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My father, Michael Rogers, was a bartender at New York’s legendary Astor Bar from 1936 to 1965. The photo above was taken for the N.Y. Daily News series, “The Correct Thing,” on tipping bartenders. It’s not a good shot of him, as it doesn’t do justice to his hair, wavy and deep black, a color he likened to “the inside of a raven’s wing.” He was born in Drumlish, County Longford, in 1900 or 1903 (accounts vary) and, in 1926, he and his Longford mate, Hughie Prunty, having never visited Dublin, were on their way to New York. They walked from Longford to Cork to travel steerage on a dumpy tub with a devout name, The Celtic Cross. After a long but fun-filled crossing, they arrived in New York. Hughie looked the city over, decided it wasn’t for him, and headed west, to Nevada. My father, on the other hand, headed north to Harlem, where he lived for a few years and later, moved to the Bronx. It was in the Bronx that he met my mother, Rose Flood, a native of County Monaghan. They were together at the Longford Association Annual Dance when my father won a round-trip ticket to Ireland and ever-gallant, offered her the prize. The Depression had left her unemployed and living with her brother and his hideous wife. She was so happy being home in Ireland (and away from her sister-in-law) that she stayed for well over a year. Her mother and sisters begged her stay, but she returned to her boyfriend in the Bronx and they married in 1938. From the 1930s to 1950s the Astor Bar was a watering hole for the glamourous and famous but it was so much more than that – it was the essence of New York sophistication. It even making its way into a classic Cole Porter song, “Well Did You Evah!” “Have you heard that Mimsie Starr / She got pinched in the Astor bar.”