BARKEEPS: Except for the question, “What’s yours?,” nothing has been posed at the Rathskeller since this 1934 photo (above) of owner C.C. “Doggie” Alexander, bartender Dave Kirkaldy and waiter Jim Allen. Penn State golf coach Bob Rutherford Jr. saic, “Doggie paid his bartenders fifteen dollars a week, and all they could steal. But he’d tell them, ‘If you steal more than I make, you’re fired.’” 

At the height of World War II, in a broadcast “from the front,” a correspondent asked a G.I., “Where would you rather be right now, soldier?” And radio listeners everywhere heard the young man reply, “I’d rather be in State College, Pennsylvania, at the All-American Rathskeller.”

Such is the feeling of many Penn Staters—from present-day undergraduates to alumni in their sixties and more—about State College’s oldest continuously operating saloon. From the tapping of the first keg there 42 years ago, the ’Skeller, as it is affectionately known, or “Doggie’s Place,” as it was frequently called, has been a traditional spot to celebrate, commiserate, collaborate, and commemorate with cold beers and warm friends. Two Daily Collegian reporters, making the rounds of local pubs in April 1970, wrote: “If you’ve ever seen a typical college bar in a movie, you know what the Rathskeller is like. Dark paneling all around, pictures of University athletics business manager Richie Lucas when he was star quarterback and other Penn State sports shots, and big high-back booths with checkered tablecloths. They all add up to a mood that seems to have been set a long time ago.”

They were right. Time was when the ’Skeller ran out of room and glasses by four o’clock every Friday afternoon, and “two customers out, two customers in” would be the rule. And, as the words “All-American” imply, it long has been a favorite hangout of Nittany Lion athletes.

Before there were such things as full athletic scholarships, football players and boxers waited tables for their meals or, like Tor Toretti ’39, checked I.D. cards at the door. Leo Houck, boxing coach (1923-50), was a regular customer as were Hud Samson ’53, Penn State’s first NCAA wrestling champ, and John Egli, basketball coach (1955-68), whose autographed picture hangs over the bar.

Football ace Lenny Moore ’56 entertained TGIFers with tall stories, while teammates Jesse Arnelle ’55 and Rosey Grier ’55 tippled Cokes and played a mean game of pool. Other habituals were NCAA all-around gymnast Mike Jacobson ’66, placekicker Don Abbey ’70, and musical All-American Mike Reid ’69, who loved to bang out songs on the upright piano.

In its infamous Dean’s List days, the ’Skeller was also the domain of fraternity men in blue blazers and shiny black loafers. And it always has been “home” to war veterans who held nightly songfests at the bar in the 1950s and weekly meetings in the back room in the ’60s and ’70s.

Today, the checkered tablecloths have disappeared and the barroom is three times its original size, but returning alumni are relieved to discover that the All-American Rathskeller is still the dark, dingy, oaken-beamed basement they remember from their youth. H. Dean Smith, with the ’Skeller since 1950 and its co-owner since 1958, said, “One time an old grad asked me, ‘Why don’t you ever dust this place and brush down all the cobwebs?’ But before I could answer, another customer said, ‘What! And ruin all this atmosphere?!’”

For those who can’t remember a day without the ’Skeller, there were plenty. An Act of the Pennsylvania Legislature, dated March 17, 1859, prohibited “the sale of ardent spirits or malt liquors within two miles of The Farmer’s High School,” so students and townspeople had to quench an alcoholic thirst in Bellefonte or, during Prohibition, at Goldie’s and other speakeasies in the Snow Shoe area. Also reported to have done a brisk business were Lock Haven bootlegger Prince Farrington and William “Bill Pickle” Gilliland of Pickle Hill (East Beaver Avenue at Sowers Street).

