Photo by Gustavo Arellano “They took the dart machine already?” groans Carl Jacobsen upon entering the Covered Wagon, the downtown Anaheim bar that's been his nightly comfort since his 1971 graduation from Anaheim High School. “Geez, they're not even waiting for the closing before gutting the place. I hope they at least keep the jukebox one more week.”
The hefty Santa Ana city employee saunters through the smoky bar and points out other signs of the Wagon's slow-motion closure. The two pool tables and a 36-foot, vintage 1957 shuffleboard game—Orange County's oldest, according to bar owner Tom Hart—still occupy a wide expanse of the snug building. But Hart has already given away the inflatable covered wagons that once hung over the tables. Photos of regulars remain tacked up on a large bulletin board, but something's missing.
“Where's my POW flag?” Hart snaps as Jacobsen plops into his stool and asks for the usual—Miller Lite from the tap. “Where is it?”
“Calm down,” says his wife, Covered Wagon co-owner Linda Hart. “Stop putting on a show. If someone had really taken it, you'd be screaming and yelling and punching the wall.” Her husband, who sports sideburns that went out of style with Millard Fillmore's administration, grins before returning to his usual perch, labeled “Tom's Corner.” He pulls out a Zippo and fires up a Marlboro Red.
Anaheimers have patronized the Covered Wagon for generations, and nearly everyone in town has at least passed the building, whose signature adobe exterior and faded wood sign have occupied the same spot on Anaheim Boulevard since 1957. But the bar will be no more come Sept. 13. Like the Little Dude before it—and the Wolf's Den, the Bean Hut, Jane's Place, the Claymore Inn, the Pirates' Cavern and dozens of other bars that occupied the same boulevard through the decades—the Covered Wagon has fallen victim to the redevelopment dreams of Anaheim's master planners.
The city used eminent domain to take over some of those other bars, but not the Covered Wagon. But Linda acknowledges that when city officials first offered to buy the bar from the Harts about 18 months ago, “they made insinuations that the city would use the tactic if we refused to sell.” A plump financial package eventually persuaded the couple to sell. Linda declined to state how much, just saying, “It was good.”
Tom is a little more dramatic. “Remember The Godfather?” he says, taking the cigarette from his mouth long enough for a nice swig of beer. “That part where the guy finds the horse's head inside the bed? They made me an offer I couldn't—”
“Hey, shut up!” a guy with a buzz-saw larynx says. “This ain't a talking forum! Some of us are trying to watch the football game!”
The Covered Wagon's demise continues the city of Anaheim's habit of replacing downtown buildings with vacant lots and seedy businesses. Once a beautiful thoroughfare dotted with ornate buildings, Anaheim Boulevard now features used-car dealers, decrepit medical clinics, and an ARCO station at the corner of Anaheim Boulevard and Broadway. Nightlife has been reduced to the 24-hour Jax Donuts across the street from Anaheim City Hall. The only signs of the boulevard's former status as a center of Anaheim's civic life are the Carnegie Library—built in 1909 and on the National Register of Historic Places—and, until Saturday, the Covered Wagon.
“It seems that every six months, the newspapers come out with a story saying Anaheim has a new plan for development,” says Kurt Bauman, former bassist for the Pontiac Brothers and a Covered Wagon regular since he graduated from Anaheim High in 1976. “But nothing happens. My final line: it'll probably be a vacant lot for about three years, then it'll be a paved vacant lot.”
“Don't forget the Promenade,” growls Roland White, a 72-year-old vet with a beard that could scrape paint off a car. “Just a bunch of damn palm trees with Christmas lights.”
The Promenade is a small street that now connects Anaheim City Hall with Disney Ice, practice rink of the Mighty Ducks. For years the area featured bars and mom-and-pop hardware stores, but was redeveloped amid great expectations in the mid-1990s. Time-lapse photography would show shutters coming down on a series of restaurants.
“I wouldn't mind [the closing of the Covered Wagon] so much if something would actually come and replace it,” Bauman continues. “But what happened the last time we had major redevelopment? All of downtown was torn down in the early 1980s. And for what? A Vons and a Sav-On? The city tears down everything for nothing.”
The Harts will hold one final party on Sept. 13, with beer at $1 and pitchers at a Nixon-era $3. Tom doesn't know what'll happen to Covered Wagon regulars—there's talk of monthly reunions at his house—but he knows how he's going to spend the bar's final days.
“I'm going to stand across the street with a video camera,” he says, gesturing. “And I'm going to see the bulldozers try to knock the building down and hope that they flip over.”
“It's going to be fun seeing them try to knock the walls down,” Jacobsen says, munching on chips and staring absently at the bartender's cleavage. Then he thinks and says, “No, it's not. It's going to be shitty.”
