By David Himmel

When I was growing up at summer camp in Decatur, Michigan, I would overhear tales of a mystical place called the M-40. The camp counselors—men and women of drinking age and those close enough—would gather at this M-40 after long days in the summer sun wrangling rambunctious children. In the mornings, huddled over Styrofoam cups of coffee from the mess hall, they’d reconnect the pieces from their nights. Some wore M-40 t-shirts purchased from the bar. Kids with a few bucks cash could find the right counselor to buy them a shirt. They would wear it with pride until the camp owners caught wind and banned the t-shirts. After all, you can’t have alcoholism advertised by thirteen-year-old kid billboards at a summer camp designed to churn out intelligent, diversified members of society.

I never had the scratch for a t-shirt, but I was determined to one day go drinking—whatever that was—at the M-40. And when I could do that, I’d get me a t-shirt.

It wasn’t the beer that I was so drawn to. It was the camaraderie the counselors seemed to share because of this place. The M-40, I’d come to learn, was the closest thing to reattachment to the real world beyond the bubble of a summer spent in ignorant bliss. Because of the way legend takes form, this little bar in this little southwestern Michigan farming town transcended drinking. It was a mecca of love and good times.

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I’m struggling to write this. It’s almost a year since we went into pandemic lockdown. I’m struggling to write this in the same way I’ve struggled to write anything over the last year. In short, I’m tired of sitting. Tired of typing. Tired of completing almost every interaction through a computer screen. But right now, the struggle is comfortably different. Right now, I want nothing more than to be at a bar, slouched over the wood engaged in deep conversation and debate over the most importantly trivial of matters, drinking beer—lots of it—from room temperature mugs that began frosty while pumping five dollar bills into the jukebox stacking the playlist with ’90s grunge and alt-rock with the occasional disco, Motown, or Credence Clearwater Revival slipped in for spice.

Specifically, I want to be drinking at the M-40. The M-40 before the fire. Before it was gutted and cleaned up. The M-40 with the gently tilted pool table and the low lights and the bathroom doors that don’t latch. The M-40 where we could smoke and dance on the banquet chairs. The M-40 where all our summer friends were together all at once and where Steve the bartender kept the good times rolling by taking our money and filling our pitchers, feeding us quality burgers and the most perfect mozzarella sticks to ever grace a taste bud.

That’s all I want to do now. That’s the only place I want to be. And I have Steve to thank for this kind, nostalgic struggle.

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Steve McIntyre, who died February 17 at 47 years old from complications of diabetes, wasn’t the first bartender I met. He wasn’t the first bartender I befriended. But Steve was the bartender that was most impactful. I learned to drink in Decatur. First, as a teenage camp counselor where three cans of Miller Lite would put me on my ass like I was leaving Las Vegas. I graduated to Jim Beam and Coke on picnic blankets late at night down at the Lake of the Woods Public Access boat ramp. And then, finally, when I was twenty-one and old enough to saddle up to three foot of wood in front of a mirror and a rack of snack size potato chips, I drank pitchers of beer at the M-40.

As camp counselors, we were a ragtag group of kids from mostly midwestern states. The rest of us were Australians, Brits, Israelis, Dutch, Germans… A global economy with collective goals—drink, laugh, dance, play pool, maybe screw, try not to puke.

The Decatur Townies didn’t like us. We were the “Jew counselors” from that “Jew Camp” down the road. It was far from an accurate description of us, but the feeling was palpable. We always tried to make friends with Townies—an affectionate and accurate term for the year-round regulars. Despite the stinkeye that came from those select townies, we camp folks thrived. And, while I’ve never seen the M-40 books, it’s impossible to assume that our time there did anything other than help feed the bottom line with delicious American USD.

Steve ran the joint. Tending bar was the family business. His father, Tom, ran it the generation before mine. Steve and I became fast friends. That’s the bartender’s job, after all—to befriend their loyal patrons. But I was also young, boiling over with energy, and thirsty to learn the ways of drinking legally in public. Steve gave me, gave so many of us that arena.

The drinks were cheap. The food was good. The company was always preferable to any other. There were the big nights out where twenty of us counselors would make the short drive from camp to the M-40 and join the twenty or thirty Townies for loud dancing and heavy drinking, but there were the quieter nights, too.

