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About The Old Soak, and Hail And Farewell (Unabridged)

Published in 1921 (Prohibition went into effect in January 1920), "Hail and Farewell" is a collection of poems in honour of alcohol, drunkenness, and all things related. In "The Old Soak", an old codger grumbles and connives to get alcohol in the age of Prohibition. Part is narrative, and part is installments from The Old Soak's papers. “I'm writing a diary. A diary of the past. A kind of gol-dinged autobiography of what me and Old King Booze done before he went into the grave and took one of my feet with him. In just a little while now there won't be any one in this here broad land of ours, speaking of it geographically, that knows what an old-fashioned barroom was like. They'll meet up with the word, future generations of posterity will, and wonder and wonder and wonder just what a saloon could have resembled, and they will cudgel their brains in vain, as the poet says." “Have you got any of it written?” we asked him. “Here's the start of it,” said he. We present it just as the Old Soak penned it.