I enjoy sliding into a tavern for a refreshment occasionally. Especially on one of those torrid Northeast Minnesota July days in the high 70s. It’s always nice to visit with fellow sufferers over a glass of beer to get the latest news, opinions, and Bravo Sierra.
Area oases are welcoming and comfortable. You’re able to dress in anything from apres golf ensembles to tee shirts proclaiming your allegiance to causes of the sixties.
So imagine my indescribable shock at being asked to disrobe prior to entering an area hospitality spot. It’s not so much the disrobing that shook me as I’ve been a patron of Ahola’s Sauna just off the downtown. I guess it has always been officially Ely Steam Bath but Dad always called it “Ahola’s Sauna” in honor of the founder Toimi Ahola, onetime Ford dealer and longtime county commissioner. Disrobing before entering the sauna is more than custom, it’s de rigueur. Conversation and a good shave in the steam is therapeutic.
There’s a right time and place for everything.
That sauna paragraph, as you might have guessed, is in part expository but mostly procrastinating on my part as I’m more than a bit hesitant to proceed with the nude bar narrative. But here goes.
In the foyer was an invitation to enter the business typed on a standard 8 and 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of white paper (see copy adjoining this column). I paused to read it before entering thinking if there were rules here, I better know them.
And there on line four -- as big as a Britton’s Cafe pancake -- was the shocking requirement, albeit prefaced with “please,” that I was expected to join the other participants in a round or two au naturale. I hesitated despite my eagerness for a cold beverage and thought about the Stan Boreson classic oldie played often on WELY’s Saturday morning polka show “I Just Don’t Look Good Naked Anymore.”
I reread the poster. Yup, it definitely asked me to “please bare (sic) with other patrons while they enjoy our beer and food.”
Sigh. As much as I was ready for the enjoyment of beer and food, I could not get myself to accept the conditions requested of me. Besides, there were no hooks in the foyer on which to hang my cutoffs.
Disappointedly I shuffled to Ahola’s for a steam and had to be satisfied with a bottle of Dorothy Molter root beer afterward since there’s no beer at the Ely Steam Bath. Alas.
On the way home I rued the ubiquitous intrusion of auto correct on our word processors. Some messages are better left to human proofreading.
Doug Luthanen grew up in Ely and graduated from Memorial High School in 1967. He wrote a weekly viewpoint column for the Northwest Arkansas Times for four years and is an occasional contributor to The Ely Echo.
