PREFACE
In compiling this record of certain of the somewhat dubious episodes centering around Gavagan's, we have enjoyed unusual advantages. In the first place, both of us can take shorthand. To be sure, neither of us has a degree of proficiency that would arouse envy in a court stenographer; and this makes necessary the warning that we cannot vouch for the absolute accuracy of all the quotations. But it is quite possible for either of your reporters—we reject the name of "author"—to sit at one of the back tables with a notebook concealed in his newspaper and surreptitiously set down the remarks of the various guests without any of them being aware that they are talking for posterity.
In the second place, we were fortunate enough to have met Gavagan (rhymes with "pagan") at a comparatively early date—before the unfortunate accident that cost him the use of his left foot and compelled him to abandon his profession as a field oil geologist. He had some money to invest, and the amount was largely increased by his disability insurance. The operation of a beneficent Providence and the fact that Gavagan and Mr. Cohan were fellow parishioners of Father McConaghy led the injured scientist to put his funds into the bar that now bears his name—a business whose details he could handle by remote control, as it were, and without physical activity.
The place was rather run-down at the time, and the clientele was chiefly drawn from the lower orders of society. Gavagan, whose taste is in the direction of the social and intellectual, indeed the refined, redecorated the place in a manner designed to appeal to the carriage trade and solicited the patronage of the better elements in town. It is doubtful whether he would have succeeded but for the influence, talents, and wise acquaintanceship of Mr. Cohan.
This gentleman—Aloysius P. Cohan, to give him his full name and distinguish him from his brother Julius, an officer of the police force—brought with him to Gavagan's a quantity of patronage that immediately established the place in the position it has never lost. Decidedly portly these days, he was at one time a remarkably fine performer at the Irish game of hurling, and is said to have once beaten the champion of Scotland at tossing the caber. His prowess with a bung starter has relieved many difficult situations in Gavagan's. His early biography is somewhat obscure, but the name appears to have been Cohen (pronounced co-hen) at one time; he and his brother Julius changed the spelling, not for any reasons rooted in racism, but because they were constantly receiving appeals from both the Jewish and the Catholic charity organizations. Being men of heart, they found it difficult either to refuse the appeals or to support the drain on their resources.
Mr. Cohan had been working in a bar on the far side of town (a city in the northeastern United States) when Gavagan suffered his accident. At about the same time, this place was purchased by a chain bar-and-restaurant organization, which insisted on serving ice cream in all its establishments. This so revolted Mr. Cohan (a fundamentalist on the subject of liquor) that he resigned on the spot. He was on the point of returning to Sligo when Father McConaghy placed him in touch with Gavagan. The former geologist did not hesitate for a moment at the opportunity of simultaneously obtaining a bartender of unrivalled virtuosity and the patronage that would turn his bar into the kind of place he wished to maintain. He not only obtained the refund of his passage money for Mr. Cohan but also paid back to his new factotum the amount that had been expended on passport and visa.
Mr. Cohan's value to Gavagan's will become more apparent in the course of our reports. The material for them has been gathered over a considerable space of time, and we believe that, taken together, they constitute a document of no small social importance. Too little investigation has been given, and too little importance has previously been attached to certain sequences of incident for which Mr. Cohan, both as a bartender and an unlettered philosopher, acts as a catalytic agent.
L. Sprague de Camp
Fletcher Pratt
September 1952