Columbus After Dark: The Late Shift with a Ruckmoor Lounge Bartender

Marge Monroe,opening bartender at Ruckmoor Lounge:I have worked at the Ruckmoor for 15 years, and the last 10 of those, if not more, have been as the 5:30 a.m. bartender. I retired and didn't like retirement and was looking for something else to do. I wake up at 4 a.m. every weekday [for work], but I've always been a morning person, so it just felt right.

The Ruckmoor Lounge has opened at 5:30 for a long, long time-since 1958 when Mr. Bob Rucker first opened it. Mr. Rucker wanted a place for night-shift workers to come after work. We still get night-shift workers, businessmen, people from the nearby hotels who are in town for a convention-just about all walks of life.

We always have three beers on tap and a long, long list of bottles. We have a liquor license-the whole thing. I've been [pouring drinks early] for so long, it's just second nature. Nothing strange about it.

Somebody said to me, "You ought to write a book." Well, it would have to be under fiction because no one would believe it. The colorful characters, faces and names. -As told to Anthony Dominic