1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett

OldWaldorf Bar Days tells of finding one of those barmen in Ireland during the early part of the century. He had reached Cashel, a little town in Tipperary, a hundred miles or so southwest of Duplin, famous for a rock towering above it, on which tourists find some . of the most imposing ruins in Ireland. Weary and thirsty from sightseeing, the American found a dirty little "pub– lic house" which looked far from inviting. He entered, hesitatingly, to confront a genial bartender. The latter's expression somehow reminded him of home. "I suppose you couldn't make me a cocktail," sug– gested the visitor. "Sure, I can, sir. And what kind, sir?" Flynn thought he would give him something out of the other's ken. "Make it a Clover Club," he said. And after certain familiar rites, the barman set down before him a Clover Club that, except that it betrayed lack of ice in the making, was perfect in content. "Where the deuce did you ever learn to make a drink like that?" the newspaper man inquired. "Why, sir," said the barman, "where else but at the Waldorf? Meself was a barman there for several years." SOLON AT THE BAR During the greater part of its existence, the most pop– ular professor in Bar One of the American School of Drinking was "Johnnie" Solon. Johnnie helped close the Bar when prohibition descended. He had come to it soon after the Spanish-American War, in which he served as a volunteer. Like certain others of the most famous bar-