Callahan's Saloon - An Imperfect History!

A Memoir by Lou

I stumbled into Callahan's Saloon in July, 1994. It was my first night online. I don't quite remember how I joined Delphi Internet but I do remember looking over the open chat rooms from the 'Main' directory and deciding to try "Callahan's Saloon - A Virtual Irish Pub"

When I entered the room I encountered a blur of welcoming greetings interspersed with a blur of general conversation. It was dizzying. I lurked for awhile trying to keep up with the conversation until someone asked me what my name was and if I wanted a drink. I did.

"Glen", I told them.. and, " a double scotch, please." I had been told by someone earlier in the day to use an alias if I was going into a chat room, which I did, and for a few months I was known as "Glen."

A little later that night, a distraught patron arrived, whom everyone in the room seemed to know. He was a Viet Nam veteran and he was suicidal. The room quieted down considerably and I said a few words to him which indicated that I had served over there, too.

He and I began talking and I noticed that people were leaving, the room was made private and before long there were only three or four of us in the room. We spoke for 4 hours with me trying to convince him that the buddies he left behind over there would prefer he join them later - not tonight. When he left, the issue was still unclear. I was emotionally drained, unsure that I had done any good, and I soon left the chat room, too.

The next night, the tender from the night before was there and asked to speak to me privately. She (TERRYTEE) somehow knew that I needed to talk about the night before. I didn't know it, but she did. She listened carefully to me, and guided the conversation to draw out details and stories about Viet Nam that I had never been able to tell before.

For example, I told her that I been 3 years in Viet Nam in the US Air Force, and then had become a civilian advisor to the Vietnamese Army for another 3 years. That I had gone 'native', wearing black pajamas and a conical hat (the 'uniform' of the Viet Cong), that I had been married in Viet Nam and that my first two children were born in Da Nang. That I had done such things there as teach English in a Vietnamese high school, dig wells by hand and grow and dry yams (for a tasty treat during monsoon season.) And that, on March 31, 1975, my family and I were evacuated under fire from there. All of this came out that night...and more.

Before long the telling of these things brought tears streaming down my cheeks and my hands began shaking too much to type. And I felt... better.

Not just better because of the release of the emotion of the night before, but better because of speaking about my service in Viet Nam. This was the first of many encounters I would have with the magic that is Callahan's.

I quickly became a regular in Callahan's, participating in fanciful discussions like hot air balloon rides, yellow submarine missions and theme based puns; and more serious discussions such as how the Internet might be changing societies and affecting international cultural differences. Regulars way back then included, Nick NGREENE, the founder, Matthew, Tee, Kathy, Peter (now BRATCHILD), Shady, Cat, John MEGABITE, Angel, Leo, Bob Weaver, Al NURFBALL and Bokkie who took a saucer of Bailey's and Cream from time to time.

Somewhere along the line I unmasked and became 'Lou' but not before Glen, upon learning from Kathy that her 'father' owned Callahan's Saloon, promptly asked Kathy to marry him. She put him off but I'm sure she regrets it to this day..:)

Back then the most popular Delphi membership plan cost 20 dollars per month for 20 'free' hours and then more per hour beyond that. Most of us were online for 100 hours or more each month (I remember one night when I used up my 20 hours before the first day of the month had ended!) and so having multiple accounts was the norm. One of my accounts was TGLOSTER, named after the protagonist in one of my favorite poems, "The Mary Gloster" by Rudyard Kipling.

After a year or so, the staff honored me by asking me to become a tender. Soon after, Leo, the staff member in charge of the Internet usenet groups had to leave. He had been taken advantage of by a very unscrupulous person he had met in Callahan's and could no longer come online..:(

I temporarily took over his duties which led to my being appointed to Callahan's staff about a year later. There's nothing more permanent than a temporary assignment..:)

Once, soon after I became a tender in Callahan's, a patron strode into our place with a membername of SROBINSON (I think) and who called himself "Jake" in conference. The place lit up as he purported to be none other than Spider. I remember the widespread speculation as to whether he was or wasn't.. but he sure brought a buzz to the place.

As it turns out, it was a hoax. We discovered this when Nick, the Manager then, said that he wrote to Spider's agent and found out that Spider had NO Web presence. Nick was furious and tried to take legal action against the person, but I don't know how that all turned out. The person did immediately disappear from here, though..

Nick Greene opened Callahan's Saloon on Delphi Internet as a custom forum. Custom Forum 6. I think it was Kathy who told me that the 'tenders back then would sit for hours waiting for the occasional patron to enter a chat room. Also, that she believed that Nick chose his first few 'tenders hoping to have one from each of the four USA time zones. The first 'tenders (and staff) in Callahans were Cat CATMOORE, Matthew MANDRO, Kathy KATHYC and Leo LEOMUNDE.

