He opens at 5:30 p.m. every evening and stays open as long as there are customers sometimes until legal closing time around 2 a.m. He is the sole bartender. He serves only beer and wine and never had interest in owning a "liquor bar" that sells hard liquor. The fare is modest-- Hamms, Blitz, Pabst,Bud, Coors, Rainner, a few micro-brews, red and white wine. The prices are a bargain--$1 for any can or bottle, except microbrews which go for $1.75, and 50 cents for glass of Blitz.

The ambience is low-key, a bar with stools on three sides, a few tables, a pool table, beer signs on the walls, a bulletin-message board, an ancient cash register, and Lester, a generous, amiable, sel-effacing, industrious gentleman.

When he is not in the tavern, Lester is in his apartment above it. He rarely goes anywhere else. He hasbeen to the river across the highway once, but he's never been to the ocean.

Why should he ?
"I ve got the best view upstairs," he says.

He owns a red 1974 Mercury Comet and occasionally drives it to Newport for supplies or to visit his only living brother in Long Beach Washington, across the Columbia River from Astoria. Lester says the tread on the tires is like new.

His needs and wants are few. Since he retired from the Alsea Veneer plant he has received Social Security, but he's put it all into money markets. He could retire from the tavern, but there's no place he wants to go and nothing he wants to buy. And he is always busy, fixing a washing machine, painting, reparing something or maintaining his spacious apartment, which he renovated when he bought the tavern.

Lester Blair never became a Texas cowboy, But he is a western legend, a tavern and host, serving the public and pleasing himself.