Gil’s Bar on Third Avenue
Although most of Gil’s was an ordinary greased postage stamp for dancing to any kind of a band, with any kind of entertainment, there was one thing about it that was different. There was a thirty-foot bar, and on a deep shelf in back of it Gil had accumulated and laid out an inexhaustible quantity of junk-there is no other word for it-which he called his “personal museum.” It was Gil’s claim that everything in the world was there; somewhere, and that the article, whatever it was, had a history closely connected with his own life and doings. The game was to stump him, on one point or the other. I never had, though all told I certainly had spent many happy hours trying to do so, and , lots of money. At the same time, Gil’s logic was sometimes strained and his tales not deeply imaginative. There was a recurrent rumor that every time Gil got stuck for something not in stock, he made it a point to go out and get its equivalent, thus keeping abreast of alert students of the game. Furthermore, his ripostes in the forenoon and early afternoon of the day were not on a par with the results achieved later on, when he was drunk.
Anything?” Pauline asked, surveying the collection.
Anything at all,” I assured her.
— The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing
