Hard to believe this year marks the 15th anniversary of Jeff Knapp’s death, although many a glass has been raised. In case you’re not up on your Fell’s Point lore, he tended bar at the Cat’s Eye Pub in the 1970s and ‘80s—and perfected practical jokes. Jeff loved libations and died in 1992, one week before the Fun Festival banned drinking on the streets. Ever since, Knapp devotees have conducted an annual pub crawl in his honor. This year’s is on Saturday, Sept, 29. See Alicia Horn at Birds of a Feather for details.

In the early 1980s a German restaurant called Fritz’s opened on Thames Street at the site that now is Koopers—just another turn in the endless game of musical stools that is this community’s food and beverage business. Since my father was of German heritage and the food was touted as authentic, our family of seven put it to the test.

One day while leaving Jimmy’s Restaurant I noticed something peculiar about the street curb. There in the 800 block of South Broadway were all these numbers, in a 500 series, chiseled in the stone. I eventually sought out Bob Eney, who knows practically everything about Fell’s Point, and found him dining at Jimmy’s breakfast counter—with a cup of coffee in one hand and a newspaper in the other. He looked up from behind his spectacles and solved the puzzle.

Two Roland Park sisters, Eleanor and Mary Dashiell, were remnants of a family rooted in Fell’s Point for 200 years. Their mother, Amelia, had lobbied Congress to choose the Star Spangled Banner as the National Anthem and their grandfather, Henry Dashiell, was a sea captain. He owned several buildings, including the Captain’s Hotel on Aliceanna Street west of Broadway—now a tattered candidate for restoration by the Preservation Society.

In the mid-1980s, as I watched the TV show “Cheers,” I started thinking it would be fun to own a pub. Rick’s American Bar, at 706 S. Broadway, was for sale. It’s now La Marsa and is a water-pipe bar, hoping to be grandfathered out of the new ban on bar smoke. It was owned in the 1970s by Fell’s Point historian Geoffrey M. Footner, and before that was a transvestite haven.

Years ago there was a character down here nicknamed Wally, which was surprising, even though his surname was Wallace, because his given name was Philander. He’s now deceased. Wally had two girlfriends, each named Jane. In this drinking man’s version of “Captain’s Paradise”—the 1953 film in which Alec Guinness captained a ferry on conjugal visits between Gibralter and Algiers —there was a wealthy Federal Hill Jane and a not so wealthy Fell’s Point Jane. Unbeknownst to each other.

Fell’s Point experienced a milestone, some would say millstone, one minute after midnight on Feb.1 when the state officially banned smoking in bars and restaurants. If you consider our forefathers were lighting up in the old London Coffee House more than 200 years ago, this indoor smoking ban truly is unprecedented and at least deserves a moment of smoker’s-cough silence.

For a busker, the streets are a stage. And for 15 years Steven Lampredi has strut the streets and piers of Fell’s Point, playing the concertina, fiddling, portraying a ghostly sailor home from the War of 1812. His more formal venues for interpreting history include the Admiral Fell Inn, the Constellation, the Flag House, and the Preservation Society’s garden theater. At 6 foot 2, he commands a presence on the bricks.

The sign on the wee saloon at 1718 Lancaster Street says BAR. Surrounded by residences, it’s out of a dimming past. I can trace its heritage to the mid-1970s, thanks to Fell’s Pointer distributor Ann Cavanaugh and her friend Monica Broere, who worked for the late owner, Harry Reynolds, and interviewed him on New Year’s Day 1989 at the Whistling Oyster. With that oral history, Harry can return in spirit.

Edward Schaechtel’s death last September wasn’t picked up right away by The Fell’s Pointer, partly because the crowd along Aliceanna Street talks of him as if he were expected back sometime soon—for a drink maybe, or to take up a masonry project, or the saxophone. He was the ‘Point’s Renaissance man, and he punched his own time clock.

In the 1970s there was a character well known here as Ralph Miller, although his real name was Ed Lawrence. While no one can explain the Ralph, we do know he was always drinking Miller Beer. He was a gifted carpenter and his work on the Constellation was much appreciated. A brilliant man with a photographic memory, some said he was also “the first real Fell’s Point character.” According to Town Crier P.J. Trautwein, Ralph was the guy who could approach a couple along the street, run up and kiss the lady, then say to the gentleman, “You have great taste.” He had the personality to get away with it.

The late Jeff Knapp, the ‘Point’s master practical joker, was a friend of John and Alicia Horn at Birds of a Feather on Aliceanna Street and they watched one of Jeff’s pranks close-up. Across the street from the Horns’ scotch whiskey bar was a longshoreman headquarters with a big sign that read, “Masters Mates & Pilots.” Jeff stared at that sign through the bar’s latticed windows during uncounted VTNFs— Vodka Tonic, No Fruit.

Alicia Horn at Birds of a Feather kept telling me I had to come down here on Halloween night. So I did, on October 31, 1985, persuading brother Scott to tag along.

Her morning came on like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, there at the parking machine just in front of Jimmy’s on Broadway. Before she could deposit a coin, up piped: “That’s okay, I got it.” Her benefactor inserted a credit card into the E-Z Pay, pushed the four-hours button, and added, “You can just pay me a dollar instead.”

Here are two stories that make a pass at being seasonal from Joe Trabert, the genteelly retired owner of Turkey Joe’s that graced Broadway in the 1970s. As with many tales from that era, the plotter of the first shenanigan was the late, fermented Jeff Knapp.