After 53 Years of Mixing Drinks, a Beer for the Road Tommy Rowles did not have a Tommy Rowles. Mr. Rowles, a bartender at the Carlyle hotel for 53 years, retired at the end of the day on Friday. A Tommy Rowles is a cognac-and-rum drink that the hotel named for him. For his first civilian drink in his own bar - Bemelman's, where he was hired all those years ago because he went looking for a bathroom - he had a beer. A Heineken. It took a while to work its magic. He said he was nervous. Maybe it was because he was in unfamiliar territory, at a table beneath one of the famous murals instead of behind the bar. Maybe it was because he was trying to think of things to say about his career without really saying anything. This was imperative for someone whose credo seemed to be: What happens in Bemelman's stays in Bemelman's. So if the memory he recalled was about so-and-so's billionaire husband being, shall we say, more than a little friendly with some other woman - and if the memory included seeing them slip out together, and seeing the man's unsuspecting wife walk in with a couple of women friends a few minutes later - well, he kept it to himself. He did allow that Harry S. Truman was his fourth customer. So who were the first three? He shook his head and shrugged. Around him the cocktail-hour crowd had lots to say, judging from the decibel level - to one another. The pianist Chris Gillespie went from "Moon River" to something that sounded a lot like Bach. Mr. Rowles said, "I've got the card." He dug in a pocket and pulled out the identification card the Carlyle had issued on Sept. "I had just turned 18," he said. He was from Dublin and had been in New York for only a couple of days. He was staying at 96th Street and Madison Avenue. He said he had £30 to £40 - "a lot of money," he said. I thought I could take off for three months. He wanted a job in a bar. People told him to start walking, he could not miss one. But he wandered toward Fifth Avenue and Central Park. No bars there. "I came over here to go to the bathroom," he said. He struck up a conversation with the man behind the bar. I said I'd like to be a bar boy. He said, "We call them bartenders over here." " And arranged a job. Back to Truman. "I'll tell you what he drank if you don't ask what time of day it was," he said. That was more circumspect than what he said in an interview in 2002: He let slip when Truman walked in (afternoon), what Truman asked for (an Old Grand-Dad bourbon on the rocks) and what they talked about. "I told him I could drink, but that I could never drink an Old Grand-Dad," Mr. Rowles said in that interview. "He said, "Well, take a look outside and tell me what you see." So I looked outside and saw these reporters with cameras and microphones. And I says, "I see a lot of reporters." And he said, "Yes, and if you had to walk 15 blocks with these guys following you, you'd drink this, too." " This time around, he talked about shaking hands with John F. Kennedy, who sometimes stayed at the Carlyle, and chatting with Edward M. Kennedy. "Teddy," as he called him, "was one of the boys. You wouldn't know he was a Kennedy," he said. Teddy was cool. Roger Rice, the manager of the restaurant and wine director at the Carlyle, told a story about Mr. Rowles's talent as a sounding board or maybe peacemaker. A couple came in, Mr. Rice said. "He had proposed, and they were headed to City Hall," Mr. Rice said. Of course, City Hall is not where the Manhattan marriage bureau is, except in the popular imagination. But they got into a big fight. "They're sitting there talking to Tommy, this old soul," Mr. Rice said. "He said, "I'm a married man. You have your ups and downs. He said whatever he said. They left, they got married, they've been happily married ever since, and they wrote this long, handwritten letter saying, "We wanted to thank you, you cemented the deal for us." " Mr. Rowles talked about a Steinbrenner and a Steinway. One was the Yankees owner, a customer. The other was a piano, not the grand in Bemelman's but the upright his mother once had in Dublin. He tried it when he was a child. She told him, "You have no talent." He added a coda: "But she didn't see me dance." Sizing up the customers is an important part of any bartender's job, and after all these years, he has had practice. "Martini people know what they want," he told a man who had just ordered one - gin, not vodka; shaken, not stirred; olives, not a twist. They want five ounces for the price of one and a half. They want peanuts. And no vermouth. For the record, here's the recipe for the drink he didn't have: Martell Cordon Bleu Cognac 10Cane Rum 1 oz. fresh lime juice 1 ¼ oz. simple syrup 1 tsp. quinine powder ½ oz club soda