This One’s For You, Lou…

An awful lot of people have an empty feeling inside today.

Lou is dead.

If you’re wondering “Lou, who?”, then you didn’t know him.  But for countless people in Birmingham and across the country, Lou was a one-name legend like Madonna or Bono.

His full name was Lou Zaden and he was the owner and proprietor of Lou’s Pub and Package Store in Birmingham’s Lakeview District.

For most of his patrons, Lou was a friend.  For several others, Lou was family.

Lou was found dead in his home Thursday.  He was just 59.

Walking into Lou’s Pub felt like walking into the middle of a Broadway show, with Lou always commanding center stage.

“HEY BABY!” he’d bellow to regulars and strangers alike.

Lou’s Pub was the only place where getting yelled at made you feel welcome.

If you hadn’t stopped by to see Lou in a while, he’d greet you with a gruff “Where the hell YOU been?” or an overly sarcastic “It’s good to see SOME PEOPLE can make time for their friends every once in a while.”

You felt sheepish and ashamed, like you let your best friend down, and in some ways, you had.

But after a little while, Lou would calm down and you would be fast friends again.

Perhaps Lou’s greatest gift was that he was truly an old-school bartender.

Any idiot can pull a tap or pour a drink, but Lou took time to get to know each and every one of his customers.

It wasn’t just the regulars, either.

One of my college buddies from D.C. has been to Lou’s two or three times over the past eight years.

Every time Sagar walked in, Lou remembered his name, where he was from, and what he was drinking.  Same thing for my brother, Marc, from Boston. 

It was remarkable, and I’ll never know how Lou did it.

But that type of care says so much about a guy who really didn’t have to care.

Now, Lou Zaden is dead.

He’ll never yell at me again.

Right now, I’d trade anything in the world to make that not so.

Like I said, there are a lot of people who have an empty feeling inside today.