Dust Is Gone Above the Bar, but a Legend Still Dangles
Joshua Bright for The New York Times
The freshly dusted gas lamp over the bar at McSorley's Old Ale House in the East Village. It is said that the wishbones were hung there by World War I doughboys.
By DAN BARRY
Published: April 6, 2011
On Sunday morning, before the ancient doors of McSorley’s Old Ale House opened once again to spill that beer-and-sawdust aroma upon an East Village sidewalk, the owner took on a sorrowful job that in good conscience he could not leave to any of his employees. Too close to tempting the fates.
Shannon Stapleton for The New York Times
The chandelier at McSorley's in 2004, when it was covered in dust.
But it had to be done. The New York City health department was dropping hints as loud as the clatter of mugs on a Saturday night.
So, with heavy heart, the proprietor, Matthew Maher, 70, climbed up a small ladder. With curatorial care, he took down the two-dozen dust-cocooned wishbones dangling on an old gas lamp above the storied bar counter. He removed the clouds of gray from each bone. Then he placed every one of the bones, save for those that crumbled at his touch, back onto the gas lamp — where, in the context of this dark and wonderful establishment, they are not merely the scrap remains of poultry, but holy relics.
“Reluctantly,” is how Mr. Maher says he approached this task. “It’s kind of — how would you put it? It’s something you didn’t want to touch. It’s the last thing I wanted to touch or see touched.”
But it had to be done.
A couple of weeks ago, another city health inspector paid another visit to McSorley’s, a drinking establishment that has been around since the 1850s, and looks it.
For many, this is the charm of the place: you sip your beer, take in that portrait ofFranklin Delano Roosevelt, or that wanted poster for John Wilkes Booth, or those firefighter helmets, and you can almost feel your long-dead relations beside you, waiting for a free round.
But the charm is lost upon the occasional few. They might not understand, for example, what those dust-covered wishbones above the bar have come to mean.
Joseph Mitchell, the inimitable chronicler of old New York, once wrote that the founder, John McSorley, simply liked to save things, including the wishbones of holiday turkeys. But Mr. Maher, who has worked at McSorley’s since 1964 — he predates some of the memorabilia — insists that the bones were hung by doughboys as wishful symbols of a safe return from the Great War. The bones left dangling came to represent those who never came back.
Over the years, Mr. Maher says, the custom continued. In fact, he says, bones representing doughboys lost in France now hang beside those representing soldiers lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then he adds: “Actually, it started with the Civil War.”
If this is only a story, a tale embellished by time and beer, its power has resonated for generations. Thirty years ago, Mr. Maher says, he got into a tiff with a health inspector who demanded to take one of the wishbones as evidence of something. Things got physical, and the police came, and, well, he says, “all quashed, no word about it.”
But times have changed: old New York and new New York remain in conflict, and old New York is losing. For example, lounging cats had been a furry part of the McSorley fabric since Lincoln. But word recently came down from City Hall: no cats. A longtime regular, Minnie, has been barred as a result.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, a city health inspector gave the establishment a grade of A, but strongly, strongly, encouraged the removal of those wishbones above — or, at the very least, removal of the dust enveloping them.
“The chandelier had numerous strands of dust,” said a health department spokeswoman. “The inspector encouraged the operator to clean the dust, or at least avoid storing or serving open drinks directly beneath it — to avoid the dust from falling into the drinks of their bar patrons.”
The way Mr. Maher heard this was with a faint touch of hope: At least the bones could stay.
So, on that sad Sunday, he climbed up on his ladder, removed the dust from the bones, and hung them back with the care you might give to heirloom Christmas ornaments. He applied the same care to the dust, which he put in a container and took home with him to Queens, because, in the context of McSorley’s, it is sacred.
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