But with the nationwide legalization of beer in 1933, traveling, at least for a draft of Piel’s, became a thing of the past when the first tavern license in State College Borough was issued to “Pop” Flood and his wife, owners of the Green Room (now the Campus) Restaurant at 142 East College Avenue. After renovating the former barber shop under their restaurant, the Floods ushered in fall House Party Weekend by officially opening “The Green Room Rathskeller and Gardens” on Nov. 9, 1933, giving it a proper debut by sending printed invitations to friends and hiring Bud Wills’ Blue and Gold Orchestra to entertain.

Dean Smith said, “I’ve heard that when beer first became legal a lot of people didn’t like it— said it was too strong with hops and not as good as bootleg.”

Charlie Abramson of W. R. Hickey Distributors agreed: “In the rush to get beer back on the market, most brewers were making it so fast that a lot of people were drinking green beer.” By December 1933, however, things had improved, judging from Collegian advertisements in which Scheidt’s Valley Forge Beer was “guaranteed to exceed Pre-War Strength” and Schlitz promised it “will not make you bilious. Cannot ferment in your stomach.”

Bob Hunter ’48, whose student career began in the ’30s but was interrupted by World War II, remarked, “If I wasn’t at the ’Skeller on opening day, it was darned close to it, and they were serving three-two beer for a dime a draft—maybe even a nickel. I don’t recall exactly.”

Obviously, Bob and his classmates didn’t mind the weak alcoholic content of the brew (modern beer is 3.5-4% alcohol), for, with the addition of dancing every Wednesday and Friday night to such groups as the Blue and Gold, the Campus Owls, and Duke Morris and his Orchestra, the Green Room Gardens soon became “the talk of the College.”

Bud Wills added, “In those days, anybody who could slap a board across two barrels could get a beer license, but the Rathskeller was the only really nice bar in town.”

Six months after opening their basement taproom, however, the Floods decided they could not successfully operate both it and the Green Room, for on May 21, 1934, the following ad appeared in The Collegian: “For Hot Days ... Refresh Yourself at the Coolest Beer Garden in Town! The All-American Rathskeller, formerly the Green Room Rathskeller, owned and managed by C. C. ‘Doggie’ Alexander. Excellent food served in an appetizing manner.”

Born at Julian in 1896, Carey Collins Alexander had attended Bellefonte Academy, Penn State and, as Tor Toretti put it, “more prep schools and colleges than anybody in the world, but didn’t graduate from any of them.” He was an avid sports fan and an inspired golfer who consistently won the men’s championship at Centre Hills Country Club and used his own car to chauffeur the Nittany Lion golf team to out-of-town matches. Dean Smith said, “Even after he retired in 1957, and until he died in 1961, he would spend his winters in Florida and his summers at Penn State’s pro shop!”

Doggie had also served in the Navy and the Army, and had worked as a railroad fireman, a tire salesman and a high school football coach before going into partnership with Jim “The Greek” Harris, owner of a combination pool hall, gambling parlor, shoeshine stand and hat-cleaning establishment on Allen Street. Doggie’s widow, Betty, who in 1973 married former Nittany Lion track star Charles “Crip” Moore ’26, remarked, “In those days, Doggie didn’t have enough money to finance a hamburger. But he was able to borrow enough from a ‘pluck-me bank’—what he called a loan company—to buy the Rathskeller.”

Betty, now 72 and living in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, first came to Penn State in 1924 as her present husband’s date for House Party. In 1928 they were married, but not to each other—she became the wife of D. R. L. Robison ’26 and had one child, Joan, before the marriage ended in divorce in 1946; Crip married a girl from his hometown of Coatesville and in 1929 became the father of Charles Moore Jr., winner of the 400-meter hurdles event in the 1952 Olympics.

Meanwhile, in 1934, three months after buying the ’Skeller and one day after his 38th birthday, Doggie Alexander gave up bachelorhood to wed Elizabeth Bower Daggett, a Bellefonte woman who immediately presented him with a stepson, Frederick Daggett Jr. ’49.

“Oh, I remember Freddy,” Tor Toretti said. “He was just a little boy then, and I used to bounce him on my knee when his mother would bring him down to the ’Skeller.”

