The Chester Club & Oyster Bar in South Bend, Washington, sits on pilings over the Willapa River and serves fresh local oysters.

“Old, real old,” the bartender at the Chester Club and Oyster Bar in South Bend, Washington, said when I asked the joint’s age. I was there killing time before my presentation at the Pacific County Museum, one of the more charming little museums in the Pacific Northwest.

Old, real old. That’s good enough for me. I tend to hate “new” in bars and restaurants.

The Chester Club sits atop pilings on the winding Willapa River. At low tide, there is nothing but beautiful brown grooved mud below you. Mud is good. Mud is a wonderful contrast to all the concrete in our lives.

I ordered a soft drink and surveyed the Chester’s interior: two pool tables, a real CD jukebox (not the accursed digital kind,) old beer and liquor promotional posters featuring buxom women, hundreds of faded photographs documenting historic partying, and a huge black and white photograph of a local high school quarterback from the feathery 1970s, who was the spitting image of a wily young Ken Stabler, formerly of the Oakland Raiders and recently deceased.

What more could you ask from the décor in a great dive bar in rural Washington?

Something else about the Chester Club. They serve deep-fried oysters and oysters in shot glasses. The oysters are local. Everything about this joint feels local. They made me feel like a local, and I was there for half an hour at 11 a.m. on a summer weekday.

Matt Love lives in Astoria and is the author/editor of 14 books about Oregon, including “A Nice Piece of Astoria: A Narrative Guide.” They are available at coastal bookstores and through www.nestuccaspitpress.com