The Zoo Behind the Saloon
When Wild Animals Were Good for Business
I’ve been doing genealogy research for most of my adult life. Long before I wrote Motty’s Vow, I was writing about my family—German immigrants who settled in Covington, Kentucky in the 1800s and built lives out of nothing but grit and faith.
For a few years in the early 2000s, I published a family history newsletter. Nine issues. Mailed to aunts, uncles, and cousins. The 9th and last edition, published in March 2004, included a fictional short story rooted in a real place.
Fromandi’s Zoo was combination saloon, restaurant and neighborhood menagerie on the corner of Lewis and Worth Streets in Lewisburg—one block from my ancestor Andrew Herb’s home on Leonard Street. The owner, William Fromandi, kept a wolf, a fox, a wildcat, a weasel, a raccoon, snakes, an alligator, and a brown bear named Max.
I recently found the historical record on William Fromandi through the Kenton County Library genealogy site. He was born in Germany in 1841—another immigrant in the same neighborhood where my ancestors lived and worked. The animal list I wrote in 2004 turned out to be almost right. The one creature I forgot was the monkey—the animal that gave the whole place its nickname. Neighbors simply called it “the monkey house.”
Here’s the story written around the time I aspired to be a writer.
Fromandi’s Zoo
Every Saturday Carl’s mother sent him to Fromandi’s to summon his father home to dinner. Without fail, at two o’clock, after his shift at the brewery, Pop would stop for lunch, meeting friends and neighbors who, like him, would spend the afternoon sopping up Mrs. Fromandi’s stew with freshly baked biscuits, washing it down with a few buckets of beer. As the oldest and nearly fourteen, it was his duty and his absolute pleasure to fetch his father home. Mother always sent him and she always made sure Carl had enough time to visit the zoo.
But Fromandi’s Zoo wasn’t a real zoo. It didn’t have a giraffe or an elephant, and there were no lions. The eccentric owner, William Fromandi, who operated the neighborhood saloon and eatery since 1885, had collected many kinds of animals over the past ten years, housing them in the yard behind the building, surrounded by a high picket fence. Kids paid a nickel to peer through barred cages that held a wolf, a fox, a wildcat, a weasel, and a raccoon. Snakes slithered in mesh boxes, and a four-foot alligator made its home in one corner, a small bog scooped out of the earth and watered daily to keep it wet and marshy.
But the greatest spectacle of all at the zoo was Max the Bear. Legend had it that Fromandi bought Max from a hunter who’d raised the brown bear cub, orphaned when his mother was killed for a bearskin rug. He came to the zoo when he was only two years old, but even at this young age, his height from paw to shoulder was three feet and his girth rounder than a full-grown oak tree.
Sent to fetch his father, Carl walked the two blocks to Fromandi’s on a summer Saturday evening in 1896, the sky still afternoon bright, soft breezes displacing heat and humidity, readying the neighborhood for a sweet, cool evening. He bounded into the saloon and found his father seated on a high stool at the counter, a stein in front of him, a friend on either side.
“Hey Carl! Looks like your Pop has a beer to finish.” Mr. Fromandi handed him a pail of vegetable scraps. “Feed Max for me, will you?”
“Sure, Mr. Fromandi!” Carl’s usual excitement of visiting the zoo doubled by the additional treat of feeding Max. He looked to his father for permission.
Pop raised his mug toward his son, saluting his approval. Carl left the saloon through a thin, windowless hallway leading to a rear door that opened onto the menagerie of animals Carl had come to call friends. He greeted them one by one as he moved toward Max’s cage. He said hello to the wolf that was as friendly as a dog, to the wildcat whose fur he’d like to ruffle, and even to the weasel, an ugly creature he supposed God had some use for.
Usually alone on these Saturday visits, Carl was surprised to see a girl of about ten standing a few feet from Max’s cage. Her blonde head tilted to the right, peering at Max as he lay on his side. The bear’s eyes were closed, ignorant of its lone spectator.
“Hi,” Carl said to the girl as he unfastened the wire mesh door at the bottom of the cage. “Hey Max. Feeding time.”