Tor began his three-year career as ’Skeller checker and host in 1935, after having washed dishes for several months upstairs at the Green Room. “I always changed my clothes downstairs,” he said, “and one night Doggie asked me if I’d like to work for him. I told him I’d have to check with Coach Higgins, but he said he’d already gotten the okay from Higgins.”

Pay was in meals, as it usually was for visiting musicians and part-time waiters, the latter including Spike Alter ’40, Bill Smaltz ’42, Aldo Cenci ’44, and Olympic medalist Barney Ewell ’47.

“I did get some extra money once,” Tor continued, “for getting all the students’ birthdates from the Penn State records office and writing them in the margins of a student directory that we kept at the door to the ’Skeller. That way we could tell who was 21 and who wasn’t, and at least it was some proof for the LCB [Liquor Control Board] boys.”

The only regularly paid employees were bartenders F. A. “Fritz” McGrail and C.J. “Dan” Sprankle, both of whom worked there from 1935 until the beginning of World War II, and Edgar “Spider” Clark, kitchen manager for 24 years, until 1958.

Spider, who died in 1960, had been a Green Room chef before Doggie convinced him to take over the downstairs sandwich concession in 1934. “Doggie told him to buy some Swiss cheese and ham and keep the profits for himself,” Dean recalled. “But the first week, the help ate all the food, so Spider not only didn’t make a profit, he didn’t have any money to buy food for the next week!”

Once things were under control, the ageless black man (“He had to have been 90 then!” Toretti chuckled) prepared an array of tasty Southern dishes, such as fried chicken, spiced beef, and black-eyed peas. But one of his specialties was a sandwich he called a “mexihot”—beef, pork or ham (“Whatever was left over from the day before,” Fritz McGrail said) in a spicy tomato sauce. “That was a good sandwich,” Tor recalled. “Even after I married Ruth [Kistler ’41], we’d often get take-out orders of Spider’s mexihots. The meat was so tender.”

Betty Moore, who frequented the ’Skeller with her first husband, Dr. Robison, remembers buying delicious steak sandwiches there for only 15 cents each. And, until the Hetzel Union Building opened in 1955, Spider and Doggie served meals every day to 125 students, charging (in the 1930s) 25 cents for “a good lunch” and anywhere from 60 cents to a dollar for a sumptuous dinner of meat, potatoes, vegetable, dessert and any beverage except beer.

“We used to feed athletes all their meals, free,” Fritz McGrail said, “and some of them could really pack away the food. Why, I remember Ferky Frketich [tackle, 1939-40] would eat six eggs and a half-pound of bacon every breakfast! Well, one time I slipped an athlete a draft beer with his lunch, and Doggie got mad. ‘Don’t do that again!’ he told me. ‘He’s got to buy it—that’s where I make the money to pay for his food!’ Can you imagine that? A ten-cent beer!”

Fritz recalled, too, that when he first tended bar at the ’Skeller, there was no limit on closing time. “Some so-called intellectuals would be there drinking and arguing until four o’clock in the morning! But then Doggie started closing at midnight, mainly to keep peace with the neighbors, because beer was almost voted out twice in State College after it became legal.”

Asked why the Rathskeller was so popular, Fritz said, “For one thing, customers liked meeting the athletes who worked there. For another, it was a respectable place to take a girl. And we were congenial, we sold good beer, and we hope we gave good service.”

According to Dean Smith, Doggie didn’t believe in advertising nor in joining the Chamber of Commerce, calling the latter “taxation without representation.” Consequently, news about his barroom was spread by word of mouth.

“Doggie knew the right people who always seemed to recommend it in conversations,” Dan Sprankle said. “And we knew how to dish it out, too. Why, people would be waiting out on the street to get in—like going to one of today’s X-rated movies.”

For years the Rathskeller’s hold on student taste buds was undisturbed. Then, in 1948, John O’Connor ’38 and Ralph Yeager ’42 opened The Tavern Restaurant a half-block away. “But before they opened,” Betty Moore said, “P. H. [Gentzel, owner of the property O’Connor and Yeager were interested in] came to Doggie and asked, ‘Should I rent it to them or not?’ And Doggie said, ‘Sure! I could use some competition!’”

