Jason Parker is not the least bit superstitious.

The 27-year-old Keene resident opened his tavern, The Olde Kilkenny Pub, on Friday, Aug. 13, and he’s been lucky so far.

“We’ve been getting busier and busier every day we’ve been open,” he said.

People tell him they are happy to see the Milford building at 30 Middle St. in business again, Parker said. It was the Kilkenny Pub for many years until it closed its doors in 2008.

“Random people were hugging me on Friday night,” Parker said. “People here are great – very gracious, very giving. They ask me if I need help, and they clean up after themselves.”

The tavern serves only beer and wine and has a limited menu of bar snacks. It also has three pool tables.

“A typical old pub,” Parker calls it.

Parker had been working in the service department of an auto dealership before he and his business partner, Anthony Scozzari, bought the business.

According to the town history, the building, on the corner of Middle and Putnam streets, had originally been a barn owned by James Shanahan, one of the first Irish settlers in Milford. He came here in 1855 and owned a lot of property, moving many buildings from lot to lot.

The Kilkenny building was moved to the corner strip of land in 1869. It became a blacksmith shop in 1873 and remained one until 1912, when May Burnham Richardson Tracy bought it, covered it with metal sheeting and named it the Star Theater.

Here she showed movies, and for awhile vaudeville acts and “rather crude comedians,” Winifred Wright wrote in The Granite Town.

“The town made her Milford’s first policewoman so she could quell disturbances, or if need be, throw the guilty party out,” Wright wrote.

Kathy Cleveland can be reached at 673-3100, ext. 21, or kcleveland@cabinet.com.