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surelypovichjr · 6 years

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Death in North Bethesda

Dietle’s Bites the Big One!

Photograph by Flickr user Gloria.

It brings me great displeasure to have to report on a horrible tragedy that has befallen a once noble pillar of our ever-changing community. As many of you by now well know, the other week, the great Hank Dietle’s Roadside Tavern, the first watering hole in all of Montgomery County, the rowdiest in all of Rockville, the Mariana Trench of DC dives, the skeeviest of the skeevy, and yes, the under-the-table hand job mecca of MoCo, met an untimely end. A sad day for Rockville Pike and a sadder day for Yers Surely.

The local papers have seemed almost afraid to cover what should be an above-the-fold A1 story. The few reports that have come out have been scant at best, a canard of an ill-fated cigarette flicked into a potted plant as the alleged culprit of the great blaze. But the overwhelming conflagration that engulfed my favorite watering hole shall never overwhelm the many memories I have of that ole pile a’bricks.

via Pete Piringer/MoCo Fire & Rescue

I realize that I am far from the only one among the grieving; Dietle’s has been properly eulogized by others in song and prose but it has taken me a fortnight to come to terms with its denouement. Indeed, the minyan of drunkards have already touched upon the things that made Dietle’s objectively great – the stoic, hard-nosed nature of the place, its delightfully meager offerings, a bag of Utz potato chips, salt and vinegar if you caught them on a good night, watching the Nighthawks play live after sellin’ em blow, drinking bad draft beer tasting of cold deer piss, but delicious nonetheless.

But these stories have been told already!

I wanna get a little bit more personal about what Hank Dietle’s meant to me. Ya see, Hank’s is where I got my first taste of the good life, back when I was a young kid with a shock of red hair with the pubes to boot!

A shot of Old Granddad, bought by my famous sportswriter dad, is what I remember. That and the bar flies, talking a lot of mishegas about that whole Watergate nonsense; I remember the token floozy, Susan Blumenthal, 38 and sunburnt, slathering aloe on her back after a weekend passed out on the Ocean City boardwalk; the alimony dodger, Mitchell Glick, looking paranoid from ‘ludes and a starving ex-wife; and wait, who’s that but the Head Hog himself, George Starke! Dad had invited Georgie-boy to Hanky D’s as he thought a bit of libation might get the great offensive lineman to loosen his lips. It took almost the entire night, and an under-the-table handjob from Suzie B. but sure enough dad was right and Starke spilled the beans on the debacle that was the Washington Redskins season. What dad had was gold, a fresh yarn of the power struggle between Sonny Jurgensen, fresh upstart Billy Kilmer, which had the Over-The-Hill Gang ’73 squad in an uproar. I’ll be damned if dad didn’t get his big, masterful scoop on the front page of the Washington Post, above the fold A1! Eat it Woodward.

I also met my first and third wife at Hank Dietle’s—same person, in case you were wondering.

As for the future, it’s here that my biggest questions arise. As the great mystic once asked, is it better to burn out or to fade away? I guess it depends on the size of the fire.

I personally have very specific instructions for my own departure, a native Washingtonian’s viking funeral. As woman after woman has said “you’re dead to me”, it’s only natural that I’ve fully contemplated my own earthly dispatch. We’ll start things off with my expired corpse, which shall be placed in a seat on the red line train from Grosvenor, embarking north towards Shady Grove, which will allow me to pass through all of my favorite Rockville Pike establishments, most of them, like me, having closed for good. It’s when we pass the Silver Diner that the Walter Johnson High School band will take up their instruments, playing a big band rendition of the title song to an old Hal Ashby flick, a movie for which I have never received my proper screenwriting accreditation. Where was I when this idea came forth? At Dietle’s, of course! Hal was so drunk he got the title all wrong for a movie set in our nation’s capital--the hell if that wasn’t Randy Quaid is playing me in what shoulda been called The Last Dietle! A story for another day, dear readers.

The Last Detail/dir.Hal Ashby

As fire investigators close the case, I can’t help but wonder about whether there’s a good old-fashioned cover up. Like Watergate, only if it actually happened and wasn’t a complete fabrication. Perhaps there was foul play afoot?

“C’mon Surely, who would want to burn down a shithole like Dietle’s, charming as it may be?”

“To this I’d ask you to get up from your barstool and take a good gander across the street. Tell me, whaddya see?”

Wikimedia commons license

“Huh, what happened to the White Flint Shopping Mall, that beacon of 1980s consumerism rife with its marble avenues and Cheesecake Factory and Franklin Mints? What is set to replace it?”

Photo by horta5

“I dunno,” I reply, “could it be the future headquarters of a company owned by the richest man in the history of the world?”

“But Surely, if it was arson, don’t you think the paper of record, The Washington Post, that shining light of journalistic integrity, would print something about this kind of thing?”

“My friend, what if I were to tell you that the richest man in the history of the world, who wants to relocate 50,000 of his employees to a now demolished meadow across the street from Hank Dietle’s, is the very same man who owns your precious Washington Post?”

“But why, Surely? None of this makes any sense.”

“Don’t be naive. The guy’s gotta make room for 50,000 employees in an area already besotted with housing shortages and horrifying traffic. And so, perhaps the man burned Hank Dietle’s Roadside Tavern in a brilliant conflagration of orange cinder, all while receiving billions of dollars in tax breaks and blessings from Maryland’s most powerful politicians.”

“Well, those are some interesting points for sure, but I’m not a fire marshal. Wow Surely, maybe you have something there.”

“Thanks Suzie,” I reply.

To be fair, these are just rumors—gossip between old friends, reminiscing about stale beer, local rockabilly, Mitch Glickstein’s new wife, and of course, the frequent under-the-table hand jobs, the number of which, seem to dwindle and fade with each passing year. There’s other talk as well. Rumors of rebuilding. Who knows what will happen? Who cares? Certainly not the newspapers, nor the politicians, and most certainly not the large multi-national corporations and their rich owners. But who cares what I think, anyway? I’m just a sad old man in search of a new place to drink a cold piss beer and mourn all this area stands to lose if we are not careful. Every. Last. Detail.

Every. Last. Dietle.

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