Although the Tavern’s address is 220 East College Avenue, its entrance has always faced McAllister Alley, just as the Rathskeller has always been entered from Pugh Street. “It used to be,” Dean said, “that any place serving beer was not allowed to face the campus. That’s why so many bars in State College started up in alleys or on streets other than College Avenue.’ Dean, who was born at Potters Mills 11 years before the Rathskeller opened, became its manager in January 1951, after having worked a month there as a part-time bartender. “I got kicked out of this place when I was in high school,” he chuckled. He later spent one semester at Penn State majoring in hotel management and working in the kitchen of the Nittany Lion Inn before moving to Pittsburgh in 1942 to work for Westinghouse.

Three years later he married Helen Schur, and by 1950 they had had two (of a final total of five) children when Dean was laid off by Westinghouse and moved his family back to Centre County. In December 1950, after brief stints as bartender and cook at the Boalsburg Steak House and Bellefonte’s Mari-Mac Inn, he went to work at the ’Skeller.

“Doggie had me tending bar, managing the place, and even scrubbing the floors on Sunday—all for thirty-five bucks a week,” he laughed.

From that time on, as far as Penn Staters were concerned, Dean was the ’Skeller, for Doggie had begun spending half of every year in Florida with his new wife, Betty. (The first Mrs. Alexander died in 1949, and Doggie and Betty were married the following year.) In the 1950s, it became a favorite fraternity hangout, especially for members of Beta Sigma Rho, Delta Tau Delta, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and Phi Kappa Psi. 

It was also the originator (in State College) of TGIF—Thank God It’s Friday. “That custom began with a ‘Sure Happy It’s Thursday’ group,” Dean recalled. “But then, when most class schedules got heavy on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and seniors no longer had Saturday classes, the celebration was moved to Friday afternoon.” A reminder of this still-popular activity hangs on the wall among such mementos as football booster buttons and an autographed hockey stick. It is a 1964 New Hampshire license plate bearing the letters TGIF that was sent to Dean by a ’61 graduate who had worked in the ’Skeller kitchen.

In the late ’50s, Dean originated another custom that has since been discontinued—that of having students sign a wall board on their 21st birthday, then issuing them a Dean’s List membership card. “They loved to write home to their parents and tell ’em they made the Dean’s List,” he chuckled. “Of course, it wasn’t the same list their parents thought they were on.”

Never in its history has the ’Skeller been open on Sundays, a fact borne out by a wooden plaque hanging over the bar: “We sell no beer here on Sunday, and dam little during the week.” The last part of that statement is not a fact, however, for the ’Skeller has set two brewery records. The first came on a Navy football weekend in the early 1960s when 51 half-kegs (102,000 ounces!) of Schlitz were consumed in two days. “I don’t know if there was any connection, but shortly thereafter State College installed a new sewage disposal system,” Dean laughed. The second record came in April 1975 when 1,000 cases of Rolling Rock pony bottles were sold in one month. This springtime feat was especially unique since traditionally the ’Skeller’s busiest months are September through December; its busiest days always have been Wednesday and Friday.

Only twice has the ’Skeller been fined by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board—once in 1938 and again in 1956, both for serving minors. “Our checkers have had to turn a lot of people away,” Dean said, “because the penalties are really stiff on us. The minimum fine to a bar that serves minors is 150 dollars and maybe even revocation of its liquor license. On the other hand, the offender usually pays a fine to the borough of only 25 dollars.”

Doggie and other State College tavern owners are reputed to have been instrumental in having student photos included on Penn State matriculation cards. But even this did not stop students from borrowing upperclassmen’s cards or altering their own.

“Before LCB cards [the only acceptable proof of age today], we had a cigar box full of matric cards that we had taken away from underage kids,” Dean continued. “It was mainly to scare them and make them think we really were going to turn their cards over to Penn State. But if a student asked about it a week or so later, we’d give his card back to him.”

