At Tough Bar, Even Dead Men Aren’t Noticed

Death dropped in at the Blue Banjo one Sunday, and nobody even noticed.

Richard O’Bennick and Frank Woodworth lay by the back steps in the 90-degree heat for more than six hours before anyone realized they weren’t asleep.

Two nights later, the jukebox blared a Johnny Cash song about a Dallas bordello as haggard men lounged in the alley behind the Blue Banjo, talking and passing the jug. On the sidewalk out front, drug deals went down.

It was business as usual.

Inside, a couple of Mexican farm hands played pool on a ragged blue-slate table. Half a dozen men at the bar laughed and traded jokes with the bartender.

A blonde with a bandaged hand and a front tooth missing danced a little as she walked from the jukebox to her table. A man strutted behind her, mimicking her steps. She turned and swiped him on the shoulder. They laughed.

O’Bennick and Woodworth used to come in, when they had cash.

Men Known at Mission

“They certainly take these fellows’ money readily enough and give them alcohol. They’re friends as long as they have money,” said Roger Phillips, who runs the 100-bed Union Gospel Mission.

Robert MacLemore, a kitchen worker at the Blue Ox restaurant across town and O’Bennick’s sometime drinking buddy, took a seat at the orange Formica-topped bar. “He would go up and try to bum for money, and I got to know him. He would always be glad to see me coming. He knew I always had money on me, you see.”

MacLemore last saw O’Bennick the Wednesday before he died, and had given the transient all of his bus fare to buy a quart of beer. MacLemore walked to work. O’Bennick “was a nice person, he really was, but he was lonely. He had something down inside of him that was eating him away,” he said.

O’Bennick “had a lot of good in him,” said Phillips, whose mission was the dead men’s last address. He “always carried a trombone around and talked about playing it,” though Phillips never actually saw him play.

MacLemore remembered Woodworth as a quiet, heavy man who walked with crutches and loved to drink wine. “He was older. Well, he looked old, but he wasn’t as old as I am. He was in his late 40s, maybe early 50s.”

Deaths a Mystery

After autopsies and testing for poisoning, the cause of O’Bennick’s and Woodworth’s deaths on Aug. 6 remains a mystery. The men’s bodies lay in the summer heat, a jug of Almaden Blush Chablis between them, long enough to start decomposing before anyone knew that they were dead.

Yakima County Coroner Leonard Birkenbine wasn’t surprised. “You go down there, there’s always somebody lying down like that.”

The tavern, with a blue neon sign that has read “lue Banjo” as long as anyone can remember, is in the tough section of Yakima, a central Washington town of 50,000 that is best known for its apples, cherries and vineyards but is fast developing a reputation as a rural drug center.

In a block between a residential neighborhood and a restaurant strip are the Blue Banjo, another tavern and a long-vacant building with barred doors.

“We did have an extensive problem some time ago down there,” said police Capt. Don Blesio. “For the most part the problem has been reduced considerably, but we’re suffering from the cocaine and heroin problems that exist.”

‘You Can Get Killed’

“It’s tough there, it really is,” MacLemore said. “You can get hurt there. You can get killed there.”

Bob Briggs, who said he was released from the Washington state penitentiary in Walla Walla that day after serving eight years for burglary and auto theft, watched the Blue Banjo scene from the corner bar stool.

“I asked where the toughest place in town was, and they told me the Blue Banjo. So I figured I’d better come try it out,” he said. “It couldn’t be any tougher than Walla Walla.”

The bar is a popular spot. Patrons wander in, some for draft beer at 50 cents a glass, some for the two-for-a-quarter cigarettes. In a cubbyhole behind the bar are two shelves filled with bottles of fortified wines like Thunderbird, MD 20-20 and jugs of White Port, O’Bennick’s favorite.

While MacLemore and others talked about O’Bennick and Woodworth, a young woman walked in and ordered a beer. The bartender asked for identification and instead of producing a driver’s license, she lifted her shirt and exposed her breasts. She was kicked out.

Routine Ejections

“We get that all the time,” said the bartender, a burly man with a gravelly voice who asked that his name not be used. “I’ve got to kick her out or the cops would bust me for promoting prostitution.”

Two men staggered in and tried to order beer. They were kicked out too.

“He was like that,” the bartender said of O’Bennick as they lurched out.

The cash register rang almost continuously after the bartender gave last call at 11:45 p.m. MacLemore downed one for the road and walked out through the shifting crowd outside.

“Coke? Coca?” two men asked, making little sniffing gestures.

MacLemore ignored them and walked to the back of the building, where a lone man was rummaging through a trash bin. The homeless winos had left. The spot where O’Bennick and Woodworth died was empty.