Manhattan memories

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?