The Ugliest Bartender in Milwaukee

My Uncle Moxie and the Power of Story

Stories are the building blocks of life. They reflect who we are. And inspire who we want to be.

In business as well as life, stories connect us. Too bad we've turned storytelling into a cliche. A joke. Yet another business fad.

But before we discard storytelling, may I introduce you to a master storyteller? Someone who may just rekindle your belief in stories, both in & out of the office. That someone is my Uncle Moxie.

What can I tell you about my Uncle Max?

Well, Hubert Maxwell Wegerbauer is his given name.

Hubert Maximillian Augustus Tiberius Justinian Titus Aurelius Wegerbauer III is the name he sometimes bestows upon himself.

But for the sake of time, let’s call him “Moxie”.?

No matter what you call him, just the mere mention of Moxie and most people throw back their heads in laughter.?

Everyone has a tale or three to share about this oversized and outrageous character.

He looks like The Most Interesting Man in the World, only he’s more interesting.

And real.

The Ugliest Bartender in Milwaukee

In his younger days, Moxie was voted The Ugliest Bartender in Milwaukee.

Not once, but twice. And trust me, he had plenty of competition.

Moxie was also an amateur boxer at Marquette University.

He wasn’t half bad, either.

Too bad he came up against some pretty stiff competition.

One opponent went on to be the 8th ranked heavyweight in the world. He nearly knocked the 6’4” Moxie through the ropes.

Bobby Hines was another eventual pro. He also knocked Moxie into next week.

But as is the story of his life, Moxie got up.

Knock him down seven times and he’ll get up eight.

No surprise then that he went to tend bar for another former boxer, Dutch Ulmer at his eponymous restaurant and bar, Home of the Taki Passion, and a hothouse for brilliant business storytelling.

Dutch's Sukiyaki Bar

In Moxie’s words...

Dutch's was located on Layton Ave. across from the old airport terminal at Mitchell Field.? It had started as a hamburger joint I think in the late 40's.?

It was owned by Harold 'Dutch' Ullmer.?Dutch was from Pound, Wis.?

During WWII he was a meat cutter and exempt from the draft so he did not serve in the war.?He was active in the union and may have served as its president.?Dutch was also a light heavyweight boxer.?I do not know how many fights he had.?

I met Dutch in 1957 when I went into his bar and restaurant and applied for a job as a bartender.?Dutch had just converted his establishment into a Japanese restaurant featuring sukiyaki, tempura, and yakimeshi. No sushi.?He had hired Japanese waitresses who had married American service men who had served in the Korean War.?

I was hired.?I had some experience as a bartender but not much.?I had spent the summer as the bartender at the Jewish country club in Milwaukee. I can't remember the name of the club.?

I was always paid on Friday and for the first several months Dutch would often ask me not to cash the check until the next Monday or Tuesday.?Dutch was definitely having cash flow problems.?There was one other bartender and he was a bit of an odd ball.?He belonged to some far-out religion that believed in a bunch of Egyptian stuff.?He was not very good at explaining It, so I never could figure it out.?

No one would have bet on a Japanese restaurant in a town inhabited mostly by Germans and Polish.?The town loved beer, brats, hot dogs, potatoes, cabbage, and kielbasa. We?had the most unique place in town.??

In those days the liquor companies in Wisconsin would only sell the good booze if you also bought some unsellable stuff.?This was later declared illegal by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.?

Cutty Sark Scotch was very?popular.?To get a case of Cutty Sark you had to also buy a case of?Bols?Liquor.?Dutch had a basement full of unsellable liquors. Milwaukee was not the town that went in for fu-fu drinks.?

Dutch had a dinner menu of course.?Well, we produced a drink menu.?It?may have been done before but I never heard of it, so?drinks menus may have originated with Dutch.?

We took all that?unsellable dusty Bols liquor and started to invent drinks.?

The recipe was simple.?You took?some colorful?looking liquor and added a lot of vodka to give it a kick, then added some fancy name, created a?fanciful, romantic story and poof you had a Japanese drink. It was wonderful.?

The Taki Passion

One of my favorites?was the Taki Passion.?We looked on a map of?Japan and?saw the Taki Falls.?We made a drink of Blue Curacao, vodka, and lemon juice.? Then we created a story about a young Japanese maiden who had fallen in love with a Samurai but because of the class difference they could not marry, so she threw herself over the Taki Falls.?All this in the 11th century!? I tell you we had a ball coming up with all that bullshit!?

One of the best things is we had to experiment and test all the creation we were coming up with.?The afterhours testings in Dutch's basement were great.?Dutch even got to the point where he ordered imitation pearls and we floated the pearls on rose petals in the drinks.?We had one drink we claimed was so powerful that we limited it to two per customer knowing that all the macho dudes would want to drink at least three.?

We would argue a little and then serve them a third one. It was a pure money maker.?The specialty drinks reached their zenith when Dutch got some really large, I mean large giant shot glasses. Inside this large glass we place a smaller glass but still very large.?The outside glass contained the ice.?The inner glass the drink.?

I mean we poured everything into it.?

We floated the rose petals with the pearls on them. We lit sparklers and stuck them in the ice. We had large bamboo umbrellas stuck in the drink.?In the restaurant you took off your shoes and sat on the floor.?One of the waitresses dressed in a kimono, of course, would walk in front of the drink and ring a gong.

The drink was so large we had to put it on a wooden wagon and pull it into the dining area. It was outrageous, and so much fun.?The drink had flexible straws so you reclined on the floor and sipped you drink in luxury.?What a kick.

We?also served hot Saki which went well with meals. We had a sakitinni which was a martini made with saki instead of vermouth. Very good,?and very dry.?

