Lit/Pub #IV - The Wake Up Issue - Spring2024
The magazine of Professor Andrea di Robilant literary class at The American University of Rome. "Last year’s issue of Lit/Pub was about the slow return to a post-Covid world. This year, the initial theme was dreams – time to get on with it and think about the future. But the more we discussed what to put in the issue, the more it became apparent that a lingering wariness was still in the air, even a certain complacency. Hence the exhortatory title – The Wake Up Issue – which Isabella Klepikoff has deftly captured in the design of this year’s cover: a wolf resting by a Roman fountain. He looks to be resting, but his lively green eyes tell us he is stirring back to action."
The magazine of Professor Andrea di Robilant literary class at The American University of Rome.
"Last year’s issue of Lit/Pub was about the slow return to a post-Covid world. This year, the initial theme was dreams – time to get on with it and think about the future. But the more we discussed what to put in the issue, the more it became apparent that a lingering wariness was still in the air, even a certain complacency. Hence the exhortatory title – The Wake Up Issue – which Isabella Klepikoff has deftly captured in the design of this year’s cover: a wolf resting by a Roman fountain. He looks to be resting, but his lively green eyes tell us he is stirring back to action."
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Prose<br />
Brownie’s Watering Hole<br />
By Hanna Hadrick<br />
I grew up running across red and white checkered floors, giggling at the grumpy old men who<br />
smiled over the tops of their beer bottles just for me. Old, dusty signs were scattered all around the<br />
smoke ruined walls of grandpa’s dive bar in Papillion, Nebraska: ‘No Whining,’ ‘Boulevard Wheat,’<br />
‘This Tavern is Recommended by Al Capone.’ Stuff like that. Plaques with the names of customers<br />
who had been coming to Brownie’s since my grandpa bought the bar in 1983 decorated the place like<br />
memories in a person’s mind. <strong>The</strong> smell of old leather and brew mixed with the stench of cigarettes<br />
and chewing tobacco. <strong>The</strong> regular drunks – sailors and blue-collar workers – had, through time and<br />
dedication, earned their very own Brownie’s bar stool. <strong>The</strong> new construction crews who came in for<br />
the legendary Brownie’s Big Burger, drooled over them with envy. Young twenty-something kids came<br />
to Brownie’s saying, ‘Omg! This is such a cute bar!’; the old patrons would spin in their bar stools and<br />
give the bartender a side eye, as if to say, ‘<strong>The</strong>re is no way in hell these kids can legally drink.’<br />
<strong>The</strong> day I saw my first ever drunk was the day I was old enough to distinguish my house from<br />
Brownie’s, and to comprehend the effects of the liquid in the random shaped glass bottles had on men<br />
and women alike. <strong>Up</strong> until that point in my life, I had believed each patron to be closer to God than<br />
to the devil. My grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, my high school graduation party, birthday<br />
parties for my family’s friends – all were held at Brownie’s. It was the backdrop for most of my memories<br />
growing up. And it is still a place where I can walk in the door and be reunited with the grumpy<br />
old men of my childhood, my family members, and new friends. I was brought up surrounded by<br />
happy drunks, who would give me ‘just because’ trinkets and knick-knacks from back in the day; and<br />
say stuff like, ‘I remember you when you were this big’ as they held their hand out to the height of<br />
the wooden, stress-worn bartop. I was often told that a drunk could not be a good person. But when<br />
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