Tall, thin and somewhat tattered around the edges, his red rimmed eyes peering from beneath shoulder-length hair, Don Younger looks like a man who just spent the night in the back seat of a 1966 Chevrolet.
After lighting a Camel and blowing a puff into the cool dark coziness of the Horse Brass Pub, Younger hunkers down to confess, "Listen, I'm just an old tavern rat, and I always will be."
This is not a surprise after a first glimpse at the man, but a seeming incongruity when you get to know Younger and see how his personality has transformed the Horse Brass into a finely detailed replica of a comfortable English pub.
At 54 Younger, who has owned the pub since 1976, is an admitted Anglophile with a romantic's penchant for collecting things. His pub is festooned with the trappings of empire, creating an atmosphere so authentically British that sojourners from Piccadilly often claim they feel at home here.
As Younger explains, "Something just clicked. In fact, when I started out I had only a fantasy of what an English pub should be. But then I decided to make it the best pub there is.
"Then the Brits started coming in, and I've heard them say, 'We're stunned. This is the best English pub we've been in.'"
Outside Britain, of course.
Yet, a dozen or so visits to the British Isles over the years have confirmed Younger's vision of what a pub should be. The Horse Brass evokes a venerable Victorian quality, a Dickensian ambiance appropriate to meetings of the Pickwick Club, retired members of an RAF squadron, or thirsty bowlers and batters just off the cricket pitch.
The pub is dimly lighted beneath a low, heavy beamed ceiling, while glimpses of the outside 20th century are viewed through small-paned windows recalling centuries past. Walls are hung with flags, photographs and signs recalling Britain's fading imperial splendor; maps near the kitchen guide you through London's streets and subways, while polished horse brass medallions gleam around a bar glittering with glasses and bottles, the bar being a snug place where a thicket of wooden tap handles are pulled beneath an antique sign that reads simply, "Public Bar".
Quite prominently, there is a gnarly, highly polished Irish shillelagh hanging over the bar as well.
"Whenever I was in England," Younger says, "whatever I saw for sale in antique stores, pubs or whatever, if I liked the feel of it I'd grab it."
And since the Horse Brass is an authentic, self-respecting pub, dart boards are targeted on the walls to be thunked by amateurs, and by those members of teams Younger has sponsored through the years.
After beginning as a tavern with only vague aspirations to becoming a pub, the Horse Brass today offers not only beer, wine and a respectable hard liquor bar (with an impressive selection of single malt whiskys) but a restaurant as well.
Snapping his Zippo on another Camel, ("This is a pub, not a hospital," Younger says defiantly), Younger passes over a broad menu laden with "British Specialties": bangers, pasties, Scotch eggs, a ploughman's lunch, fish and chips; as well as colonial fare: burgers, chicken, salads and sandwiches, and a light list of heavy desserts to fuel and evening of darts (provided by the management).
Younger confesses drily, "When I started out, I thought food was chips behind the bar, and I considered hard liquor a condiment. Now I'm a restaurant," he says, as if he still can't believe it. "And we're serving more food now. Some of the food we have now --- I can't believe it. It's fantastic."
Not that beer is ignored, certainly, for the Horse Brass taps pull down 29 (actually 39 draughts -- Ed.) beers and ales from several continents, including a full contingent from the Northwest's fine microbreweries, and there is a vast array of bottled foreign and domestic beers as well.
Lighting another Camel, the old tavern rat says proudly, "I'm held in high regard among the microbrewing community. Our microbreweries have made Portland 'Beer City'," he boasts almost gleefully, before telling about how the pub has been written up in several national magazines.
"I'm amazed when people come in and say, 'I've heard so much about you.' They come from all over and are curious why Portland has the biggest and best selection of local beers in the country."
Flipping quickly through the pages of his memory, Younger gets that wily old tavern rat look, lights another Camel and says, "You know, up until about twenty years ago (a period he calls 'the dark ages') this was a 'Blitz' and 'Oly' (Olympia) town. Now it's become an incredible drinking town."
Grinning, he stops to recite an archaic bit of doggerel: "'Oly is holy, ignorance is Blitz' is what we used to say," before chuckling like a man who can't believe things have gone so far.
