The Jube

In the early 1980s, a night club called the Jubilation appeared almost overnight on the periphery of Jonesboro.  It appears that someone figured out how to navigate the tricky political waters of Arkansas law enforcement to acquire a private club liquor license.  Jonesboro was, and is, in a ‘dry’ county. Its status as such has been diligently maintained through the years by a curiously resilient and enduring alliance of local preachers, bootleggers, and Poinsette County liquor store owners.  The possession of a liquor license to operate a private club in a dry county was tantamount to having a press to print money.  The Jube, as it came to be known, was located in a very cool, newly constructed and purpose built building between Stadium Boulevard and Caraway Road, bordering the bypass.  It had gravel in the parking lot, as any self-respecting social club in Arkansas should, and potted plants in the foyer that always seemed to be dying slow and tortured death. 

When the Jube materialized, there were already a number of other social clubs and organizations in Jonesboro that had liquor licenses.  The Jonesboro Country Club, which had a limited and expensive membership, and a very exclusive bar.  The Elks was your grandparents favorite place and featured a recently enlarged bar.  For the adventurous, there was always the VFW and a couple of others.  Those were social clubs with specific clienteles. They had other purposes as well as a license to sell booze.  They were not places that young people wanted to go.  No one wants to go dancing and see your parents sitting across the room near the dart boards.  Furthermore, those clubs had barriers to membership be they financial or social.  The Jube only wanted ten bucks for a membership.  It has been said by some that when the Jube arrived, Jonesboro was at a crossroads in terms of social clubs and alcohol licenses.  I tend to think of the arrival of the Jube in Jonesboro as more of a exploding collision between the quaint social hierarchy of the past and the MTV Generation.

The Jube was pretty much one large room.  Entering the building, the greeter was directly in front of you. To enter the barroom, you turned left.  The restrooms were to the right.  As you entered the bar room, the first thing you noticed was the high ceilings and openness of the place. This wasn’t some dimly lit watering hole where furtive miscreants secretly drank forbidden alcohol. This was a celebration of good times. It was unlike any other bar in Jonesboro. The generous parquet dance floor was ringed by backgammon tables backed up by four tops.  A very pleasant afternoon could be spent playing backgammon or enjoying a beer at the bar.  The bar tenders were generally nice young ladies, though perhaps there was the occasional guy.  It might be that I mostly remember the pretty girls and don’t remember the male bartenders.  Either way, drinks flowed.

Music at the Jube would start at a reasonable decibel, and gain in volume as the room filled.  This was the eighties, and every night was filled with that really good eighties music.  I’m kidding of course.  It was crappy, plastic eighties music, but no one cared.  It was Madonna in her heyday and Millie Vanilli was running wild.  We didn’t have to like it.  We just had to survive it.  Toward the end of the night Micky Gillys’s words of wisdom rang true.  At closing time when the lights came up at the Jube, the girls actually did get prettier.  It was a good time to be young because we had some seriously good looking girls back in the day.  As the crowd left, it became clear to anyone who was watching why the potted plants in the foyer were dying.  Everyone seemed to be pouring the last remnants of their drinks on those plants.

The Jube was a fairly nice place.  I’m sure it had its fair share of trouble, but I never found trouble there.  I never even noticed a bouncer.  I saw old flames there, but never found new love there.  The jube, for me, was more of a meeting place than anything else.  The membership was cheap, and the drinks were reasonable.  The food, while I was there, was pretty good.  I had my first, and perhaps best, mesquite grilled steak there.  I still love mesquite steaks, but I never get to have one because of allergies.  The steak was pretty damn good, but a case of the hives generally ruins a date.

Navigating the rugged gravel parking lot on the way in was a breeze.  You were sober and it was somewhat light out so dodging the potholes and mud puddles was a snap.  However, after spending 3 or 4 hours drinking and dancing, finding your way across a dark, gravel parking lot studded with invisible potholes and mud puddles is more challenging than you would expect.  More than once I got an up close and personal look at the gravel.  I suspect that many a high heel shoe was ruined in the mud and gravel at the Jube.

The Jube was a pioneer.  Following the success at the Jube, other clubs like the Mallard in the Holiday Inn and the 501 up on Union opened up in Jonesboro.  The funky little college town in a dry country was growing into something else. A whole new chapter in Jonesboro history was just beginning.  So tonight when you are drinking, laughing and dancing at The Brickyard, remember the Jube and the gravel parking lot.  That’s where the party started.