While I never drink anything stronger than Moxie, I often go to Dick’s to observe life, a subject in which I have been deeply interested since childhood. This place is down a narrow street near the Brooklyn Bridge; it is one of those places with a twitchy neon sign, a bar which sags here and there, possibly because it was moved in and out of several speakeasies during prohibition, and a grimy window on which are stuck greasy cardboard signs advertising specials, such as “Special Today. Chicken Pot Pie. Bread & Butter. 35C.” There are a large bowl of fresh roasted peanuts and a bottle of mulligan on the bar, and the tile floor is littered with peanut hulls and cigarette ends and bologna rinds from the free lunch. The cook uses olive oil for frying, and he burns a lot of it during the day. On damp days the place smells like a stable, and there is a legend in the neighborhood that truck-drivers in the street outside have to restrain their horses from entering.

The proprietor, Dick, is a sad-eyed and broad beamed Italian who often shakes his fat, hairy fists at the fly-specked ceiling and screams, “I am being crucified.” He hates all his customers, but he is liberal with credit and has a cigar box under the bar full of tabs. If he is feeling good, he slides the bottle toward the customer every third drink and says, “This is on me.”

One time Dorothy Hall, a society reporter, took Dick with her to the Beaux Arts Ball. The costumes were supposed to be Oriental, and she got him a eunuch costume. She told him to speak nothing but Italian and introduced him as a big Italian nobleman from Naples. He danced with Elsa Maxwell, who was dressed as a Grand Eunuch.

“She sure did have good manners,” he said later.

When he buys a newspaper, he spreads it out on the bar and looks for girls in bathing suits. When he finds one he likes, he says, “My God! Look at this baby. My God! This baby has everything. My God! I would die for her.”

The customers hardly ever call him by his name. He is called “The House.” For example, a customer will say to a bartender, “Go see if The House will cash a check for me.” When he is shaking dice, he always sings. He believes he has a good voice, and his favorite song is “Love in Bloom.” When he comes to work, he ties on his apron and looks down the bar at his customers. Then he shakes his head and says, “They must have forgot to lock the doors at the asylum.”

However, he believes he runs a classy place. “The last time Mr. Heywood Broun was in here, he said I make the best gin rickey he ever tasted.” One time someone stole a sign from one of the chain nut stores, the Chock Full o’ Nuts Company, and hung it on his door, and he was angry for days.