It all started during the spring semester of 1986 when I was attending American University in Washington, D.C., and fellow student Christine Martin asked if I could fill in for a daytime bartender who had gone missing. 

Mark was a very popular bartender at Quigley’s on New Mexico Avenue. He was handsome and young, and his interests were drinking, drugs, and gambling. He often went missing due to an excess of one or more of these vices. Christine assured me he was never missing for long, was a very dear friend, and would lose his job if somebody did not cover his shift. 

Although I had worked in restaurants on the Jersey Shore since high school, I had never technically bartended. I arrived early for my first official day in khakis, an Oxford shirt, a regimental striped tie, and comfortable shoes. I was handed an apron and chose server number four because four belonged to the famous baseball player Lou Gehrig, who maintained the most consecutive game record until Cal Ripken exceeded it in 1985. 

Attendance was my thing. I never missed school, a game, church, Boy Scouts, or anything else I was involved in. I won an attendance award for going from first through eighth grade without missing a day of school. 

The manager, Paul, handed me the bartender’s bible, Mr. Boston’s Deluxe Official Bartending Guide. I felt like a pilot flying a plane with the manual on my lap. Paul then wrote three drink recipes on a napkin: the Seabreeze, the Bay Breeze, and the Cape Cod. All very similar but indeed different. He said, “Keep these three drinks memorized, and you will be just fine.” I have that same napkin to this day. The trilogy, the trifecta, and the trinity of knowledge. 

In 2005, I bought a house in Chestertown because I love old colonial towns, and, most importantly, this one had Washington College. You see, I had a business degree from American that had taught me to reduce everything to a memo. And in bars and restaurants, nothing really changes other than the cash registers. But I had learned that life, business, and relationships are complex, and I wanted to grow. I enrolled in a master’s English program at Washington to learn how to write a 30-page paper instead of a memo. 

Taking on that challenge when I was 40 was the greatest thing that I ever did. Already a voracious reader, I discovered at Washington I could talk about everything and anything with people who reciprocated. It was fantastic.

Throughout this period, I bartended in Chestertown until I took the plunge and opened Zelda’s in November 2019. Four months later, everything shut down due to COVID.

However, there was a silver lining to the shutdown. My mother was suffering from memory issues, and I got to spend invaluable time caring for her in her home in New Jersey. When things opened up again later that year, my mother returned to Chestertown with me. At first, I had trouble finding carers to look after her and couldn’t open the bar on a regular schedule. That’s when I came up with the green light idea. In true speakeasy fashion, patrons could tell the bar was open when the green light outside was on. And that’s how it is to this day. 

I have bartended for 38 years, and Lou Gehrig would be very proud of my attendance record. I joke that I am still waiting for Mark to return to work so I can get on with my life, but the truth is it has been a great life.

The friends, coworkers, bar customers, and a chorus line of cocktail waitresses and hostesses have all been cherished by this Irish-descent kid from a small family and small town in New Jersey. I could never begin to express my gratitude for all the wonderful people who have been my family. Like Lou Gehrig, “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”

Jeff Maguire M’11
Owner/Publican Zelda’s Speakeasy,
Chestertown, Maryland