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PREAMBULARY
5
in memory mostly as a series of dashes from a table to
the bar of "Dirty Dick's," in Nassau. It came to be said
that a ship's company in those days did not disembark
upon arriving back in New York, but was poured out upon
the pier.
When the repeal of the prohibition amendment was
accomplished, on December 5, 1933, proprietors of New
• York hotels and restaurants made the discovery that good
bartenders, men who knew anything at all about mixing
cocktails, were' scarce. Most of the old-timers had died
off, or forgotten what they had known. Steamships and
clubs were raided; barmen were even imported; but it is
a good hazard thatp ut of every ten men employed to mix
cocktails on that historic day of Repeal, not more than one
really knew the rudiments of his trade. Schools for bar–
tenders had sprung up, but they could not turn out ex–
perts fast enough
to
qualify. Properly mixing a wide variety
of cocktails requires much more than a month of training.
Long practice is absolutely essential.
Besides, even in pre-prohibition days, no one man could
keep all the drink recipes in his head. Few latter-day cock–
tail slingers really have any conception of the number and
variety of cocktails and other mixed drinks that used to
be in demand.
In
order to be able to serve the correct cock–
tail when a customer called for his fancy of the moment,
recipes had been written down and · kept ready for con–
sultation.
During the last few years, the market has been flooded
with so-called cocktail recipe books. Without challenging
them all, one may mention that some seem to have been
based on the p·ractices and even on the orthography of
speakeasy "bar-keeps." In one, for example, I came across