Max’s huge lids lifted slightly, and he seemed to recognize Carl. He sniffed the air, rolled onto his belly, rose slowly, almost painfully, onto all fours, and shook himself free of sleep and dust.
“What’s he eat?” The girl peeked into the bucket.
“Vegetable scraps mostly, but sometimes a few old apples or leftover berries. He loves berries.”
“How do you know? Do you live here?” She inched closer to the cage as Carl dumped the contents of the pail into the sawed-off barrel that served as Max’s feeding dish.
“No. I live a block over on Leonard Street. I’m just helping feed Max.” He hung the bucket on a makeshift hook on the side of the cage where it belonged.
He turned to the girl and introduced himself. “My name’s Carl. What’s yours?”
“I’m Dottie,” she replied, keeping her watch on the bear. “Is the bear dangerous?”
Carl didn’t mind her curiosity. Any reason to talk about Max was welcome. “Well, not especially. I’ve never seen him get mad or even heard him growl, now that I think of it. But sometimes when he’s napping he sounds like a sleeping old man. Not quite a snore, more like a snarl.” Carl did an imitation of Max’s noises, making Dottie giggle when he snorted.
“Can I pet him?” The girl moved closer to the cage and now stood side by side with Carl. She hovered over the bear, gripping the bars of the cage while Max ignored her and ate.
Carl had never petted Max. Though he thought it might be safe to brush the ginger colored fur of this particular bear, he knew by instinct that disturbing a bear while it was eating would be unwise.
“I wouldn’t. I’ve known Max for almost a year now, and he’s as gentle as an old beagle. I’ve heard of bears that can kill a mountain lion with one swipe of their claws.”
Both of them looked at Max’s paws, as large as dinner plates, claws long as kitchen knives.
Carl made the decision for them both. “Nope. I won’t pet him and you best step back a bit, Dottie.”
“Oh, he has to know I won’t bring him any harm. What could a girl do to a bear, anyway?” She sniffed at the idea.
Max’s enormous head swung toward the girl. Still chewing, lettuce dangling from between his massive teeth, it seemed to Carl that the bear contemplated her question. But Max dismissed them both, his food more important than a perceived threat from these two little humans.
Carl heard his father call from inside. This visit was short, but at least he’d fed Max, a first for him.
“That’s my Pop. I have to go. Stay away from the bear,” he yelled as he headed toward the back door of the saloon. He said his goodbyes to the wolf, the wildcat, and the weasel. At the doorway, he thought of saying goodbye to Dottie too, but before he could get the words out, a deafening scream filled the yard.
Carl saw her fall, and he raced to her side, where she lay on the ground clutching her leg. Max stood upright on hind legs, all seven feet of him, his enormous shadow covering the prone form of the girl who lay a few feet beyond the bars.
“What happened? Are you hurt?” Blood oozed from between her fingers clutching the calf of her right leg.
“Pop! Mr. Fromandi! Help!” But he didn’t wait for help. Quickly he tore off his shirt. “Move your hands. Let me see.” He yelled at Dottie, whose own screams had subsided into howls of pain.
Carl wiped the blood away and examined a long, thin scratch on the side of her calf. He pressed the shirt down on the wound and though it bloodied quickly, he could tell it wasn’t deep.
“That bear! He clawed me. Oh, my leg! It hurts! It hurts!” Her tears subsided to a whimper as men from the saloon streamed into the yard, called to action by Dottie’s alarming scream.
One man cried out over the rest, “Dottie! Look out, that’s my daughter!” Pushing through the crowd, he reached her side and swept her into his arms, while Carl kept pressure on the wound.
“I think it’s just a scratch, sir. The bleeding is stopping.” He pulled the red splotched shirt away from her leg, revealing the injured calf. Carl’s own father came into view but kept his distance, watching the drama unfold from the sidelines.
“What happened, Dottie?” asked her father, his tone shifting from fear to worry.
