Life Behind Bars (The Appetizers)

About the Author

There simply is no easy way to explain author Ray DeGraw Jr.  People have been trying to do it for years, few have succeeded.  Ray was born into a middle class family in the suburbs of New Jersey and lived a typical childhood during the roaring 80’s.  As the son of a sports writer for the New York Daily News, Ray was privy to sitting in press boxes and meeting professional athletes; making him, of course, the envy of his peers.

It seemed predetermined the young Ray would follow in his father’s footsteps and become the next great sportswriter in the metropolitan area.  With a love of playing and watching sports and a head start sneaking in and out of professional locker rooms and ball fields, it was only a matter of time before he got his first newsbeat.  Unfortunately, the universe had a different plan.

Ray Sr., suddenly and tragically passed away from a freak illness at the age of 49, leaving Ray Jr. without a father at the young age of 11.  A turbulent decade would follow where the love of cold drinks and women led the young author into different directions…sometimes not great ones.  He did still manage to get a job covering sports, albeit because of his last name.  It was determined early he simply was not a very good sportswriter, and without a mentor to guide him, or co-workers willing to teach him, he quickly soured on the whole experience.  

Drinking and being the life of the party soon became his pastime, and eventually his occupation.  He began by running an underage speakeasy as a teenager in his backyard and eventually graduated to the real thing in his early 20’s.  After college he traveled the European countryside, ran a semi-professional baseball team and worked dozens of jobs before finally finding a home in a small Irish Pub in Morris County New Jersey.  

Before settling in for a 20-year run as a bartender, Ray was a sportswriter for the Morris County Daily Record for five years covering swimming, lacrosse and volleyball.  Other accomplishments as a writer include the novel Nowhere Man published by First Books Library in 2003, a commercial flop and poorly written pile of pulp. He did, however publish a children's book in 2020 called, "The Adventures of Willy Boy" with help from longtime friend and artist Scott Galan. Although the book was not a huge seller, he still remains proud of it to this day and hopes to publish the several sequels still sitting on his computer's hard drive.

After two decades of slinging suds and filling his wooden legs, Ray settled down and married the love of his life Kathy, and had two wonderful children, his son William and his daughter Maggie.  Now a stay-at-home-dad/landscaper/handyman and local activist with too much time on his hands, Ray has taken to the pen and paper again in one last attempt to make his late father proud.

Prologue (Every-town USA)

The days of the neighborhood bar are all but over.  As the old guard retires, the buildings and liquor licenses are sold off to the highest bidder; in most cases, to the dreaded chain restaurants.  One by one, they are being picked off and bulldozed to make room for the next Chilis or Applebee’s or some godforsaken gastropub tap house designed to delight the big bearded hipster millennial.

It is a sad state of affairs when you see a bar at happy-hour and nobody is talking.  All cozied up with their faces either in their cell phones or one of the two dozen televisions that obnoxiously hang over what used to be ornate antique bar mirrors.  It is depressing to see the bartenders struggling to gain the attention of the patron and vice versa as the rows upon rows of tap handles now separate what was once a hall of conversation, debate and friendship.

It has become apparent that the days of the bartender knowing everybody who stepped foot in the door, whether they came once a day or once a month, is slowly coming to an end as the art of conversation dies with each text message sent.  As corporate America engulfs and decimates each mom and pop family-run joint and replaces it with yet another mindless chain, we give in a little more.  Accepting boil-in-a-bag garbage reheated by line cooks making minimum wage, we continue to embrace mediocrity as it becomes the norm.

As we travel down America’s highways from town to town we no longer get to see or experience the local flair.  Each exit we pass there is a sign for another mall outlet featuring the same crap over and over again…Applebees, Outback Steakhouse, The Golden Coral (God help us all!), Chilis…the list goes on.  No longer can we get a good home cooked meal at a small off road diner, I have to limp to the barn with some half assed pancake from an IHOP.  Most likely cooked, plated and delivered by some asshole who doesn’t want to be working there.

I spent 20 years tending bar, from my humble beginnings running a teenage speakeasy in my mother’s backyard to slinging suds at some of the best little neighborhood bars New Jersey could offer.  We didn’t have cell phones when I started, and if there was a television it was 12 inches wide and stuffed into a corner just in case one of the local teams was on the verge of winning a championship.

Those of us who were lucky enough to enjoy the glory days of the restaurant industry remember it fondly and as we move from bar to bar trying to recapture that glory, it’s all but apparent those days are gone.  Don’t get me wrong, they do still exist; and those that do are fighting tooth and nail to stay afloat.  But even they aren’t the same as they try and do everything they can to imitate the chains and stay relevant.  It doesn’t help either that the joyless citizenry buries themselves in their technologies, all while sipping their quadruple IPAs.

Mediocrity has become the law of the land as anything different is deemed scary and foreign and unsafe.  I left the industry after just not feeling welcome any more.  As I attempted to engage customers in conversation I was treated more often than not as intruding on their personal space.  When I tried to mentor the younger kids entering the business I was not to be trusted; I was the old kook…what did I know?

When the kids had time to kill they didn’t laugh and kid around with each other or get ahead of the game by doing their side work, they sat in the corners and watched YouTube videos of dogs humping soccer balls.  Nobody wanted to be working there and they consistently walked around as if the world had failed them and they were owed something grandiose.  It was a far cry from the early days of my career when everybody who worked in the joint actually wanted to be there.

The following 150 some odd pages of dribble is the story of my so-called career behind bars.  It will make you laugh, it will make you cry and it will make you cringe…and there’s even an outside chance you might learn a thing or two about bartending and restaurants in general.  There are things in this book that are trade secrets…things, dirty filthy things, you never wanted to know.

Every bar has a cast of characters from the staff, to the patrons, and to ownership.  If there is one thing I have learned over the years is that no matter where you work, the cast is always the same.  In this book of bartending, you won’t learn how to make too many drinks as that simply just isn’t that important!  You will learn how to deal with the cast.  Any idiot can follow a recipe and pour a drink; it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do that.  Besides, there are plenty of books out there already covering that aspect of the trade.

To be a truly successful bartender you must control all those around you, multitask and be able to come through in the clutch when the shit is hitting the fan.  These following pages will teach and guide you and help you accomplish this. Well, I hope so, anyway! Enjoy your dish, it comes with a shot of Amaretto at the end.