Today, Matthew is host of the Star Trek forum on Delphi, and Kathy hosts several forums, including Business Strategies. I don't know if Cat or Leo are on Delphi anymore.

By the time I arrived on the scene a year later, Callahan's Saloon on Delphi Internet was well established and thriving. Soon after I became a 'tender, Delphi elevated Callahans from a custom forum to a Special Interest Group, or SIG. I believe this meant that Nick no longer had to pay Delphi to run Callahans, and that because of the high traffic in the place, he could give out a few free accounts, and perhaps even receive a check from Delphi. Thereafter, joining staff meant receiving a free account - a significant benefit.

Delphi was opening up its text based Internet service and I created Callahan's first Internet Navigator. It was a *ton* of work, and I had to learn to use EDT, the VMS operating system text editor to do it. I also wrote a tutorial for EDT so others would have an easier time with it than I had.

This led, with Kathy's help, to my being named to Delphi's Web Development Team. Kathy and I split up all Delphi's text based Special Interest Groups and helped them develop their text based Web presence. Later, Kathy and I developed the Delphi Web Development Web site to help Delphi Forum Hosts convert to the new Web based service.

That first Internet Navigator still exists on Callahan's text based service and those patrons with Premium memberships can explore our past there.. I plan to do so this summer and to augment this poor history with links to anything interesting I rediscover.

Somewhere along the way, Cat CATMOORE became manager of Callahan's Although I was made a tender under Nick's watch, I mostly worked for Cat when it came to the Internet Navigator. Nick remained owner of Callahan's but stopped by less frequently as time passed.

Conferencing has always been the bread and butter of Callahan's - and still is. Before Cat became Manager, we had tenders in place every night across the time zones but we didn't have too many 'special' conferences.

One of the things Cat did was start scheduled and themed conferences. I did a Tall Tales Night for several months, until every 'worst date' story that ever happened was told..:) And I did a Riddle Night conference for a bit. I also tried a Spider Night conference to discuss the Callahan's stories - but it didn't work very well.

Cat, who was gay, did several "Everything you Ever Wanted To Ask A Lesbian But Were Afraid To Ask" conferences which were well attended. I know *I* had a question or two..:)

Before Delphi went to its graphical Web based interface (and free Web based service) it was not uncommon to have 3 or 4 or 5 open chat rooms every night in Callahan's. Private rooms were also more common then.

It was also not unusual for us to have 20 people in a room - and - be guiding a topic driven conversation. If a distraught or otherwise troubled patron came into a busy room, one of the other tenders would take the person 'private' without being asked.. When, as happened, a room got so busy that a conversation became difficult to carry on, an 'off-duty' tender would simply open another room - and start another conversation.

Callahan's tenders are very special people. I hope our patrons appreciate that as much as I do.

While conferencing has been most important in developing Callahan's magic, its Message Board has always been active - and has produced its own magic along the way. I remember Shady once telling me that it was a message board post by Cat, about her friend who had passed away, that so touched Shady's heart - and drew her into Callahan's.

I also remember early on delighting in all the poetry being posted. In fact, long before I became a Callahan's tender I was, every quarter, compiling Callahan's Poetry into text files which I then emailed to those who wanted it. I created an index of sorts for the compilations, too..:)

I think I have some of those quarterly compilations on a floppy around here somewhere... maybe I should look for it..

Conferences hold no monopoly on flights of fancy. I once took a world-wide trek, in a series of message board posts between myself and Jym, our then poet-laureate, to become a bodyguard to the Callahanian Goddesses. It was on this trek I learned how to make smoke curl around tree trunks and to instantly clean up glass shards around the fireplace with a wave of my hand. Anyone reading this remember that thread..?

And Jym! Who can forget his moving love poetry..? He paved the way for so many wonderful poets, too. We couldn't select a poet-laureate today if we wanted to. There are too many wonderful poets in our Community to even consider it.

Later that year an informal gathering was held in Fort Meyers, Florida. It was held in Dave and Cham's house and Angel, Kathy and myself drove in. As I was driving to Fort Meyers, I was anxious, wondering what everyone really looked like and whether I would like them. Then it happened... Callahan's Magic. I came to understand during the drive to Fort Meyers that it didn't really matter what they looked like. I already knew and loved them for who they were. Their looks were utterly unimportant.

It was a great meeting.. The five of us went out for dinner. Then I had to drive back to work while they all went to the circus. Callahan's was good to me that day - these were and remain today very special people..

A second official Callahan's Clan gathering was sponsored by Kathy in Sarasota, Florida in January, 1996. I attended the second Gathering and completely enjoyed meeting many of my cyber friends in the flesh. I'm *pretty sure* that the rumors that surfaced about me *after* we all returned home were false..:)

In June of 1996, one of our patrons, Cherrie, was married in Los Angeles, California. She met two of her bridesmaids (Angel and Viv) here at Callahan's, and in fact, they all met face to face for the first time the night before the wedding. Read our July 1996 Bar Rag for more details.

