92 Years-Young and Counting:
Beloved Barkeep Still Filling Shots, Spinning Yarns at El Cerrito Tavern

EL CERRITO -- Todd Ogden has just about seen and done it all and he's not stopping. The 92 year-old man is arguably the oldest and most colorful bartender in El Cerrito. He is a longtime local cowboy who twice failed in marriage, lost a small fortune, but retains a heart of gold, longtime friends and loyal customers say.

Ogden has toiled as a bartender for 70 years. For the last 21 he has filled glasses at the Forum Club at 11215 San Pablo Ave., the business he inherited from his second wife. Four days a week, Ogden drives himself 13 miles to work from his Benicia home. He arrives at 6 a.m., opens the bar at 10 a.m., and stays on until 6 p.m.

Ogden is a thin man who stands about five feet three inches tall. He keeps his snowy white goatee neatly trimmed and his head of fine hair combed straight back. He stands behind his bar donning the same leather vest he wears every day -- "made in India from water buffalo," he explains.

He doesn't hear as well as he used to, but those who know him well believe he understands more than he admits. Like any good bartender, Ogden abides by the old refrain: "I didn't see nothing, I didn't hear nothing, and I don't know nothing."

Ogden drank heavily for most of his life, but says he's been sober since 1983. For years he smoked three packs of cigarettes per day but quit in 1969. Forum Club customers, many of whom have heard his outrageous stories several times over, still delight when he delivers his punch line grinning to display his lone upper tooth. He refers to himself as an "ornery" old man.

"They say booze and cigarettes will kill you," Ogden shoots out in a serious tone of voice. "I'm still waiting."

Ogden was born in Oakland but grew up in the only home within three miles of San Pablo Dam, where is father, Ira Ogden, a civil engineer, was the dam's caretaker. Todd used to ride a horse two miles to Grant Elementary School and by the time he arrived "the horse would be full of kids from head to tail." Ogden's great grandmother died in nearby Columbia at the age of 108 "in her rocking chair with a pipe still in her mouth," he says.

Most of the regulars in his bar know much of Ogden's background through his stories. Verne Pegrow, a regular of Forum Club for the past seven years said: "You could write a whole book about him. Ogden will talk to you for months. Man does he have stories."

The 1920s was in many ways the cultural heyday San Pablo Avenue and Ogden was at the center of it all. The Avenue was home to strip clubs, dozens of bars, and an electric streetcar. Oakland's Sweets Ballroom, a popular dance hall, hosted such performers as Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and Frank Sinatra. Once during a Western Day celebration, Ogden hauled his horse and guns into a popular entertainment club. The havoc that ensued makes up one of his trademark stories.

"A friend of mine and I had a few drinks and rode into the It Club, an entertainment club then owned by Walt Gatto," said Ogden. "The place had just had a new ceiling put in, but we didn't know that. We fired a few shots into the ceiling and the father of the owner who was sitting on a barstool was so shocked he fell off his seat and had a heart attack. When the police arrived, they found out it was us who had done it, they waved their hands up in the air and walked right out. The old man turned out to be okay."

As a member of the Contra Costa Rangers, a group of civilian men who led search and rescue operations, Ogden was known to the sheriff and police--thus escaping any punishment from the law for his recklessness.

"That story about him shooting into the ceiling, these days they would send people to jail or prison for attempted murder," said Cheryl Jackson, a 42 year-old postal worker who brings Ogden a meal each workday. "Everybody would have been suing everybody."

Jackson is one of the regular customers who have developed a friendship with Ogden. They know his stories, the tidbits of his long history living in the East Bay, and chuckle over them still.

His second wife, Jo-Ann--a Las Vegas chorus girl who passed away eight years ago, previously owned the Forum Club. They were divorced when Ogden came back to help her run the Forum Club after she became ill. When she died, Jo-Ann had left the bar in her will to him.

"Todd will do anything to help someone," said Pegrow.

According to Carl Johnson, a part-time bartender at Forum Club and a friend of Ogden's of 20 years, Ogden has even helped customers pay their rent money.

"He does a lot more for people than just give free drinks," Johnson said.

According to the Forum Club manager, Kim, Ogden complains good-naturedly about his two late ex-wives for "milking" him for all he was worth. Ogden admits Jo-Ann, the woman he asked to marry after only three meetings, left off with $250,000. His first wife ended up with a 650-acre Cloverdale ranch.

"He sometimes says he didn't care about the money and the house, but he wishes he had those horses," Kim said.

"I didn't want to get a lawyer," says Ogden. "I didn't want to fight it. I told them, if they don't want me, then take it."

But Ogden doesn't like to talk much now about his late ex-wives--except for the time when he decided to take his horse, Pancho, inside the house to the chagrin of his first wife Blanche.

"She was always telling me, you love your horses more than me," he said. "Before leaving for town one day I went in the house and walked down the hall. I put my head around the corner and said, 'Blanche, you got a visitor.' I pulled Pancho around so she could see him and I said, 'But we know we're not welcome in here, so we're going to leave now.'"

Blanche was 15 years old when Ogden saw her walking down the street and told a friend, "That's the girl I'm going to marry."

A ladies' man to this day, Kim attests to Ogden's flirtatiousness.

"He chases the girls," she says with a smile.

"No, he doesn't chase the girls, he flirts with them if they flirt with him," counters Pegrow.

"No, he chases them as soon as they get through the door," she says.

As a young bar owner of Todd's Club, the San Pablo Avenue bar he owned for 37 years, Ogden claims he once had 20 hired "bar girls." The "b-girls," as Ogden called them, would get a 25 cent commission for every drink they sold, he says, just for hanging out around the bar and talking with men. In order to fool men into thinking the women were drinking beer, Ogden would serve them tea instead. The inscription at the bottom of a 1949 postcard of Todd's Club at 2068 San Pablo Ave. reads: "Where Rangers Meet, Horseman and Good People Gather. Finest Foods and Drinks."

There was one occasion shortly after his divorce with Jo-Ann when Ogden nearly got married a third time to a woman who lived in Hollywood.

"I used to fly down to see her one week and drive the next," said Ogden. "Finally I bought a five karat engagement ring and brought it down to Hollywood with me. We went to visit her family in San Diego for a couple of days and when we were driving on the way back, she told me, 'You know Todd, when we get married, I don't want you to bring your dogs with you into the house.' I still had the ring in my pocket and hadn't mentioned anything about marriage. Before I left, she asked me if I was flying or driving the next week. I told her I'd let her know. She never heard from me again. I thought to myself, 'We're not even married yet and she's already telling me what to do.'"

A third and final marriage isn't out of the question. Longtime friend Cheryl Jackson, though she's 50 years younger, says she'll marry Ogden when he turns 100.

"I don't want to be the cause of his death before he turns 100," Jackson says.

"I'm not a dirty old man, I'm a sexy senior citizen," Ogden says. "The third time is the charm."