Published April 5, 2025
Sunday, April 5, 2015, began as just another day. Due at work by 3, I set the DVR to record “Mad Men.” I began to drive to the office, popping in a random CD.
Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends” was first. Neil Diamond’s “Heartlight” was last. Somewhere between them was Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?” I remember thinking I hadn’t heard it in a long time, and I’d forgotten I’d put it on what was essentially a mix tape. If someone had been with me in the car, I’d have been like this guy.
(I can’t do this one without some comic relief. Also, if that’s not a “Seinfeld” clip, please refresh the page until it is. Weird things are happening on smartphones today.)
Peggy Lee’s song took the wheel from me for the rest of the day and, in a sense, for the next decade. It was my stealth soundtrack for my entire work shift. As always, it put me back in a neighborhood bar where I spent a lot of time — years before it was legal for me to do so. It was a “holy shit” moment to remember the song, but not the biggest holy shit moment of the day. That was still to come.
Unexpectedly hearing it in the car set up an ending to my day that rocketed to the top of my extensive collection of “You Couldn’t Make This Up” unexplainable stories.
This is a story that has been trying to get me to write it for 10 years.
I didn’t see it coming
Nine hours after leaving for work, I got home and pressed the play button. I’m a big fan of Mike Nichols, who had died since the last previous episode of “Mad Men,” so this struck a chord.
Then came the show’s usual intro music and credits. Barely two minutes into an episode titled “Severance,” the wild-ass moment happened. I probably hadn’t unwrapped the steak quesadilla I’d picked up on the way home. My jaw dropped. You’ll see and hear why.
Truly, what are the odds?
Bar talk
My dad was an alcoholic. That’s not something I knew to say before he died in November 1980, when I was 19. No one spoke it until years later. As maligned as the saying “it was a different time” is, it was a different time. Things people whispered to each other included divorce, massage, even toilet paper, often politely abbreviated as “T.P.”
And alcoholic or alcoholism.
My dad wasn’t a sloppy, beat-us-when-he-got home alcoholic. He was a maintenance drinker. He needed beer, and lots of it, to get through life. I found out why years after he died. I’ll keep that part to myself. The cigarettes are probably what killed him at 52, but the alcohol probably contributed.
I watched him drink countless beers at home, on fishing trips, and at the neighborhood bar when I was a toddler. I’ve got more questions than answers about how my parents worked out that last one, but it seemed normal to me. A lot of people there seemed like extended family.
It wasn’t until one night after my grade-school football team finally won a game that I sensed there might be something unusual about my going to the bar with my dad. “Can we go to Mr. Henry’s?” I excitedly asked my parents on the field. They rushed to shush me, with people all around us, and I didn’t know why. Mr. Henry was his name, not the name of the bar, so why the fuss? What did I do wrong?
I don’t remember if my dad and I went that night, but I recall plenty of nights and Saturday afternoons there. I felt like a semi-regular, at 6, at 8, at 12, at 14, and the odd age here and there. It’s not as if it was a well-kept secret. Classmates would say, “Hey, I see your dad’s truck at that bar a lot.”
One of them reminded me about that a few years ago before she died.
Cue Peggy Lee
The bar was small, with beer-sponsored LSU football schedule posters and other standard fare on the walls over the years. After my dad died, his photo was added to a Wall of Fame that I don’t think I ever saw. Somewhere along the way, I misplaced my wallet-sized copy.
I’m sure I heard “Is That All There Is?” on the radio at home or in his truck before hearing it in the bar, but that happened at least once. I couldn’t tell you now if there was a jukebox in the place or just a radio on a shelf, but there was music. And occasionally, dancing.
Memory is a funny thing, but in my mind’s eye there are middle-aged men and women shuffling their feet together as Peggy Lee sings the song, released in November 1969.
And when I was 12 years old
My daddy took me to the circus
The greatest show on Earth
There were clowns and elephants, dancing bears
And a beautiful lady in pink tights
flew high above our heads
“A circus, clowns and elephants, dancing bears, a lady in pink, the greatest show on Earth,” a friend of mine said last month. “Sounds like a bar to me.”
Yeah, now that you mention it. I guess my daddy did take me to the circus.
