There is not a modicum of sense in assigning a numerical score to a bar like this. Washington has 5…read moremain bars that I can think of off the top of my head, and which one is best will be contingent upon your socioeconomic status and existential demeanor. Small rural towns in the Midwestern US are generally wastelands in a tangible sense, that goes without saying; but there exists a more abstract sense of desolation that tends to swallow one whole if a little too much time is spent in a town so bereft of anything that could reasonably be called cultural.
Disgruntled, romantically hopeless drunks like me are often inaccurately characterized as decrepit, amoral, underachieving dregs of society that have no need for anything but themselves and the bottle. Pretty much accurate, but my main point of contention with this portrait lies in the blatant falseness of the last bit.
Drunks like us, we need people. We need a place to go to drink with jaded folks facing the same eternal war on tedium and disappointment that is living in a town like Washington, IL. Drunks like us, we don't go to the bar necessarily to have a good time. We go because if we're given nothing but free time in the glorified solitary confinement that is one's living quarters, we'll lose our fucking minds.
The main directive of this site is completely worthless when it comes to assessing local watering holes like Parish's. If I was a random visitor, I would visit it and be thoroughly unimpressed. You probably have a bar exactly like this in your hometown, and you love it for two reasons: the staff and the regulars. Over time, you foster a relationship with the two that ensures that if you're down on your luck and have fuck all to do with your night off, you can always head down and avoid staring at your bedroom wall until you pass out.
How many times have I seen two people unsuccessfully hustle me and proceed to copulate on a pool table while the couple thought everyone was outside? Once, but that's still enough to prove a point.
How many times have I been inundated with whisky-drenched tales from the past of smuggling pounds of cocaine around state lines from guys with 7+ DUIs? More than I can count.
Dive bars are ideal temporary residences for drunks like me because it's a way to playfully repel the malaise of untapped potential that forces one to be a glorified automaton in a small, boring town by letting the id take over and run its course.
Then of course, there's the staff. Dive bar lore is rife with stupid, inaccurate adages suggesting things along the lines of a loyal bartender being better than any therapist you could hire. That's bullshit almost 100% of the time; often they're simply nodding in agreement and allowing your bleating to go in one ear and out the other. That isn't the case here. Rick is a true lifer in the greatest sense of the word and will bend over backwards to help out the loyal regulars. Lord knows he's done it for me countless times. Dani refuses to take my tips because she knows I'm perpetually broke, has gone out of her way to feed me because she knows I rarely eat, and has, along with her husband David, a Thursday regular, taken an active interest in my problems far beyond empty regurgitation. They informally "adopted" my brother and me, because, in their own words, "you guys are exactly what I'd like our children to grow up to be like." Last Thanksgiving, when I texted her asking if the bar would be open, she responded that they would not and asked if I had a place to go for dinner. I had to work. Sure enough, she shows up with a massive plate of food and a bottle of whisky.
If you haven't noticed already, I deeply love this nondescript, forgettable-to-outsiders bar. Not in the pedestrian manner that stupid fucking Toby Keith song celebrates. Drunks like us, we don't go to our local dives to celebrate temporary egalitarianism and yee-haw Saturday nights as a fun little break from our everyday life. We go to our local dives because without them, we'd have no other place to wallow in the utter senselessness of living in a town like Washington without losing our minds.
