A friend of mine is of a mind to post pictures of
his after-work cocktails, & one of last week’s was of a Manhattan.
That
shot a blast from the past across the bow of my memory.
The summer between junior & senior year of high
school I was on a student tour of Mexico. We were on a bus, stopping at hotels
in different cities. We’d have dinner & breakfast at the hotel’s
diningroom, & staff would pack us bag lunches for the journey.
(BTW—every freaking day it was invariably ham &
processed cheese sandwiches on white bread. We even wrote songs about them.)
At dinner we could choose from the fixed menu,
usually a starter, a main course & a dessert; nothing exotic. We spent two
nights at Acapulco—or maybe it was Mazatlán; somewhere tropical. On the first
night the choice for the first course was a shrimp cocktail & a Bacardi
cocktail.
Well, in Mexico there was no minimum drinking age. A
few of the kids on the tour got daring & ordered the Bacardi (basically a
daiquiri with Grenadine syrup) & most of the others—including my two
15-year-old roommates—saw a lost opportunity.
So, the next night, when the choice was between
shrimp cocktail & a Manhattan, my two roomies went for the latter.
Well, a Manhattan is basically booze diluted by
booze, & back in those days kids not yet eligible for a learner’s permit
didn’t regularly score beer & recreational drugs. So this was a big
freaking deal for them.
The three of us spent the night without sleep, since
they were loopier than a hooked rug & I was run off my feet trying to keep
them from spilling over into the hallways. (Okay, I was a bit of a pill.) I
recall some hoo-hah about one of them wanting bottled water to wash her hair
in, & I was the one elected to fetch it from the dispenser down the hall.
The next morning they (& half the bus) were not
feeling on top form, but at least the blonde had clean hair.
Ever since then, whenever someone mentions the
drink, that’s what I think of. Perhaps I should try drinking one?
1 comment:
Over the weekend, a bartender told me that people below our age don't know that a rum and Coke is a Cuba Libre, or that a vodka and orange juice is a screwdriver....
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