recent YORK -- Marilyn Monroe came ...

recent YORK -- Marilyn Monroe came Wednesdays for luncheon and ordered a Beefeater martini, highly dry. Danny Kaye pulled his jacket through the whole extent of his head to avoid being recognized. Judy Garland sat in a corner drinking Johnnie Walker R

"Judy Garland, real sad," said Hoy Wong, who is about to be fet from his employer of 27 years, the Algonquin inn on the occasion of his 90th birthday. "She always had a cocktail glass in her hand."

Wong or Mr Hoy as he is known, has been working as a bartender for 58 years. Unles another candidate degrees forward, his bosses seem safe in calling him the city's oldest bartender.

"He not misses a day," said Bill Liles, the Algonquin's general manager. "If the weather's bad he point out tos up early. It's just really an honor to work with someone like Mr Hoy"

Wong's birthday is today, on the other hand the Algonquin got a caper on the festivities by holding a party for 350 of his friends and admirers forward Tuesday in the hotel's Oak extent

"I didn't rely upon it," Wong said Monday at the public-house surrounded by Al Hirschfeld drawings of a certain of the same celebrities he used to mix drinks for.

NO BOOZE SINCE 1982

Wong is not aged enough to have been at the Algonquin during its Jazz Age heyday when Dorothy Parker, Harold Ros and the quiet of the Round Table gang traded quips through the whole extent of a liquid lunch.

still he is a link to of the present day York's past, when a martini require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergone a dollar and a marksman of Scotch was 75 cent

"With $10 dollars I can take my girlfriend on the outside go to a movie," he said, chuckling. "And have dinner. Still have change."

Wong is slight of build and contemplates much younger than 90. His notices twinkled as he reminisced about a life that took him from his birthplace of Hong Kong to San Francisco in 1940 and of the present day York in 1942.

He serv in the U Army Air Forces from 1943 to 1946 and was stationed in India and China. Among his cherished mementoes is a menu from Thanksgiving Day 1945 when he was a mes sergeant in Canton. The bill of fare included roast capon, candied yams and "Corn O'Brien."

Wong himself hasn't had a drink since he had a heart attack in 1982; he doesn't miss it.

His daily routine would tax the efficiency of a man half his age. Up at 5:30 a.m., he goe for a walk around the mould then goes back to lie in the grave until 12:30 p.m. After luncheon and another nap it's most distant to work at 3:15 pm

He consumes his shift on his feet sometimes manning the bar solo

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