If that’s all there is, my friends
Then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all … there is
Trust me, my friend could write this story better than I can. But I press on, recalling a feeling I had many times long ago, whether I was standing quietly at a rock concert or experiencing something for the first time after hearing people rave about it. Is this … it?
And as I sat there watching
I had the feeling that something was missing
I don’t know what, but
When it was over
I said to myself
Is that all there is to the circus?
Since rewatching the “Severance” episode of “Mad Men” (not to be confused with the current TV show “Severance”), I find myself thinking about my conversation with my writer friend.
“A meditation on memory,” he imagined this story being. “How a song sometimes fits you.”
I wanted to capture that “holy shit” moment for you when “Mad Men” surprised me by letting me hear “Is That All There Is?” for only the second time in at least five years — and the second time in less than 10 hours. I don’t think I’ve ever been that good of a writer. You might have to help me and use your imagination to join me in that moment 10 years ago.
Things like this happen to all of us, though, right? They seem to happen to me a lot. A LOT. But you probably have similar stories, yes? Could you feel the goosebumps?
An online friend of mine, Vicki Addesso, is another writer, and when I saw this on a social media feed of hers, I asked for and got permission to use it here. It seemed to fit.
What’s the point of it all? We all wonder. From what I have seen, she lives a life that artfully answers the question in alignment with her values and her heart.
Thanks for the assist, Vicki. Sending you warm thoughts.
Come back to the bar with me
The “Mad Men” episode that inspired this story is set in April 1970. I was 8. I’d been in the bar before, and I would be in the bar again, through much of my high school years.
There were moments that stand out.
If there were newcomers there, if Mr. Henry wasn’t sure about them, they’d have me sit at a small table in the back, surrounded by cases of liquor and beer and along the path to the restrooms. I’d sit with a Coke and a bag of peanuts and eavesdrop.
“I’ll give you a penny for every pushup you can do right now,” a man told me on his way back to the bar after taking care of business. I may have tried to bargain for a higher rate and lost, because I don’t remember doing any.
A woman was at the bar one night after attending a function somewhere that required her to wear a nametag. A man went up to her and pointed to her left breast. “If that one’s Ethyl,” he asked, “what’s in the other one, Regular?”
And there was a lot of smoking.
The “Mad Men” episode features scenes in a diner where there is a cigarette vending machine by the door. Outside the window, you can see it’s nighttime. The vibe of the diner is enough like that of the neighborhood bar from my childhood to be an echo.
It’s all a bit of a blur now, but in memory they are almost identical twins, those places. The goosebumps wouldn’t go away that night 10 years ago.
The life not lived
“This episode was really about the life not lived,” series creator, showrunner and producer Matt Weiner, who wrote the episode, says in a commentary. You’ll have to watch it if you want to know more. This isn’t the place for a plot synopsis.
It’s easy enough for me to think about the life not lived. I went inside the bar in my football uniform, in a Scouts uniform, in boys clothing. It’s fun to imagine going back to visit as Carly, but the bar was torn down decades ago.
My dad liked Willie Nelson, and when I still lived in Louisiana, I toyed with the idea of showing up at Mr. Henry’s with my guitar and playing “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” or “Remember Me” and dedicating them to my dad. “He was that one,” I’d have said, pointing to his photo on the Wall of Fame, my baby blues probably turning misty.
When I started writing this, I didn’t own a guitar anymore, but I just bought one for the first time since 1981. Maybe after I teach myself to play again I can create that lost tribute here somehow. Why not?
My friend reminded me that relief pitcher Tug McGraw named a pitch in his repertoire “a Peggy Lee fastball.” As the story goes, McGraw explained in 1980 that a batter, after seeing it, would say, “Is that all there is?”
The McGraw anecdote is bittersweet. My dad was in the hospital for the entire 1980 Major League Baseball postseason. I watched alone at home when McGraw threw the last pitch of the World Series and then threw his arms up in the air in celebration.
My dad died of lung cancer barely 11 days later.
Speaking of sports: When I was a child, I was a walking sports encyclopedia. My dad would sometimes call home from Mr. Henry’s and ask for me so I could settle a bar bet. Oh no, I’d say, they’re thinking of Lee May. The other one is Lee Maye, who spells his last name with an “e” on the end.
I’m proud to say I was the final word. (Heh, as far as I knew.)
