If you are a Baby Boomer or Gen X then you probably remember the TV show Cheers. Millennials and Gen Z might not but maybe they caught it on The Netflix. Cheers was the local watering hole for a bunch of colorful characters who made it their home away from home. The bar was helmed by Sam Malone along with his fellow bartenders Coach and Woody, and his cocktail waitresses Diane and Carla. Rebecca came in later to help him run the bar. Then there were the regular patrons like Norm, Cliff, Frasier, and a host of other secondary characters. Why am I going on about this fictional bar? Because I used to hang out at one that was very real. Before I tell you about it, let me tell you about something strange that happened last night.

Last night, my wife and I went to a local pub here in Osoyoos British Columbia to celebrate my birthday. My wife ordered a ham and pineapple pizza. Don’t get me started on the travesty that is. It’s not the point of this post. Anyway, she asked me what was the best pizza place I had ever been to in my life. I thought about it for a few minutes and then told her about a combination bar/pizza place that I hung out at for a short time when I was in my early 20’s. It wasn’t a bar in Boston but it was in New England. The bar was called Nappi’s and it was located in Portland, ME. I also told her that it wasn’t because they necessarily had the best pizza I had ever tasted, although that and their calzones were quite tasty, it was more of the atmosphere. Portland was not a place I lived, only a place I was serving duty at in the Navy and the bar was like a second home to me.

This morning I got a text from one of my shipmates I served with back then that told me John Nappi had died. John Nappi was the Sam Malone of that bar. Can you imagine if Norm got a text saying Sam had died? I’m sure he would be saddened by the news and it would bring back a flood of memories from when he had hung out at his home away from home. I am still in contact through various social media platforms with a fair number of my shipmates from back then, some of them that were way more closer to John than I was. We spent all morning reminiscing about stories from the bar. Reading about all the old stories made me want to write a post honoring John and his family that took a bunch of rag tag sailors in and made them feel like they had a second home while they were away from their real one.

It was a cold January day in 1991 when my ship, the USS Monterey (CG-61) pulled into the Bath Ironworks annex shipyard in Portland, ME for what was called a Post Shakedown Availability. The ship itself had been built a little farther north in the main shipyard in Bath. In Mayport, FL she was commissioned the previous year and we had since been on several missions and qualification trials. Now, we were back to have all the issues we had discovered during this time fixed. It was a normal process for a newly commissioned ship and takes about five months to complete.

After getting the ship moored, liberty call was put out and what was a sailor to do but get out in this new place and find a local watering hole. So, a group of us bundled up and set out on foot to accomplish that goal. I don’t remember who exactly was with me but I do know a fellow sailor named Mike Cate was one of them. Not only were we looking for a watering hole but also a place to watch the NFL playoff game between the New York Giants and the San Francisco 49’ers. A few blocks away from the shipyard we came to what seemed like a bit of a downtown business district. Then we spotted it. Nappi’s Pizza and Bar. We quickly converged on the place.

As we got up close we could see that place was kind of split in half, with the right half where all the pizza (and a sundry of other items) were made. The left half was the bar. Which side do you think we entered first? Ha! You knew it was the bar side! However, when we walked in we noticed that the place was not exactly ready for Prime Time. There was a long bar with TV’s above it and a pool table beyond, but there were also a few sawhorses and other building type tools laying about. There was sawdust all over the floor and the air smelled of a construction site. Clearly this place was still under construction and we had just blundered into the worksite. We were all turning around to walk back out when a guy popped up from behind the bar. It was John.

We apologized to him for intruding on his worksite and began to walk out. John stopped us, telling us that they were in fact open but just putting some final touches on the bar side. In fact, the pizza side of the place had only been open for a couple of weeks if I remember right. We thanked him for his offer for us to stay but explained we were looking for a place to grab a few beers and watch the game. If what happened next had not taken place, this bar would have probably never became our Cheers. John picked up a remote to one of the TV’s that was laying on the bar and tossed it to Mike telling him to watch whatever we wanted to. He also held up an empty pitcher and asked us what beer to fill it with. That was the moment we all knew this was going to be our bar while we were in Portland.

The word quickly spread about the place and within a couple of weeks a good amount of sailors from my ship spent most of their off time there, including me. I even had a favorite barstool like Norm. The whole Nappi family treated us like we were part of theirs. We told them that it was fitting that a crew from a newly commissioned ship would hang out at a newly commissioned bar. John’s sister, Gretchen, often tended bar and always engaged in pleasant conversation with us salty sailors. I was especially keen on her, not in a romantic way (I was married then), but because of a Maine state law they were not allowed to pour a pitcher of beer for just one customer. Sometimes, depending on my work schedule, I would get their either earlier or later than my friends who were already drinking. Getting a pitcher of beer was cheaper than getting it by the glass, so this was my preferred method. To get around that pesky law, Gretchen would pour me a pitcher but keep it just under the bar out of site then let me reach over and pour from it into my glass whenever I needed a refill. It was just things like that that really made us love that bar.

We watched the rest of the NFL playoffs in that bar. Most of my shipmates watched the Superbowl there. Not me, I pulled duty that day and had to watch it on a TV in the barge where we were staying while the ship was being overhauled. Most any other sporting events were watched there. A lot of pool was played there. I watched a lot of sailors get drunk there, including myself. Yes, there were some incidents too. I was ringside to a bar fight between two sailors that I had to reluctantly testify about at Captain’s Mast, which is a form of non-judicial punishment. But it was mostly a happy family time there. A place just to unwind at the end of a long day of work in the military when you didn’t have duty.

A few sailors, including Mike, got to know the Nappi family even better, hanging out with them outside the bar. He stayed in contact with John long after our ship sailed away and was the one to find out John had passed away. He was also the one that spearheaded a blowout party at the bar a few nights before we sailed away. At Mike’s suggestion we gave the Nappi family a USS Monterey Commissioning poster signed by all us regulars. John hung it up over the bar where I was told it stayed for many years until the place closed. Even then, John took it with him and kept it at his house.

Except for one other bar, a combination bar/laundry that was called The Bar of Soap, it was the only place I hung out at the whole time we were in Portland. I even had an idea to one day open a place that would be a combination bar/pizza/laundry and call it The Wet Spot. I never did though. Who knows? There is still time left and if I ever do, I hope I can return the favor that the Nappi family gave us. I’m not sure if any of them will ever read this but if they do, please know that I think I can speak for the crew when I say that our whole life was made better by your family and we are deeply saddened to hear about the loss of John. All of our thoughts and prayers are with you!

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