Doggie Alexander had met the competition of the late 1940s and early ’50s by adding a second room filled with pool tables and pinball machines. In the 1960s, as more bars opened in State College, Dean countered by beefing up (no pun intended) the food menu and adding a third room with bar and bandstand.

Lemon, a student underground magazine, predicted the ’Skeller’s expansion by “reporting” on a future visit there in 1984, during the 25th reunion of the Class of ’59: “Say now, there’s a place that has kept up with the student population. Dean has the entire block between College and Beaver Avenues!”

Dean and his manager, Bob Albright, both laughed about that. “We’re actually expanding the other way [to the west],” Dean said, “and when we get as far as the My-O-My [a rival bar at 128 East College Avenue], we’re going to tap their kegs right through the wall!”

Albright, a Bellefonte native who also goes by the nickname “Ollie,” came to work at the ’Skeller in 1967 after having been a cook in the Navy, a baker, and a part-time house painter. “But,” he says, “I was a regular customer back in the fifties when Fred Waring Junior had a Dixieland group that played here. His drummer was Danny Grove ’54, who’s now with the FBI.”

Today, entertainment is provided every Wednesday and Friday night by Morning Song, Whetstone Run, Bob Doyle and his Buffalo Chip Kickers, or Alan Syms & Company, a group that got its start at the ’Skeller in the late 1960s as Dennis and the Menaces. Also, every other Saturday night, disc jockey Tod Jeffers drags out his “bad oldie” records for “’Skeller rats” to enjoy.

In the past, nine out of 10 “rats” were students; today, one out of four are businessmen, University employees and other working people who lunch there on homemade soup and a cheeseburger or perhaps a Reuben sandwich, which was introduced to the ’Skeller in 1969 by a Pittsburgh business executive. “Four men used to come in after playing golf at the University course,” Dean said, “and one day one of them asked, ‘Don’t you serve a Reuben?’ Our cook didn’t know what it was—none of us knew. So the guy told us how to make one—grilled corned beef, sauerkraut, cheese and a little French dressing on rye bread. We didn’t even know what to charge him for it—had to figure out the cost of each ingredient. But pretty soon other customers were ordering a Reuben, so we added it to our menu.”

Many alumni returning to State College also include a visit to their old basement haunt and are surprised to learn that Dean still remembers them. “I have a photographic memory for names,” he says. “Maybe not their last names, but a guy who graduated five years ago or 10 years ago can walk in here and I’ll say, ‘What do you say, Jim?’ or ‘How’s it going, Bill?’ It always amazes them.” Lenny Moore stopped in during Homecoming Weekend in 1972 and, most recently, after the Stanford football game in September.

Another ex-football great, Richie Lucas ’60, who did not frequent the ’Skeller as an undergraduate, is a regular customer today. “I like the people who work there and the people who go there,” he says. “They’re genuinely interested in sports—and not just Penn State sports, but Pirates and Phillies baseball too.”

For the past five years women as well as men have been waiting tables and tending bar, and the ’Skeller has been able to serve hard liquor since 1967. But one thing hasn’t changed—beer is still its most popular beverage, although since 1951 the size of a draft has shrunk from 11 ounces to 8 ounces while its price has increased from 15 cents to 35 cents.

“Also in 1951,” Dean says, “premium beer was twenty-five cents a bottle. Today it’s sixty cents a bottle.” Business is booming, however, and at peak periods Dean himself will leave his barstool to help out in the kitchen. “You see? I’ve been here for 24 years and I’m still washing dishes!” he laughs.

Rumors that the ’Skeller was to undergo extensive remodeling were squelched by Dean, who explained, “We had thought about enlarging our kitchen, but there’s a boiler in the way and we can’t. No, I’d never change the look of this place. I’m not even going to dust it or brush down the cobwebs ’cause, honey, you’re talking about atmosphere!”