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Yukon
Tavern
5819
SE Milwaukie Ave., 235-6352
On Friday, July 14, the Yukon Tavern was the place to be.
Filled to capacity, the Yukon welcomed a reunited group
of friends and family who used to call this bar home. Long-lost
friends exchanged greetings while the bar's younger crowd
stationed itself throughout the two cramped rooms of this
Southeast neighborhood tavern.
All--either by chance or design--had come to celebrate
the life of Vivian McCarty, the diminutive, flame-haired
songstress who, along with her sister Naomi Thomas, had
run the Yukon Tavern since the '50s. She died July 10, two
years shy of a century of living.
That Vivian was ambitious is beyond argument. She started
both a band (the 4 Femmes) and a bar in the early 1960s,
at a time when her contemporaries were more concerned with
proper dress length. She continued her convention-defying
ways well into her 80s, performing sing-alongs and pulling
pitchers for her Yukon customers until as recently as 1996.
On the night of July 14, the volume of voices of those
who knew her best swelled as the free beer continued to
flow. Vivian's nephews Tom and Rol Worth, who organized
the celebration, reminisced about their aunt's days as a
no-nonsense bartendress and her stint as a singer with a
circus in Hawaii in the late 1930s. Others listened to the
skating-rink chords of an electric keyboard played by Lillian
Farrance, one of the original 4 Femmes.
The walls of the Yukon provide a time-tunnel of memories
of Vivian and Naomi, who passed away in 1991. Photos of
Vivian's early days as a performer hang on the walls. Behind
the pool table is another of McCarty dressed in a sequined
black frock and a dynamite smile with a microphone in hand.
That's how Alice Knudsen, former reporter and editor of
the Sellwood Bee, remembers her. She first met Vivian
in '56, when she and her husband moved into the area. He
used to say that it was a bar he could take a lady to, where
the main attractions were sing-alongs and good company.
When the pub sold in 1997, new owner Cary Anderson installed
an ATM and refinished the shuffleboard table, and he's kept
the place up nicely. But that Friday night, the worn tabletops
and cracked vinyl shone with a brighter glow as the stories
of the quartet intermingled with the laughter of those who
had come to remember them.
As the evening wound down and the old regulars retreated,
the bass on the stereo cranked up a notch. A waitress shouted
out: "OK, it's time to party." But she was wrong. The party
was already over, carried away with McCarty and her clan's
quiet charm.
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Vivian
McCarty
