Manuel’s Tavern

How can you note love a place where you order a hamburger and end up with James Michener? On the gloomiest Monday imaginable, a few years ago, my husband and I are in a booth at Manuel’s Tavern, whining over our respective afternoon schedules and ordering lunch when a smug-looking Robert Maloof – brother to tavern owner Manuel Maloof – comes over to announce he is moving us to the back room where we will join James Michener. That’s James Michener the writer, he says. Yes, we say, we know the name. We’ve read a book or two of his. Because this is Manuel’s, it doesn’t occur to us to doubt that  Michener is really there. It makes perfectly good sense.

As it happened, he was in town with a group scouting movie locations and had asked an Atlanta policeman to recommend a place for lunch, So of course he ended up at Manuel’s – so do most local cops and so do most visiting writers, for that matter. Robert, in a burst of local literary boosterism, had taken it on himself to see that Mr. Michener was made aware that Atlanta does indeed have some writers of its own. Never mind that at the time my chief writerly output consisted of press releases for a local chamber of commerce. I can talk the talk. Besides, my husband’s credentials are genuine: Just a few weeks before we had celebrated the publication of his novel Long Gone with an autographing party at Manuel’s. So on this particular day there we are, three writers eating hamburgers and talking business. Mr. Michener turns out to be a class act, who recognized a great tavern and good sandwich when he found one. I actually think he had as good a time as we did.

I won’t say this sort of thing happens every time I set foot in Manuel’s, but it’s not exactly a rare occurrence. There are hundreds of Manuel’s stories, many of them involving famous people. I happen to like this one, because it’s mine – my small contribution to Manuel’s lore and the beginning of a sense of ownership in an Atlanta institution that I love.

Manuel’s is a classic neighborhood tavern 10 minutes from downtown, a hangout for cops and journalists and politicians and carpenters and anybody else in search of good bar food and lively conversation. It’s dark, wood-paneled and smoky, with a décor best described as Early Democrat, heavy on pictures of John F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey and Franklin Roosevelt. 

Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center and Library is practically next door, is a regular. (“Nobody bothers Jimmy Carter when he comes here,” Manuel’s bartenders tell you pointedly. Tommy Lasorda drops by when the Dodgers come to town. Captain Kangaroo has been there. And a whole lot of people you’ve never heard of come in to eat, drink, socialize or simply take care of business. My husband’s idea of how to fix a leaky shower, for instance is to go to Manuel’s for lunch and strike up a conversation with a plumber.

I brought the good silver to our marriage. My husband, Paul Hemphill, brought Manuel’s Tavern – it was his dowry. We use the silver once or twice a year, and we visit Manuel’s every chance we get.

Paul discovered Manuel’s and its founder Manuel Maloof in the 60s when he was a young newspaper columnist and Manuel was getting ready to launch the political career that would make him CEO of DeKalb County and a Democratic Party power player. Manuel, his tavern and his politics could always be counted on for a column.

I was officially introduced several years later. I’d been to the tavern – you could hardly grow up in Atlanta without encountering Manuel’s, but dropping by for a beer is different from being taken there to meet Manuel Maloof. In-laws are easy, but Manuel’s is a tough room, and I understood that my acceptance had very little to do with my sparkling personality and very much to do with my husband selection and registered Democrat status.

My first outing after our now 15-year-old daughter was born was to Manuel’s – she came too, in her pink ruffles and yellow baby carrier, to be propped up on the bar and fussed over by the regulars. She held court and I consulted Dr. Spock – the book, not the doctor, though for all I know he’s been to Manuel’s – on baby barroom etiquette. I don’t recall that she had a hot dog that day, but it may be the only time she has visited the place without polishing off a hot dog and fries.

You can’t actually know Manuel’s unless you know Manuel himself. He’s a second-generation Lebanese barkeep and old-line liberal Democrat, gruff, outspoke, well-read and, when he was still in office, widely regarded as the most knowledgeable local government official in Georgia. He is possessed of a legendary temper and does not, in government or tavern-keeping, suffer either fools or Republicans gladly.

Several of us were sitting with Manuel one evening and trying to talk over the unfortunate, glass-shattering laugh of a woman at a nearby table. Manuel shot her a series of dirty looks and shook his head. ‘In the old days,” he groused, “I would have had her thrown out.”

The Manuel stories are legion – and mostly true. Manuel lending a regular the money for law school tuition, Manuel lighting into a local broadcaster for daring to whistle to summon a waiter, Manuel accepting a nude painting of an artist’s wife to settle the man’s bar tab, Manuel having a customer thrown out for talking bad about John Kennedy.

In fact, the day of John Kennedy’s funeral, back in 1963, the bar was officially closed, but friends and customers – including those who didn’t share Manuel’s high regard for the President – nonetheless came by to offer Manuel their condolences. The scene was repeated when Robert Kennedy died, and Hubert Humphrey.

Manuel’s loves visiting celebrities, but most patrons are not household names. Some do achieve a certain notoriety like the regular, a Vietnam veteran, who was holding forth one night about his wartime experiences. He heard that there was a captain in the tavern that night, whom people seemed to be making a fuss over, and he decided to set the officer straight on some things. The bartenders still give him a hard time about the night he told off Captain Kangaroo.

TV crews show up at Manuel’s on election night, and sports fans, serious and otherwise, show up to watch football or baseball. When the Braves were in the World Series in 1991 and ’92, it was harder to get a seat at Manuel’s than it was in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.

Families come to Manuel’s for sandwiches, and softball teams cleat in after a game. Local Habitat for Humanity crews congregate after their Saturday work sessions. Students and professors come in – the tavern is close to Georgia Tech, Georgia State and Emory. It’s a hang-out, a club, a destination. So of course it shouldn’t have been a surprise the night I looked over at the next table and recognized my grade-school best friend, whom I hadn’t seen for years. Why wouldn’t she be at Manuel’s?

Manuel’s for a long time seemed most comfortable to me when I was there with my husband. Over the years there have been more books and book parties. When Long Gone was made into a movie, the first Atlanta screening was at Manuel’s. And even though I’ve been there on my own for lunches or interviews or to meet a woman friend for a drink after work, it usually felt like his place, that I was just tagging along – ladies’ night at the lodge.

James Michener helped, but it was actually Tommy Maloof, the seventh of Manuel’s eight children and now the general manager, who made me feel like a regular in my own right the day I walked in, unaccompanied by my husband or anyone else, to be greeted by name: “Hey, Susan, good to see you.”

Still, the best summation of the place, no surprise, comes from Manuel himself. Early in his political career, an opponent attacked him as “someone who runs a beer joint.”

“Beer joint?” Manuel said. “This ain’t no beer joint. It’s a community center.”

He’s right.