When I was a boy I spent a lot of time in bars. Specifically, one bar, the Malt Shovel. As a latch key kid I would swing by to meet mom as her shift as a barmaid finished. I would help clear tables, collect ash trays and, occasionally, bat my cow eyes at the stragglers and ask them to bugger off home so I could get out of there.

It is not legal here in Ontario for bars to sell alcohol for take out. In England, back when I was a boy, it was common. Many bars had a separate entrance or window where you could pick up beer without having to actually go in the bar.  It was called ‘out sales’, as in, you take it out.

This was also great for the more enthusiastic drinkers who, having reached the point of being cut off by the bar staff,  would accept banishment gracefully and just take a couple bottles for the walk home, to keep out the cold, doncha know. Very civilized.

Compare that with today. I wonder if that old fashioned style was not a better way. Drunks don’t walk home these days, they drive. That’s not good. Worse, because they can’t get a drink to take out, they stay longer and have those extra drinks at the bar instead. That’s also not good.

So here is my question: Does it make more sense to have out sales, or not? To me, it certainly does. It allows bar staff to move drinkers out without arguments. It makes the roads safer and keeps the patrons happier, since they don’t have to put up with the offensive drunk that just left.

Anyway.  I’m just reminiscing about those long distant days when I stood knee high to a grasshopper and learned far more than I should have from the regulars at the bar. I won’t call them happy days, but do you know what? They were not at all bad.