I shouldn’t, but I do remember the night I, along with Jorg Stender, my counterpart back down at the sail dock, saddled up at the bar. Jorg was in the mood for Beam and Cokes. Steve happily obliged. A few Townies were at the other end of the bar as Jorg and I drank and talked, drank and talked, drank and talked. Every other drink, as if he were a finely tuned Swiss watch, Steve would come by, join us for a few minutes of casual conversation. He slid perfectly into and out of the deep, drunken nonsense Jorg and I were churning out.  

I worked at the camp only one summer while old enough to drink at the M-40 but I kept in touch with Steve over the winters and the years. He (and the bar) was on my Holiday Letter mailing list. On occasion, when drinking on my own, I’d pick up the phone and (drunk) dial the bar just to talk to Steve. It wasn’t out of loneliness, it was out of a desire to have a drunken conversation with my favorite bartender. He’d always say, “When you come back out here, Dave, we gotta go fishing.” I would have liked that. But distance and other silly excuses kept that fishing trip from happening.

A few times we made our way to The 40 to see Steve during the winter months, again, long after I had stopped working summers there. So, sometimes, it’d be years from when we last saw Steve. The surprised but welcoming look on his face when we’d walk through the door felt better than even that first cold beer.

In early 2001, a small group of us headed to The 40. I was home from college in Las Vegas. Dan Bates, Doug Bates, James Boulware, and Jeff Miner all made the few hours’ drive to meet at the M-40 for a single night of revelry. The bar was mostly empty. We had Steve all to ourselves. The six of us got good and loaded falsely accepting invitations to go fishing with Steve, but desperately wishing we had the availability that coming summer to cast a line and crack a beer in Steve’s fishing boat on that summer lake of ours in the woods.

We brought an even bigger gang of summertime friends in October of 2004 to celebrate Miner’s fortieth birthday. Miner was the elder of the group and about thirteen of us old camp pals traveled in from all over the country to celebrate Miner’s advanced age at the most appropriate place possible: the M-40. This celebration even gave me and one of the great loves of my life an opportunity to reconnect as part of the party planning committee. No romance was rekindled, but we hadn’t talked in more than four years proving that Steve’s M-40 was the Great Uniter. Would everyone have flown in to celebrate Miner if the party were at a Dave & Buster’s? I’d like to think so, but probably not.

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During the summer of 2000, there was a second bar counselors would frequent on nights out called BT’s located a town over in Sister Lakes. BT’s was easy on fake IDs, so the underage kids preferred it to The 40. One day, my seventeen-year-old brother asked if he could borrow my ID to get into the bar. Despite him being a few inches lankier than I am, we could easily pass for one another.

“Yeah, you can use it tonight,” I told him, “but do not take this to the M-40. Steve knows me. You won’t get it. It’ll be a bad move. BT’s only.”

The instructions were simple. My brother did not follow them. The next night, I went to The 40 not knowing what my brother had tried and the first thing Steve said to me was, “Dave.” He was disappointed. “What’s this bullshit with your brother using your ID to get in her last night?” I was embarrassed, apologetic, and furious.

The following morning, I caught up to my brother walking back from breakfast in the mess hall. “Eric!” I shouted to him as I ran to catch up. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

“What?” he said incredulously.

“You took my ID to The 40. You did the one thing I asked you not to do.”

“So? I didn’t get in.”

“I know! But you pissed off Steve and made me look like an asshole. And you put the rest of the counselors in a bad light. Steve’s my friend and you tried to pull one over on him.”

Eric got more defensive. I got more angry. Then Doug and James had to pull me off of him and remind me that beating my younger brother to a pulp in front of campers was an even worse idea than trying to get one past Steve. But was it?

As the years went on, the M-40 lost its status as the bar for counselors to go to. The next generation didn’t have the affection for it, didn’t see its charm, didn’t appreciate how Steve and his bartenders wouldn’t let nineteen-year-olds drink. And after too many of-age counselors causing too much trouble, the M-40 unofficially closed its doors to those counselors from that “Jew camp.” And I get it. These kids ruined a good thing they never took the time to understand.

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The news of Steve’s death came to us via the M-40 Facebook page. Dan Bates texted a small group of us the link. I quickly shared it in a larger text then a Facebook message. Through our phones, these old camp friends had our own little memorial for Steve, the lovable bartender, the best Townie in Decatur, the man who wanted to take us fishing.

Today’s M-40 doesn’t look or feel like it does in our memories. It’s brighter now, fresher. A fire a few years back cleaned the place up a bit. I think it lost the charm in the smoke and flames, but Steve was always there. And like any bartender worth their salt-rimmed glasses, that was enough to keep me charmed.