Happy trails for the Little Wagon

The Little Wagon is on the block.

A downtown Minneapolis bar and grill since the Great Depression, the Wagon boasts generations of sometimes-listing patrons -- cops, printers, lawyers, judges, politicians, orchestra conductors, bankers, brokers, grain traders, musicians, artists, scribes and others.

A couple from Savage apparently plan to buy the Wagon, shutter it, then convert it to a sports bar.

"It was fun while it lasted," said Jerry Benda, 70, who has owned the joint a few blocks west of the Metrodome with co-owner Dan Mramor, 70, for nearly 30 years. "It's still fun some days. But it's time."

The Wagon once was wall-to-wall full on Friday and Tuesday nights in the 1980s, as customers soaked up rounds of drinks and the honky-tonk tunes of the Better-Than-Nothing Dirt Band, featuring Star and Tribune columnist Robert T. Smith on trumpet, books editor Dave Wood on sousaphone and editor Dick (Doc) Parker on banjo.

Bob Evans, the retired president of TCF Bank, would impassively intone his signature ballad, "The Scandinavian Hotshot," as his magic fingers caressed the concertina keys with an affection he never showed a depositor.

In 1981, Neville Marriner, the music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, grabbed a baton to lead the Dirt Band through a set or two of "Rhapsody in Liechtenstein" and "Can Can" in what some remember as the band's greatest gig. The event even got a mention and picture in People magazine.

In 1983, Mayor Don Fraser, with Benda and Mramor in tuxedos, cut the ribbon at a ceremony for the new first-floor bathrooms at the Wagon. Downtown Minneapolis was hungry for any investment in those days. As a practical matter, customers were happy that they no longer had to risk falling down the rickety steps leading to the old, dank, far-too-aromatic basement bathrooms.

The night was dubbed "The Can Opener." Fraser, game for a joke but no Jay Leno, also presented the retiring columnist Smith with an honorary degree from "Anal Roberts University."

The old Wagon, in a low-rise building at 4th Street and 5th Avenue S., was razed in 1992 and resurrected the following year in the street level of the Jerry Haaf municipal parking ramp.

The Wagon managed to keep a genteel, sometimes even literary ambience, marred about once a decade by inebriates who chose to elevate a courtroom argument or newsroom difference into a shoving match -- until one of the owners or seatmates would separate the aggrieved parties.

During the Vietnam War, bomb threats were regularly phoned to the Star or the Tribune, causing staff evacuations, usually to the Wagon. Some suspected the bar's owners at the time had placed some of the calls.

The Wagon still does a brisk lunch business and draws crowds before Twins and Vikings games. It still serves the best turkey-on-dark sandwich in the loop, and I've never seen anybody send back the generous cheeseburger platter.

Benda has said for several years that business was tough, and just not that much fun anymore. The owners, on the advice of their lawyer, declined to discuss the future.

Nick and Angela Baca of Savage have filed to acquire the Wagon's liquor license, according to an application made to the Minneapolis Police Department.

The Wagon is one of the last unionized bars downtown, employing about a dozen folks, and they are worried that they'll lose their jobs.

The Bacas could not be reached for comment. The word is that they plan to replace the Wagon with the new establishment called "Chewy's Sports Bar and Grill."

Thanks for the memories.