When Indian scout and Wild West showman William Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, was dining at London's prestigious Goring's Hotel in 1912, he devoted several unsuccessful minutes trying to attract the attention of his waiter. When he realized that his attempts were being unrewarded, he stood up, pushed his hat back on his head, unbuttoned his suede jacket, pulled out both of his pearl handled revolvers and fired six shots into the ceiling. Two waiters, the head waiter and two bus boys responded immediately. On another occasion, when beatnik writer Jack Kerouac was having a snack in Rienzi's, a well known cafe in Greenwich Village, he found it nearly impossible to catch the waiter's eye. According to Truman Capote who was seated at another table, Kerouac waved his arms, clapped his hands and called out in a loud voice, but nothing worked. Finally, in desperation, Kerouac took the candle that was burning in the middle of his table and set fire to the tablecloth. The waiter responded without hesitation.

Not all solutions are quite as drastic. When A.J. Leibling was living in Paris and writing for the European Edition of "The Chicago Tribune" he came to the sad realization that many waiters "have a visual and psychological disorder that prevents them from seeing even the most desperate client until they are good and ready to see them". Leibling's solution was a simple one. Wherever he went, he carried a small white mouse in his jacket pocket. Whenever his normal attempts to call the waiter failed, he took the mouse out of his pocket and put it on the table. "It always worked", Leibling wrote, "and within seconds either the owner or the waiter would be at my table, apologizing and hoping I would not sue the restaurant".

Personally, I like to think myself a civilized man, and when I am in need of my waiter, if it proves impossible to establish eye contact, I try to catch his attention by using a simple but polite gesture of my hand. There are times, however, when being overly civilized does not work and in such moments of desperation, my favorite method for catching a waiter's eye is one that George Bernard Shaw used. After all else would fail, Shaw would strike a wood match and hold it in the air, his hand extended as high as possible. Actress Beatrice Lily, a frequent dinner companion of Shaw's wrote that "Shaw's little trick always worked, and like a moth to a flame, an invariable collection of waiters gravitated immediately to our table".

© Daniel Rogov