Guinan’s Pub and County Store closed 10 years ago this month, on Jan. 31, 2008. “A lot of stories were spun, a lot of problems put aside for another day, before the warmth of that hearth,” recalled Gwendolyn Bounds, a Garrison resident and author of Little Chapel on the River: A Pub, a Town and the Search for What Matters Most. Email [email protected] with your memories and photos from the Garrison’s Landing landmark, which operated for more than 50 years, and we’ll share them in the paper and online next week.
I remember Gov. Pataki drinking there. I also remember watching the paratroopers landing before Army home games!
Our weekly family visit after Sunday mass growing up was at Guinan’s. Mr. Guinan had all the local newspapers ready and marked with subscriber’s names. He always let us kids pick out a candy from behind the shelf. We sat by the river with all the Garrison families and played while our parents caught up with each other. Some of the best memories were made at Guinan’s with their beautiful family. Life was good!
I remember my dad taking us in every Saturday to get candy while he had a quick beer in the back!
Thanks for doing this. I was able to capture some of what we experienced on closing night on video, although no digital recording or written words can fully capture the magic. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udWJpYkiugo&t=13s And I was inspired some years before that to write a song – Between the River and the Rails, which you can listen to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usCEiUD_3vQ The lyrics are here: https://revkin.bandcamp.com/track/between-the-river-and-the-rails
Sometimes I would commute to NYC from Garrison, and Jimmy would always be there with a friendly hello and a coffee and buttered roll. Made commuting a little nicer!
I remember skiing down the closed-down Metro-North tracks during a blizzard in the 1990s from Cold Spring with Guinan’s as my destiny. When I walked in, Mr. Guinan, a plow operator and the mailman were hunkered down by the crackling fire watching Perry Mason in black and white. They wondered where I had come from. I wondered if I had entered the Twilight Zone.