Roger Crossley, 83, in his 31st year as bartender at Elks Lodge No. 507 in Durango, keeps the beer cold, his repartee sharp and his longtime customers close.
“As long as I can get out of bed and get my pants on, I’ll be here,” Crossley said Tuesday from behind the bar during a slack moment.
Crossley, a longtime resident of Durango, served his first brewski in 1954. He had returned from four years in the Navy and was hanging out in Otto’s Tavern, a now-defunct watering hole in the lower end of Main Avenue in Durango.
“I spent so much time there, the owner put me to work,” Crossley said. “I told him I was his $60 barman: $20 I’d earn in salary, $20 in beer that I drank and $20 that I’d steal.”
The Veterans of Foreign Wars hired him away about 18 months later. He was there five years before marrying and moving to Denver to work for King Soopers and to take a part-time job at Walgreens.
He divorced, married again and returned to Durango in 1977 and went back to bartending at the VFW.
In 1982, the Elks Lodge hired Crossley as its barman.
It’s been a ball, Crossley said.
“I’m the captain of my ship,” he said.
A popular bartender, Crossley said, knows what each regular patron drinks, keeps the peace if tones of voices start to rise and maintains a repertoire of bawdy jokes.
He pulled a seemingly innocuous one from his storehouse of memory about Gen. George Washington crossing the Delaware. But the double-entendre punchline proved too risqué for popular consumption.
Certain rules apply at the Elks bar, 901 East Second Ave. Only members and their guests can be served. No exceptions.
Crossley recalled an occasion when Durango city councilors visited the Elks Lodge bar at the end of a meeting. When he couldn’t find one among them who was an Elk, he sent them on their way, Crossley said.
Before women were accepted as club members in the early 1990s, an Elk accompanied by a woman had to sit in the adjoining dining area or leave the woman alone at a table.
Swinging doors kept the barroom an inviolate male domain.
Today, women are equal to men at the bar, which is where Adele Nielsen, who single-handedly keeps the three-story Elks Lodge clean, listened to the Crossley interview.
“He’s pretty well-loved,” Nielsen said. “In fact, he’s spoiled.”
Crossley is ready to take requests at 11 a.m., but the place usually doesn’t get busy until late afternoon, he said.
There are hectic moments, such as one day a few years ago when he had to prepare 85 Bloody Marys for mourners at a wake taking place on the first floor.
“I was getting some orders for six at a time,” Crossley said.
As a veteran bartender, Crossley knows his drinks and has been stumped only once. When he was asked for a “perfect” martini, he had to ask an assistant to interpret.
“It’s two types of vermouth instead of one,” Crossley said.
Notable for its absence is the need for offer a shoulder to cry on, Crossley said. He never has to endure maudlin tales.
Mike Murphy, another bar habitué, said Crossley is the oldest-working bartender in Durango, and he wants to make him the oldest working bartender ever.
He is researching the career of a bartender who may have worked to a riper age than Crossley, Murphy said. But until he’s sure, he told Crossley, there’s no way he can retire.
Crossley apparently isn’t ready to go.
“This is the perfect place,” Crossley said. “My customers are a great bunch of people.”
daler@durangoherald.com
