Take the 4 Train to J.P. Donleavy's Lost Tavern

In 1918 construction was completed on the 4 train's route from Woodlawn Station, the last stop in the Bronx, all the way down to Grand Central. Now the Bronx and midtown Manhattan were forever linked, and the northern borough could expand under the pressure of the working-class hordes fleeing Manhattan's tenements. The Bronx promised workers easy access to their jobs and bigger, cleaner apartments. Those promises, at least, were kept.

The 4 train runs the length of the Bronx's Jerome Ave., and the ghostly terrace of the elevated tracks spawned under itself a business district much like that under any elevated train. Small stores catering to the neighborhood bloomed like mushrooms in the shadows, and what was true 80 years ago holds today. Sure, kosher delis have given way to bodegas, and Greek diners to fast-food joints, but small businesses still rule under the iron girders.

At the 4's last Bronx stop, at the far end of the platform, you can see through the windows of the swing room, where transit workers take their breaks. You'll see a chubby and happy crew of maybe 10 transit workers breaking up over someone's joke. Former Transit Union president Mike Quill must be smiling from wherever his soul is now: his progeny are the well-fed multicultural crew he had always envisioned for Transit.

As you exit the train on the west side of Jerome Ave., you see the Mosholu Golf Course. The early dark and bitter winds of late autumn have chased all the duffers home, and the only things moving on the grass are swirls of discarded newspapers. Due north from the golf-course entrance are the woods of the Allen Shandler Recreation Area. Allen Shandler was a Bronx boy who achieved a type of local grandeur in the early 60s, when two Bronx punks burned his grandmother to death and he asked the judge to have mercy on the miscreants. When he was 15, Shandler was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and his father petitioned the city to name a playground after his son, a boy with a heart full of unstrained mercy. Young Allen died in 1966 and the area was dedicated to him. That's about all that's left of the Shandlers in the Bronx. The family's candy store, on Katonah Ave., is owned by someone else now.

On the east side of the elevated, Bainbridge Ave. cuts in to join Jerome Ave., and there's a bus station for those who need to venture farther north into the Bronx. The Irish line up for the Bx 34 to Woodlawn; Jamaicans and Hispanics take the Bx 16 to Wakefield and Baychester. I walked by the bus shelter fearing I might see a familiar face. Time slaps everyone around, but while you can get used to the changes that accrue to your own visage, when you see a face that's suddenly gone from 20 years old to 40, it can be sobering. I saw no one I knew, and walked away a relieved man.

On the side of the elevated's concrete superstructure is a mural dedicated to Vietnam veterans. There's not a bit of graffiti on it. The painting's reminiscent of the statue of the three soldiers near the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, DC: the soldiers look off into the distance?one black, one white, one Hispanic. The Bronx has always been good for supplying America with cannon fodder.

There's a little sign under the war mural identifying it as the "Winners Circle Memorial," which is confusing if you don't know a bit of local history. The Winners Circle is the former name of the bar that sits 25 feet south of the painting; you imagine that at some point back in the day, the guys who hung around the place got up a collection to pay for a remembrance of the neighborhood's vets. The Winners Circle was a Bronx mainstay for years?and there's still a bar in its space, only now it's called the Woodlawn Cafe.

The tavern was called the Winners Circle for two reasons: because it had a circular bar, and because the Yonkers Raceway bus stops in front of it. Back in the 50s and 60s, tens of thousands of people would go out at night to Yonkers to bet on the trotters. Bars near racetracks always carry monikers alluding to betting on horses?or "feeding the ponies," as it used to be called. Now the ponies are starving. Yonkers Raceway is lucky to get 900 people out for a night of gambling.

Being at the end of the 4 train, the tavern was a home to transients. There was always something sad and temporary about it. It had a hopeless sort of energy: if nothing else, it was your last chance to get fortification before you had to face the terrors of home. J.P. Donleavy, the Bronx-raised author who now lives as an expatriate in Ireland, wrote about the Winners Circle in his 1973 novel, A Fairy Tale of New York, calling it Wickies:

A rainy city below?north past a peek of Central Park and over all the Harlem crazy streets. To the sad unsung gothic splendours of the Bronx.

"What's that?"

"The last stop of the elevated train."

"That's a bar, where it says Wickies?"

"Yes."

Stepping out under this haunted structure. The many times I climbed up and down from this train. Like a house on stilts full of windows. The end of the line or the beginning if you're heading downtown. Bartender with sleeves rolled up. Travelers hunched over drinks at the circular bar? Saw a sign don't miss an opportunity to work in the midtown area. Another slander of Brooklyn and my Bronx. Whose citizens crawl up out of the subway trains. Sell shirts, shoes and soap to the endless supply of big shots.

The renamed pub no longer has a circular bar. It's the standard-issue rectangular slice of wood, manned on one side by about 15 Irish and Puerto Rican men and women, sipping drinks and chatting pleasantly. A mellow Spanish song plays on the jukebox while, at the far end, two Irish guys argue about President Clinton as they're served pints by a waitress.

A salsa song comes on, and a middle-aged man tries to make like Marc Anthony in an attempt to impress a portly woman. The door opens every few moments as transit workers pop in and out. A businessman drifts in, looking haggard in wrinkled suit and open tie, and stands at the center of the bar drinking a lonely beer. This place was made for him?the commuter needing a belt before he goes any farther.

At the pool table in the back, angry Spanish curses are hurled over a scratched eight ball. A cue is slammed down; a young woman watches the game as she munches on a slice of Sicilian from the pizzeria next door. The salsa gives way to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and an Irish couple laugh as they sing along with Freddie Mercury: "Mama mia! Mama mia!"

They have some jukebox here: Yes, Louis Prima, Tijo Rogers, Elvis, El Maestro, the Grateful Dead, Marc Anthony, U2, Junior Gonzalez, the Notorious B.I.G., Little Feat. There's a nice feeling here?a bonhomie. No sense of imminent violence, which you often pick up in Bronx watering holes?no sense that the guy singing Queen could get ugly and attack the nearest salsa fan. Nor was there any of that Bronx wariness, with the drinkers looking toward the door every time it opens, making sure that a Bronx wind isn't blowing in some nasty parolee looking for a quick payday. None of that in the Woodlawn Cafe.

Or maybe there was a bit of it. I looked behind the bar and there it was: an indication that this little place where the Hispanic and Irish tribes gathered in peace wasn't as secure as I'd thought it was. Behind the bar, a counterfeit 20-dollar bill was pasted on a sheet of oaktag, with the caveat: "Don't even think about it! You will be either beaten or prosecuted!"

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