There have been other Gatherings, once in Toronto, Canada and another in Dallas, Texas as recently as a few weeks ago. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there have been quite a few unpublicized meetings, too..:)

Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp bought Delphi in 1994 and over the next two years almost destroyed it. Whereas Delphi had more than 100,000 text based customers in 1994, by 1996 they were down to less than 5,000. Thankfully, Dan Bruns repurchased Delphi back from NewsCorp and the Web based service started to pick up. Today we have some reason to think that Delphi will survive. It was nip and tuck there for awhile though, and I was asked to find alternative meeting places in case Delphi folded. This I did, registering the name "Callahan's Saloon" with one of the mIRC university servers. I also made inquiries with MSN and AOL about moving Callahan's to those services. Luckily, Delphi survived.

When Delphi went Webside with a graphical interface, Nick was not offered the position as Manager. None of us know the facts but we knew he simply wasn't part of the place anymore and Delphi somehow knew, too.

Angel applied for the position as Manager. As part of her application, she had to describe what the goals of the place would be, the structure of the Website and so forth. I helped her with some of this, especially our Mission Statement.

I also began building the official Website in October, 1996. Before that, Peter BRATCHILD had developed a Callahan's site, as had Kathy KATHYC. In fact, Kathy's site was listed as our official Delphi Internet site on the alt.callahans newsgroup website for quite some time.

I tried to incorporate much from those sites into our official site. Until then I was a regular in conference, visiting almost nightly. Though already on staff, somewhere in all this I was asked to be Callahan's Website Manager. Once immersed in making Callahan's a Web based entity, I pretty much disappeared from public view. There was time for little else except Website building..:)

We decided to put all known Bar Rags, the Callahan's newsletter, on the site to provide something of a history of the place. Nick had written the first few newsletters entirely on text based Delphi and I translated them all to HTML. Kathy KATHYC was our next Bar Rag editor, followed by Kak ALKAK000 and Matthew MANDRO. All of their work was translated into HTML. Then I took over as Bar Rag editor until this very month, when Patt MIST4 edits her first edition. A careful reader of all the Bar Rags will observe the stylistic differences..:)

Angel and I and others on staff exchanged tens of emails daily during this period. We had a deadline of January 1997 to go live with the site and everyone was working hard.. I remember spending many 20 hour days working on the site. We missed our deadline for technical reasons (Delphi's editorial process was too SLOW) but finally went live with an 82 page Website in March, 1997. As of July, 1999, our site has 350 pages and continues to grow.

One more aside, soon after our site went online, I searched the Web for Spider Robinson sites and found no official site. I wrote Spider's agent a snail mail suggesting that *we* become Spider's official site. She wrote back saying that Spider was on vacation but that she'd ask him about it when he gets back. *I* was ecstatic!

Soon after though, Spider's friend Ted Powell's site became Spider's official site. I then wrote to Ted about having 'cooperative' links.. and today our sites do have links to each other..:)

Better still, as a result of all this correspondence, our Website was added to the list of Callahan's Saloon sites in the back of "The Callahan Chronicals" when it was published. Still, I often think we were this close ->||<- to becoming Spider Robinson's official site..:)

When I returned regularly to nightly chats in March 1997, I was surprised to see how few people were left in Callahan's or on Delphi. The number of text based customers was about at its lowest point and the Web hadn't really taken off yet. Angel and her staff turned their attention toward building the community.

It was during this period that a whole new set of patrons moved in and eventually became part of the nuts and bolts of the place. Mitzi, our current Conference Manager, comes to mind. And Kak.. Japers.. Janice.. Viv.. Tracy.. Jbirdie.. Ambassador.. Ivana (who tended Punday Nights).. So many memories..

In July 1997, Angel resigned as manager of Callahan's and left Delphi. She wished us all a fond farewell but she was angry with Delphi and most of us were shocked and saddened by her quick departure. I applied for the position (Angel urged us to keep the place alive) and became Manager on July 15, 1997. That first summer was a slow and painful period for us all. But we survived.. and even prospered.

I often look back on Angel's tenure and think about how caring the place seemed to be. I remember we even had a paid account (CALLAHANS) that we used to loan to patrons who couldn't afford to remain with us. I strive every day to maintain the special caring nature of the place - if for no other reason than to honor all those who have passed though our doors over the years and remember this as a special place.

While this imperfect history covers only the first four years of Callahan's Saloon on Delphi Internet, I also look back fondly at my tenure, the past two years and counting, as Callahan's Manager.

Next year I may write more about that; our efforts at Community building, strategies and tactics, successes and failures - and the people who continue to make Callahan's a magical place. But for now, please be satisfied with these few of my earlier memories of Callahan's Saloon.

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