. His mother says to him, 'You need a drink, Arthur.' One night he had one, and he was the life of the party, a darling. Some people are like that; they need a drink to be darlings." Here and there, old people were dancing in rickety pairs. A line of widows linked arms and did the "alleycat." Father Jim ordered a cranberry juice, saying he does not drink out of vanity: "Once on the lips, forever on the hips."

Bob Stroot, who is on the membership committee, volunteered that Henry's Hideaway had had to evict only one drunk in the six months it has been open. "He's probably here. I'll point him out. Well, I guess he isn't. He's usually hanging all over that gal there in the back."

The pastor wandered over in a philosophical mood. "I think God intends us to be happy in this life," he said. "We all have our share of troubles." He said that when he was growing up he was an usher at Ebbets Field, in the days of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Then he became a guide with Gray Line Tours. In 1950, he said, "I figured out maybe I could lead tours to heaven, and maybe I could sneak in a side door myself." For the moment, however, he led an elderly lady onto the parquet floor and commenced to execute a quite graceful cha cha cha. --By Gregory Jaynes