1935 Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book

Ill. BAPTISMAL

T HE visitor to a speakeasy, during the recent Period of Stress, may have lacked nothing in abundance of supply; but he was confronted by decided circumscrip– tion in variety. Had one who knew breat'hed to dispensers of dreadful drinks that masked under names once guar– antees of superior content, and harmless, if potent, ac– celerators of appetite and good feeling-taken in modera– tion-some figures as well as facts about the quality and variety of alcoholic dispensation at the Old Waldorf in its real prime, he would probably have been greeted by a scouting or scornful, "Aw, what are ya givin' me?" In– deed, had you told almost anybody who hadn't the facts before him the number of kinds of fancy drinks Old Wal– dorf barmen knew how to concoct, and did concoct, they would have put you down as a liar and probably said it aloud. Those three hundred or so varieties of what was once the great American drink, one which carried the name of our people all over the world; those over four hundred more varieties of picklers than the most ambitious Amer– ican pickler of his age was ever able to advertise-and which pickled more people-deserve, with their formulas 1 to live in history. Their nomenclature belongs to it, not only as part of our national chronicles, but as an index to certain social, industrial and artistic achievements of an age. Brushing aside such mythological, ornithological, theo- 20