“He did it!” she pointed at Max, who cowered in the corner of his cage, petrified by the noise of so many humans. “He scratched me with his huge claws and I was so frightened, Daddy. He could’ve killed me.”
At that moment, a frightful din arose from the men in the yard.
“I knew this would happen one day.”
“Stupid to keep a damn bear penned up in the city.”
“Imagine if it’d really gotten hold of the girl.”
“I’ll get my rifle and take care of him right now.”
Mr. Fromandi stood protectively in front of Max’s cage, facing down the crowd. “Max would never hurt anyone. He can’t have done this.”
But the crowd had made up its mind. Carl watched as the fever to kill Max grew as if it were a living thing. He moved next to Mr. Fromandi, putting himself between the angry crowd and the bear. Carl’s father looked on, not joining the foray, yet not deserting his son either.
“Wait!” Carl yelled, pleading to be heard over the bloodthirsty mob in the yard. “Please! It wasn’t the bear.”
A few heard him. Yearning for a logical explanation, several men heeded Carl’s tone, jabbing men next to them and jerking their heads as if to say, “Be quiet and listen to the boy.”
But Dottie’s father came to her defense. “If my daughter said that bear scratched her, then it did. You calling her a liar?” Dottie sniffed in her father’s arms, clearly enjoying the unasked for but welcome attention.
“Look!” Carl pointed to a thin wire, the one he’d failed to twist around the cage bars to secure the door he’d opened to feed Max. Six inches from the ground the wire stuck out stiffly in the exact spot where Carl left her.
“Max didn’t claw her. She must have been scratched by this wire.” He gripped it to show them, and his hopes rose as several men leaned in for a closer look.
“Could be. Sure is sharp enough to scratch that girl,” said one man.
“What d’ya think, Charlie? Did your girl get scratched by this wire or that bear?” Carl’s father spoke for the first time, his voice a calming influence on the men.
Charlie was clearly torn between his daughter’s adamant statement that the bear was to blame and the most obvious cause of his daughter’s wound. He set her down on the ground and, on bent knee, was eye to eye with his daughter. He laid his hands gently on her shoulders.
“Dottie, if that bear did anything to you, I’ll see that he won’t hurt you or anyone else ever again. But if it’s possible that it wasn’t the bear, that it was an accident and the wire did it, it would mean the world to Mr. Fromandi to keep his bear.”
Dottie fidgeted with her fingers and surveyed the crowd. She met Carl’s pleading eyes, begging her silently to tell the truth and save his friend.
“I met that boy here today.” Her finger pointed, every head turning toward Carl, then back to Dottie, as her shaky voice regained their attention.
“He was real nice to me and let me watch him feed the bear. We talked for a little while, but he said I shouldn’t try to pet him. So after he left, I did try to touch him, and when I reached into the cage, I felt something stick me, but when I pulled back, it must have caught on my leg and scratched me. Max didn’t do it, I guess. I just didn’t want to get in trouble for trying to pet him.” Dottie looked to her father for forgiveness, which he readily awarded with a quick squeeze of her shoulders and a nod.
An audible sigh of relief swept over the crowd because the bear was an institution at Fromandi’s and no one really wanted to see it killed. Fromandi himself nearly cried at the bear’s pardon and turned to comfort his friend Max, who’d been at the zoo for over five years. All the men smacked Charlie on the back appreciatively for handling his daughter’s plight with diplomacy and tact. Carl’s father caught his son’s eye and with a jerk of his head motioned it was time to get home.
Mr. Fromandi shook Carl’s hand. “You can feed Max any time you want. In fact, on Saturdays, I’ll hold the feeding pail till you come get your Pop.”
Everyone began drifting back into the saloon. Dottie’s father declared he’d buy the next round, and his announcement was met with hale and hearty cheers.
Dottie hung back from the rest and stood again in front of Max’s cage. “Sorry Max. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
Max paid no attention to her apology, but went about his business of settling down for a well-earned nap.
Carl, who’d overheard Dottie’s confession, put an arm around her shoulder and said, “I’m sure he forgives you. He’s a kindly bear.”
Drinks up front, predators in the back.
