1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett

Concerning the Curriculum other days, they have been decoded, rearranged and more or less classified. The compiler of that original volume was Joseph Tay– lor, for many years, under the sobriquet of "Dan, the Barbey," one of the dozen or so experts required to staff that Bar when business was brisk. Taylor, who had been a personage of note-at least he had been in the public eye-went into comparative obscurity when the Eigh– teenth Amendment took away his occupation, and in the last decade of the old hostelry's existence, instead of spending his days saying, "Yours, sir?" and, after the performance of certain· rites, passing artistically com– posed appetizers a,nd exhilarators over the bar to stock– brokers and financial and industrial magnates, to pro– fessional men and students and the flotsam and jetsam for whom these bought drinks; instead of hearing the chatter of big business and the hum of what was often very informative conversation-abounding in hints as to how to make money on a turn of th~ market-instead of all this, he had descended to the wine cellar and the rather obscure title of "assistant in the beverage depart– ment" of the hotel, handling such elevating and stimula– tive potations as ginger ale and soda water. Only upon certain starred occasions did the old bar horse find in his nostrils the strong, familiar odors that made mem– ories gush back. To his immediate boss, the steward of his department, were intrusted the keys of the innermost cellars where reposed a good deal of the rare pre-war stock acquired by the owners of the hotel in 1918, when they took over its operating company from the George C. Boldt estate; [ 109]