Like Younger himself, a graduate of Grant High who, after a short stint at Portland State College, where he "majored in bridge and minored in pinochle", worked as an office manager for Lever Brothers before being enticed into the tavern business by his brother Bill.
"Bill came home from Vietnam and said, 'Why don't we get a tavern?' He wasn't into the tavern scene like I was, and I told him, 'Hell, I don't want to own a tavern. I'm having too much fun drinking in them.'
"Then Lever Brothers transferred me to L.A., and I looked around and said, 'I don't ever want to live in this goddamned place!' I came back and Bill and I opened the Mad Hatter. That was a good old workingman's tavern that is now the Bear Paw Inn, over on Milwaukie Avenue. I also owned Strawberry Fields, out in Gresham, before I got into this place."
Younger bought the Horse Brass from two partners with the same first name, Jay Brandon and Jay Kileen, and gives them credit for setting up business off of what Younger refers to as "the drinker's trail."
"At first the locale was a drawback," Younger admits, "but now we're near an area that has become trendy (Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard), and in a neighborhood that was once fighting for its life. It's still transitional," he adds, "but we're getting the yuppies calmed down a bit."
By word of mouth, through magazine stories and, more recently, computer internet, the Horse Brass attracts customers of all kinds from everywhere, a clientele the much-experienced Younger describes as "normal people".
"It's not cool anymore to get drunk and raise hell in taverns like we used to," he says, grinning at the memory. "People don't drink as much and are looking for something more. And being established I don't have to prove anything to my customers or myself. I get people in from New York City who say the place is incredible. They appreciate the warmth and say they feel like they're among family."
"I don't advertise, people just find us. We're more well known than you can imagine. I can't bring in the customers. My job is just to reward them when they come in here."
As any serious old tavern rat worth his beer nuts should, Younger has followed the transformation of Portland taverns from basic hardcore neighborhood hangouts to what he considers higher quality, "grownup" places, largely though the easing of Oregon's once much tougher liquor laws.
"I remember when you couldn't sing, dance, have live music or serve wine in taverns, which in the old days closed at 1 a.m.," Younger says.
"But those days are gone. When wine came in we could stay open later, more women came in and soon everyone was singing and dancing. You might say the big breakthrough was 'wine, women and song.'"
Younger attributes the increased sales of imported beers, which took off back in the 1970's, and the subsequent growth of microbreweries, to the more discriminating palates of women drinkers.
"Women were an easy sell for the more exotic micros and imports. They'd come in, take a sip and say, 'This isn't beer, this is good!'"
Inescapably, however, Horse Brass customers are attracted by the pub's nostalgic atmosphere, symbolized by a sad-eyed drawing (by James Macko) of Portland jazz great Monte Ballou, leader of the legendary "Castle Jazz Band".
While Younger explains the drawing on the wall, titled, "The Ghost of Monte Ballou", and points to Ballou's Oregon license plate, "JAZZ-4U", hanging nearby, he says, "You might say Monte died here. He would come in and play during his last years, and ... well, I loved that old man."
Former mayor and fellow tavern owner Bud Clark campaigned here, as did the now infamous former Oregon Senator Bob Packwood, among others.
"Packwood came in often, and he was a good customer," Younger says, "But," he adds almost wistfully, "I suppose now I won't be seeing him for awhile."
While newer Portland taverns, pubs and drinking places come and go, Younger says the Horse Brass keeps getting better every year, a continuing success he attributes to a "holy trinity" of management, "dynamite" employees, and loyal customers who feel at home here.
"It's just an honest bar, one big family where people can come in and feel comfortable. There is an incredible feeling of warmth, and I've never had any trouble," he adds. "I love this place. I never get tired of it. If I'm in town I'm here."
And, of course, it is Younger's long and loving devotion to taverns that has made the Horse Brass the success it is today.
Stretching out in flannel shirt and jeans, Younger seems part of the furniture, an old tavern rat who says, "I can't tell you or write it out for you, there's no formula, just an instinct that takes over. My job is to interpret the bar and know what goes into it."
Then he lights another Camel, looks around lovingly and admits, "You have to love it or lose it. Mentally it can eat you alive. I'm just an old beer drinking guy, and my heart's in a good old tavern. Give me a good old tavern with a shuffleboard, a jukebox and a bottle of Henry's, and I'm in heaven."
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