The Great American Saloon Series: Dead Pourers Society
Bakshian, Aram Jr.
GREAT AMERICAN SALOONS by Aram Bakshian, Jr. Dead Pourers Society W hen I learned of old Benny's death—from a small, yellowed obit on the bulletin board in the Members' Bar of the National Press...
...Asked where he was from, he would reply: "Locomotivia...
...While Duke had not tended bar for decades, he was the last of the Toots Shor—style hosts, a master of the putdown who was also a soft touch for old friends in need...
...After close to ninety years, Benny's was hardly a premature departure...
...A brilliant chess player and a sarcastic but kind soul, Johnny had entered America "unofficially" in the 1930's, and claimed to have been the product of a brief tryst between his mother and a White Russian officer in a first-class compartment on a train somewhere along the Russo-Lithuanian border...
...The last time I saw him, back in the early eighties, he explained that, since his doctor had not been able to rid him of a severe pain in the back, he had switched to a Chinese acupuncturist operating out of a "clinic" on Rupert Street (no doubt the successor to a retired abortionist...
...George also had a brain several sizes larger than most of the chinless old "county family" types who used to litter the bar when they could still afford to...
...He ran an unofficial betting parlor at the Club and was once busted in a gambling raid at the Washington Post building...
...Pinafore, he was always "attentive to his duty" and treated most members with good-humored tolerance if not downA Barthenon to honor some real movers and shakers...
...After turning 8o, the once-dapper Duke began to show up with long, Ben Franklin—like hair, wearing casual clothes and a golf cap, and often carrying a shopping bag...
...Competition for the position of Hermes, patron god of rascals and thieves, is stiffer...
...The result was probably the longest-running noncelebrity roast in history...
...That's all there is to it...
...Sleepy, an elderly barkeep at the Club who sported a pencil-line mustache, inflicted much suffering in his time...
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...He was one of those Dickensian Cockneys who had endless good humor and knew a little bit about everything...
...George Bar in Brown's, my favorite London hostelry...
...I happened to be there the night that the latter appeared for dinner with then-Senator Bob Dole and veteran Democratic operator Bob Strauss...
...At his best—which most people would have considered his worst—Harry was not without a certain keen, amusing malice...
...Somehow it didn't seem fair...
...In the Barthenon he is less like Hermes and rather more like Charon: may he spend eternity ferrying sinful souses across the Styx to Hades, ragging and nagging them all the way...
...On many an evening in the 1970's, John and I enjoyed what a statistician might term "multiple nightcaps...
...Since 1992, he has been editor-in-chief of American Speaker...
...But for me, and for this column, his passing was a sad watershed...
...How yah doin...
...His corrosive tongue even managed to talk him out of several other bar-tending jobs, after he had to leave the Club under a cloud...
...Just be sure to allow six weeks for your change to take effect...
...But he was a man of many talents, including, according to some, safe-cracking...
...I'm sure Harry didn't pull the trigger—he preferred killing with words...
...Zeus would have to be Johnny Prokoff, who for years was the senior bartender at the Press Club...
...Now that's class...
...He suffered from selective deafness—he only heard orders from a handful of members he approved of, myself among the lucky few—and poured, stirred, and served in extreme slow-motion...
...So Johnny gets the pedestal of honor...
...The pain in his back had been the symptom of a looming aneurysm which, unnoticed thanks to the acupuncturist, went undetected and killed him...
...One of the best was George, for years head barman at the St...
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...While it is customary in most clubs for the members to take care of employeesfallen on hard times, I know of several down-and-out members who were kept afloat by Johnny for months—even years—at a time...
...Turning to his spouse, the poor rube said, "They wouldn't let a bum like that in here if Duke were still running the place...
...Duke found many of his bar regulars laughable, but he could also laugh at himself...
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...For his part, Harry knew enough not to give me any lip, so I was one of the select few who shared the '64 Bar with him in a state of peaceful coexistence, even as the verbal carnage continued all around me...
...Yes, it was time to build (with words, anyway) a Barthenon —a Parthenon for Publicans, a Temple for Tapsters who, distinguished or notorious, had, like the ancient Attic Gods and Goddesses, embodied mortal qualities and foibles on an epic scale...
...Alas, all too soon, so had he...
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...A,1 64 October 19 9 7 The American Spectator...
...I recounted the story in my TAS piece, but wasn't sure how he would react to the story in print, and felt a bit uncertain when I saw him coming toward me a few days after publication...
...One evening a Midwesterner, who hadn't visited the place in years but was trying to impress his wife, saw the old maestro waddle in looking for all the world like a bag person...
...But, like the crew of H.M.S...
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...The pain, George said, had gone...
...I am writing this just a week after the death of Washington restaurateur Duke Zeibert, about whom I wrote in these pages several years ago...
...I have known bartenders who plundered, pilfered, and, in one case, even pissed in the ice...
...N of all my buried bartenders worked at the Press Club...
...A choleric beer barrel of a man, Harry presided over the '64 Bar in the Club's main lounge for many years before his early death of Irish Fever (cirrhosis of the liver...
...They had served while I had consumed, and yet they were the ones who had snuffed it...
...It was whispered that, at the time of his death, the authorities found a pistol in his apartment that had been used in a homicide...
...ARAM BAKSHIAN, JR...
...Not only had Duke enjoyed it?a few nights later, he retold the story to his old buddy Larry King on his national radio show...
...Dead Pourers Society W hen I learned of old Benny's death—from a small, yellowed obit on the bulletin board in the Members' Bar of the National Press Club—an eerie sense of immortality overtook me: I had buried another bartender...
...The American Spectator October 1997 63 MOVING...
...I should have known better...
...I actually miss him...but only a little...
...served as an aide to Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, and is the author of numerous books and articles on history, politics, and the arts...
...As I pondered his passing, it dawned on me that all too many publicans I had written about had predeceased me...
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...Leo, another one long gone, was also a bit of a rascal...
...Until such time as a new wing is added to the Barthenon in a future issue, I will content myself with one last monument...
...But for sheer scoundrelliness, Harry retired the cup...
...Leo always greeted my old friend and fellow TAS contributor John Coyne—who favors a raincoat on even the clearest day, and bears a slight resemblance to actor Peter Falk—with a hearty "Hey, Columbo...
...A stolid, soldierly, upright man of few words, Benny was the last of the old Press Club bartenders I had portrayed back in 1974, in what was the first of many saloon pieces for The American Spectator, then still known as The Alternative...
...George might still be dispensing at Brown's had he had more faith in modem medicine and less in acupuncture...
...He had a rich trove of anecdotes involving restaurant and racecourse encounters with everyone from J. Edgar Hoover to Milton Berle and every president from Truman through Clinton...
...So, the other evening at the Fairfax Bar, I looked through a glass darkly—and concluded it was time to commemorate some of those departed master dispensers who had added a little color and humanity to life's sordid scramble...
...Harry had a customized insult for everyone, and he never scrimped with them...
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...When a faculty member from nearby George Washington University would remark that it must be fascinating working at a power center like the Press Club because of all the interesting things to overhear, Johnny would expel a long string of four-letter words — that, he explained, was what he heard most of the time at the Club...
...His wit was benevolent, and aimed to amuse rather than bruise...
...They are a not-so-thin, red-nosed line of heroes...
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Vol. 30 • October 1997 • No. 10
