McSorley's Old Ale House

For Margadant, who spent a good chunk of his life seeking out the best bars in the Upper Midwest and classifying them - cowboy bars, redneck bars, fern bars, blue-collar bars .... and his Holy Grail, what he called "bar bars". Eventually the whiskey took it's toll and the escalating cost of the pursuit to body and purse became prohibitive, and now as he eases into his graceful years, he has pretty much abandoned his quest.

And for Dex, who also managed to get out of Kansas alive.

By Robert Day

"When I was in college at the University of Kansas, my friend Harris and I made “pilgrimages” to towns we’d read about. Or to places in songs. One summer we drove my open-top CJ-5 ranch Jeep (with the windshield down when we cruised through cities large and small) from Lawrence, Kansas, to Bangor, Maine—all because of Roger Miller’s “King of the Road.”

On the way we stopped just shy of Bangor at Old Town, where we discovered a boat builder. After checking our pocket money and double-checking our bank balances, we bought a canoe and rigged it as a top for the Jeep so that we sailed along in shade. The canoe was red like the Jeep. People would honk and wave and flash their lights." continued