Loose ends
The misogyny of the ’60s and ’70s displayed on “Mad Men” was surely in the air in the bar when I was there, but if I had sussed out uncomfortable moments, it would have been an unsophisticated recognition.
“I want to burn this place down,” Joan tells Peggy (Olson, not Lee) in this episode after being humiliated by sexist remarks in a meeting with three men.
At 8 years old, I might not have understood that, but it was all around me, at the bar and elsewhere. I can’t remember how Ethel (actual spelling, I’m thinking) reacted to the joke about her nametag. It was probably understood and customary that she’d laugh along with the others and change the subject.
Don Draper, he of the womanizing ways, shows up several times at the diner, the last time jolted after hearing about the death of someone from his past.
“When someone dies, you just want to make sense out of it,” the waitress he’s drawn to says. “But you can’t.”
Relatable to me in 1970, in 2015, and in 2025.
After all of his running around, Don appears to need to slow things down and rest.
“I just want to sit here,” he says.
That’s me lately. I just sit here. Or sleep. When I’m gone, maybe people will try to tell my story, just trying to make sense of it, and they won’t get 20 percent of it right. That’s how it goes, and I know that. Maybe I will someday decide to outlive them all, out of spite. Let me get back to you on that.
The spoken word
I was afraid of death as a child. It didn’t help that when I asked my dad about it one night, he said it was like being asleep for a long time. You don’t have to be a psychologist to suspect that could partly explain why I’ve had a lifetime of nightmares.
And yes, Peggy Lee refers to dying (and even the question of whether to end it all) near the end of the song.
I’ve often wondered if I’ll ever understand all of why the song has always haunted me. Are the spoken words a part of that? Is there something about that dynamic that brings extra gravitas to a song when it doesn’t come across as cheesy or campy?
(These are cued up for you.)
Cheesy? Campy? Poignant? Something else? You decide.
But seriously, folks …
In the case of the Peggy Lee song, to an 8-year-old, I’m thinking, it’s a grown-up speaking, a grown-up speaking to me, so it’s probably important for me to listen and take it seriously.
The “holy shit” moment during the first few minutes of “Mad Men” came back around at the end of that episode 10 years ago tonight, in case I needed to be reminded of what I’d seen and heard.
The song has lived rent-free in my head from childhood to now. What happened 10 years ago today was a one-two punch, closer to the end of my life than to the beginning of it, that joined a long list of unexplainable moments across my decades.
Okay, that’s it.
Here’s the song in its entirety. I could write many more words, but I’m tapped out. This one took me three months to write, as unfocused and shaky as it is.
Featured photo: Courtesy of AMC.
Photo of cigarette vending machine by dkdkdkdk via Shutterstock.
Photo of wooden table in blurry bar by Buntoon Roseng via Shutterstock.
Oh, one more thing
Bonus “holy shit” moment: While I was writing an early draft of this, U2’s “Vertigo” started playing. It’s on that CD I listened to 10 years ago to unknowingly set up my Sunday night “Is That All There Is?” double feature.
Why is “Vertigo” another “You couldn’t make this up” moment? Because I was writing while waiting for a call from my clinic. I had to make an appointment for what turned out to be a bad (and still lingering) case of vertigo. Holy shit, “Vertigo.”
Dizzying, all of this.
I’m sorry I couldn’t write this better and that I’m asking so much of you here. It’s my job to put you in the moment, and I know I’ve failed, but it was now or never.
Sending love.
♥
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And now, a political moment
You knew I’d have something for you. Here it is.
Really telling that a whole bunch of people didn’t realize this was a crisis when it was just people of color, LGBTQ+ people, veterans, scientists, teachers, immigrants, and the poor getting destroyed. They only noticed when it was the stock market.
— Deirdre Assenza (@deirdreassenza.bsky.social) April 4, 2025 at 10:16 AM
And in case anyone has forgotten:
This was….five months ago
— Mina Kimes (@minakimes.bsky.social) April 2, 2025 at 4:49 PM
We all make tradeoffs, though.
It turns out that the joy of calling people “retard” and “pussy” was worth literally trillions of dollars to these guys
— ☀️ Jon Schwarz ☀️ (@schwarz.bsky.social) April 3, 2025 at 9:38 AM