(This article was first published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Jan. 9, 1999.)

Guy walks into a bar, sits at his usual spot, but stops the bartender from pouring his usual, beloved beer. It's Ash Wednesday, and he's decided to give up beer for Lent.

"Gimme a Coke," he says.

Thursday, he orders a Coke.

Friday same thing.

Saturday, the bartender starts to get him a Coke, but the guy says, "No, hold that. Gimme a beer."

"What? A beer?" the bartender says.

"Yeah, a beer," the guy says.

After a few sips, he gives the bartender a grim look and says, "Guess what my wife gave up."

Sounds like a joke, but this is one of the true stories that Angelo Cammarata loves to tell about his career as a bartender, now in its 66th year.

He'll probably retell it today, at Cammarata's Cafe in West View in the North Hills, where he'll pour more drafts while toasting another milestone: Being recognized by none other than the Guinness Book of Records, as the world's longest-working bartender.

The confirmation finally arrived from England last month. One night his son, John, who'd nominated him with beer salesman Sam Alioto's help, rang the bar bell and handed the letter to his unsuspecting father to read aloud. John says, "Everybody went crazy."

Everybody but his nearly 85-year-old dad, who could do without all the fuss, like the banners John hung up heralding the record and today's all-day party.

"I've had my share of honors. Enough is enough," says the cheery ol' codger regulars know as "Ang" or "Mr. Camm" or just "Camm." He laughs, and when he whaps his hand on the worn blue Formica table, you hear the "tunk" of his fat gold ring from the Bartender Hall of Fame. As anyone can read on his wall of fame, above the cigarette machine, he was among the first inducted in 1987, with such giants as Virginia's Michael "Sperm Whale" Critz.

They're happy memories Cammarata serves up, as he sits in the dim light of a beer sign in the wormy-chestnut-paneled back room of the Center Avenue tavern that he bought in 1954. It hasn't much changed from his photo of a crowded opening day, except, "I would say that 90 percent of those people have passed away."

On the wall hangs an even earlier hand-colored photo of the smooth-faced Cammarata behind his father's bar in 1936, wearing his then-trademark white shirt and tie and grin, and pouring a shot of Old Drum ("You know what its motto was? 'Can't be beat.' ")

He moved out to the suburbs when urban renewal was threatening to erase the bar his dad had started on the North Side, on lower Federal Street, when it was a buzzing business district. A park bench sits there now, in the shadow of Allegheny Center.

He remembers, like it was yesterday, the first beer he ever poured: On April 7, 1933. That was the date Prohibition ended.

His father, Catino (who'd immigrated from Sicily in 1901) had anticipated repeal. Betting on how big beer would be, C. Cammarata bought the first license to sell beer in Pittsburgh, despite the fact that his business was a grocery.

While most places started serving later that first morning, his father planned to start the second it was officially legal.

Cammarata recalls the Fort Pitt brewery truck parked out front at a few minutes 'til midnight, with 50 cases of beer that had to stay on it until April 7. As soon as the nearby Carnegie Library clock struck 12, Angelo then 19 carried in the first case, plopped it on what had been a soda fountain, and started opening bottles for the thirsty throng.

He tended bar until 2 a.m., "and I've been bartending ever since." For as much as the business has changed, he says, its essence is much the same as when Josh Gibson used to stop for nickel beers.

"A neighborhood bar is more personal between owner and customer," he says. "It gets to the point where they're not actually a customer. They're a friend."

In the early days, his family (he had five brothers and sisters) lived behind and above the grocery-bar. On weekends, they'd push most of their furniture out of their dining room, and open it to patrons, some of whom would play the piano.

Angelo: "We would have a songfest in there."

John: "The original karaoke!"

The whole family helped. Young Angelo would come downstairs after breakfast and work the bar.

"Like I do now," says the man, who, with his wife, Mary, still lives above the bar. He still puts in a few hours behind it daily starting at 11 a.m. until John or his other son, Frank, come in and take over.

He and his own brothers have taken over from their father the new bar he'd built on the grocery site in 1935. Cammarata says that after serving two years as a cook on a Pacific troop ship during World War II, he had no choice but to return to the bar. "That's what I knew." Plus, "I had a family to support."

His pride shows through when he talks about his four children, and says, "They all had college."

Still, he was glad when the two youngest sons came back to run the bar in the mid-'70s, when he "retired." Of course, he never stopped working.

During the transition, he passed on to his boys all he'd learned about being a bartender, a job he likens to being a psychologist.

One of the most important things, he says, is "Be yourself. Create your own personality with your customers, and you'll have no problems."

And always respect a customer's confidences. "I've had very important things put to me, and I did not betray any of them."

Looking back, he says he feels "very fortunate" to have made a living at this for him and his family.

John says he and Frank feel fortunate to still have him. "When the bar's packed, there's not three better bartenders anywhere than us."

With loving hearts and a knack for marketing, they honored their dad with a big bash on his 50th anniversary, which county Commissioner Tom Foerster proclaimed "Angelo Cammarata Day." They've celebrated every April 7 since with 5-cent drafts and gotten enough attention that Cammarata claimed to be weary of talking to newspaper reporters and TV personalities.

John first wrote Guinness in 1994, but the publisher rebuffed him. Figuring that was because he was a relative, he asked his buddy Sam Alioto, import sales manager at Frank B. Fuhrer Wholesale Co., to send a nominating letter.

On Dec. 5 Alioto received a response from Guinness, granting Cammarata official record-holding status, as well as a certificate, which he will present to him at 2 p.m. during today's party.

"They got so many records, it's unbelievable," says Alioto, who also says, "It's well deserved."

No Guinness spokesman could be reached for comment. As the letter states, getting a certificate does not guarantee a spot in the famous book, but all records are considered for publication.

Meanwhile, the Cammaratas have to mail back a signed release and other information.

No matter what happens, the whole family - and that includes lots of the customers at this cozy little stonefront place - are going to savor this. As John puts it, "He's worked all his life, not looking for this accomplishment, but he's finally made this accomplishment."

No one's ever come forward who's bartended longer, John says. But, as always, his dad welcomes hearing from other old-timers.

Cammarata knows there could be another American, maybe even a Pittsburgher, who started back in '33. But probably not starting on that first day, and probably not with that midnight head start.

If someone from, say, the Czech Republic tries to challenge his record, he or she would be wise to consider: Just because our federal government prohibited selling booze doesn't mean folks didn't.

"Oh, we sold some hot stuff," Cammarata says with a smile. "I can go back a few more years, if I have to."