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World's oldest bartender, 95, is retiring in Pa.
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| Contributor | Scott³ |
| Last Edited | Scott³ Aug 31, 2009 07:58am |
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| Category | News |
| Author | DAN NEPHIN |
| News Date | Sunday, August 30, 2009 01:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | "Only minutes after Prohibition died in 1933, Angelo Cammarata, 19, served a 10-cent bottle of Fort Pitt beer to a customer in his father's neighborhood grocery.
Ever since, except for a 30-month hitch during World War II, the son of Italian immigrants has been tending bar and serving drinks. Guinness World Records dubbed him the longest-serving bartender a decade ago, and he's earned induction into Jim Beam's Bartender Hall of Fame and numerous other honors.
Now 95, he's calling it quits.
Known as "Camm" or "Ang," he's presided over Cammarata's Cafe through births, deaths and weddings — acting as a kind of psychologist, if not priest, for his customers for more than 70 years. The two-room bar he operates with sons John and Frank anchors the ground floor of a humble white cinderblock building in this modest suburban Pittsburgh borough. He and his wife Marietta, 92, lived in the second-floor apartment until several years ago.
"This is a good bar. All my customers here are family. We call them our family, our friends. We know them all. And they're all good," he said one day this week.
Lean of build, with much of his white hair, Cammarata looks maybe two decades younger. He wears neat tan trousers and a white T-shirt with the bar's name and "We support our troops" on the back above an eagle and Old Glory. Around his neck is a gold chain and crucifix.
He still drives — a maroon 2004 Cadillac — and while his hands shake a bit as he fills a glass mug with beer, he has little problem scaling a stool to pull an old picture from the wall.
The cafe is being sold in part because John, 59, recently had a heart attack.
It was time, the Cammaratas decided.
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