We used an onion as garnish instead of an olive.?

As bartenders we wore happi coats.?A loose-fitting outer garment.?It was held in place with a sash tied at the waist.?The sleeves came to the elbows and were large.?We were shirtless underneath and chest hair pulling became a local sport.?We also grew goatees.?

Now at this time no respectable person grew facial hair.?If you had facial hair you were either a radical or worse- a hippie.?Because of our character and stature, Dutch and I helped change that type of thinking and facial hair became acceptable.

Ha! With that kind of flair for hoopla, is it any surprise that like me, my cuzbro, Moxie’s son, Eric, went into advertising?

What Did the Fish Say When It Swam in to the Wall?

By sailing to America, Uncle Moxie’s parents took a physical journey that changed their lives. Moxie was looking to take a spiritual journey to change his own life.

He found it in California at a commune, where he moved his wife and kids.

And it worked. Until it didn’t. Moxie found himself in limbo:

When I was fifty-five years old a lot happened in a short time.?The community where I had lived and worked for eighteen years was collapsing.?I had planned to die there.?Instead I had to leave.?

The once noble community I had moved my family into had turned to crap.?All my money was invested there and it was gone.?There was no retirement. I left with the cloths I had.?Enough to fill one small closet and one three drawer chest of drawers and a king bed with two changes of sheets.?

I had $400.00.?

I spent $200.00 on an eighteen-year-old Buick.?The rest went for a deposit on an apartment I shared with another person who had left Synanon.?The relationship I was in at the time also ended.?

I had been low on money from time to time in my life but I was never broke before.?I also had borrowed money to start a calendar business.?The business failed.?I was not only broke, I was in debt.?

The 3 Most Stressful Things

Psychology Today tells us that the three most stressful things that can occur in our lives are lose you primary relationship, lose your job, and move.?Well I did all three of those in less than a month.?

I knew I was under a lot of stress.?I said to myself it is better to go through all three of these most stressful things at once and get over them then to go through them?at three separate times.?Be very stressful once rather than be stressful three different times.?Nice thought.?It didn't work that way.?

I was in bad shape.?Each day I had to call someone just to talk.?These were all ex community people and they on some levels were going through the same thing I was going through.?

I quickly got a job as a disc jockey.?I?knew if I got on the air in the state I was in?that the audience would on some level, conscious or subliminal, realize I was depressed.?

I knew I could not go on the air that way.?

I?had three dollars in my pocket.?I went to a used book store and bought three used joke books for a dollar each.?I then went to the radio station?and each day

I read those books till I started to laugh and then got on the air.?

I had cured myself of a deep depression.? I did it by laughing.? Who ever said "Laughter is the best medicine."? was right.?There was no money so no doctor, no?psychiatrist, no?psychologist, no social worker,?just laughter.??

I was very thankful to be out of my depression.

I talked to?God, and as a result of our conversation, I said that?at every opportunity I would?get people to?smile and laugh.?

It is my way to?thank?God for showing me how to cure?the?serious depression I was in.??

So, since age fifty-five at every opportunity I tell my silly,?corny, clean, kid jokes.?

I even did standup comedy in Las Vegas for a year and a half to try to reach a wider audience.?

The Stand Up Barista

Today I?have a part time job as a barista at a Starbucks in a Fred Meyers store.??

I don’t like the job that much but the money helps and my wife, Lorna, loves the discount we get at Fred Meyers, but?the main reason for keeping the job is?that every time I work I get to help about two hundred people smile and laugh that day.?

Life is good and thank you God.?

Moxie became such a fixture at Starbucks that the local paper did an article about him.

Now as far as his legendary canon of jokes go, I have to say that the humor is more in the telling than in the jokes themselves:

What did the fish say when it swam into the wall?

Dam!

What did the father buffalo say to Junior when he went off to school?

Bi-son!

Nope, there’s not a dad joke Moxie doesn’t know, and no one tells them better.

Usually with a cigar as a prop. ?

With Moxie, there is no such thing as a stranger.

And he has a joke for everyone.

The Johnny Appleseed of Corny Jokes

Spreading smiles wherever he goes.

For years, Moxie was a star in search of a stage.

Then he discovered that Shakespeare was right:

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

Moxie’s role has been that of the court jester.

And lest we not forget that in Shakespeare, the fool is often the wisest man in the play.

The one who not only tells the jokes, but is in on the joke.

Life is simple. We’re here to lift up one another and have fun.

And Moxie is a synonym for fun.

The Picnic Bench

One time, when my uncle came to visit me in Dallas, we spent an afternoon at a now razed pub- The Gingerman.

Sitting outside, we downed some pints and swapped some stories.

I’m not normally a loud laugher, but Moxie can get me going.

The only other people on the porch were two younger guys who kept looking our way.

Is our smoke getting to you? Or are we being too loud. Either way, my apologies, I said.

Oh no!, one of them said. We apologize for listening in. We’re just trying to figure out why we don’t have the kind of stories you guys have!

What a kind thing to say. But also a little sad.

Moxie assured them that we were older, and that they had more than enough time to catch up: Just stay open to the world, and everyone you meet, and you’ll stockpile plenty of stories.

We bought them a round, and got back to telling our tales.

Followed by an evening making new ones.

Go Make Stories

The best way to become a storyteller is to make stories.

Live them.

Inhabit them.

Share them.

Because your life isn't a novel, it's a series of stories.

And if you want to connect with people, you have to make them part of your story.

Thanks for Reading Navigating the Fustercluck

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Til next time...

Here's to stories.

Here's to connecting.

Here's to the future.

Wegs, like eggs with a W