Your Gift - Army Truck or Eskimo Village?

While I will offer up a few drinks at the end, with the holidays upon us and many looking to find just the "right" gift for spouses, family members, significant others and friends, I thought I would share a few gift memories.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have passed and, in fits of conspicuous consumption, the American public has spent money it does not have, for gifts. These gifts will likely be forgotten in the next year or two, perhaps sooner.  For those giving gift cards or cash, the gesture so appreciated when received, will almost certainly forgotten as soon converted into goods.

Looking back at over 60 Christmases it is amazing how few gifts are easily remembered, still fewer that call forth memories, and costliness is not a factor.

I have received the requisite numbers of ties, robes, slippers, and sweaters, though I remember none specifically.  Predictably, there have been cash and gift cards though I cannot remember exactly what was purchased with them.  Wait!  As I write, I  recall that one Christmas, the monetary gift from my parents went to buy a new steering wheel for the jeep I wrote of in an earlier blog.  I really wanted that steering wheel as the old one was badly cracked and worn.  Of the gifts I do recall, almost all are from my childhood.

$9.95 in 1958, $900 today

The first, best, and probably longest played with, was a trio (that's right, not just one, but three!) Structo Army trucks. Typical of the 1950's, they were heavy, olive drab painted steel.  Sporting a star on the roof, one had a battery-operated searchlight, the other a missile launcher.  I played with them years after the searchlight lens, the missile launcher broken, and the transport cover gone AWOL.  In fact, they were still in my old G.I. footlocker/toy box that Dad disposed of when I was away in college.  I can purchase the set pictured, and relive my childhood, for a mere $900.

The spiritual low in Christmas gifts received had to be about Christmas of 1959 or 1960.  This was rock bottom disappointing.  Much more so than my getting a Daisy pump BB gun when my friends all had lever actions. 

Picture a time when the ultimate Christmas reference for toys was the Sears & Roebuck catalog, Westerns reigned supreme in the movies and on television, and children actually went out of doors to play Cowboys and Indians.

I wanted a Fort Apache by Marx - an opus in brightly colored injection molded plastic. A  timbered cavalry fort with soldiers, cowboys, Indians, horses...I can still see that catalog page today.  Come Christmas morn, gifts under the tree, the smell of cocoa, what was in store---toy soldiers, model planes, Fort Apache?  No. It was Eskimo Village, a predecessor of the Arctic Explorer play set pictured above.

At that time, I was all about shoot ‘em up military and cowboy stuff.  An Eskimo Village?   Dad must have lost his mind or waited until there was nothing left to buy, or grabbed the first toy that came to hand.  He was in the army.  Why in God’s green earth would he pick Eskimo Village?  The box held igloos, sleds, dogs, walrus, polar bear, Inuits etc.  All foreign to my interests and world view - and such a disappointment.  It snowed that Christmas and I had a go at playing desultorily with the Village outside.  Later, on occasion, playing with my electric train, I would drag out the Eskimo Village and its minions.  Somehow, the Eskimo Village just did not feel right alongside my Lionel, my green Army men and those beloved Army trucks. The icons of the frozen North were soon relegated to the bottom of that old footlocker.

The last memorable gift was the Christmas of 1965 in Camp Drum, New York.  I had moved on to fishing, spending time in the woods, and wanting to hunt.  My parents gave me a shotgun. Now this was not an extravagant gift.  Not a Winchester, or even a Remington, it was a well-used Mossberg 12 gauge bolt-action shotgun with an adjustable choke.  It was about as close to the "bottom of the line" as you can get without being indecent in quality.  Never mind that.  I took a good number of rabbits with it and enjoyed it immensely.

As parents, my wife and I have managed to be spectacular failures in gift giving. We have heard more than once from our children that they never got what they wanted. Oh well.  As they say, "Life sucks, then you die."

As we mature (though many never do) gift giving and receiving becomes secondary to spending time with loved ones or, in my case, seeking a quiet corner away from loved ones.  My wife and I seldom give each other gifts anymore, preferring to get what we want, when we want it.  Perhaps that is best since there is never disappointment.  Like all things in life, this also has a downside; you also lose the chance to cultivate those memories of gifts - good, bad, or indifferent.

Today’s drinks are from Holiday Drink Book, by the Peter Pauper Press, 1951.  This book can be found, in its original box, for under $10 today.  It would make a cute stocking-stuffer for someone enjoying 1950's tchotchke's and some simple drinks.

Like those Army trucks, the Falernum Cocktail is worth trotting out repeatedly.

This basic Hot Buttered Rum recipe, just as that "plain Jane" old Mossberg, does its job. A no frills, no fuss, way to warm up on a cold winter day or night.

This last drink, a picker upper for that morning after, has to be the "Eskimo Village" of cocktails.  While I would gladly take eggnog or almost any other drink utilizing raw egg, the Nose Dive Cocktail would be far from my thoughts - and yes, I made one and quaffed it.

Ghoulish Stories, Requiems, Corpse Revivers, and Zombies, Oh My!

With Halloween creeping upon us and with ghoulish movies and TV shows coming to the fore, I thought I would start with some real-life stories and finish with aptly named drinks.

Looking at the not so horrifying “horror” stories from my life, there were several candidates, and all appear wanting for various reasons.  I imagine that many of you, upon reflection, could do as well or better.

War stories were the low hanging fruit.  My father, a combat veteran of WWII and Vietnam, told many tales.  Once he spoke of being in charge of a detail in the Philippines, during the closing days of WWII, whose duty was to exhume soldiers, recently and hastily buried, for return to their families.  A grisly task.  Protective equipment consisted of gas masks – his worst wartime experience and too grim to expand upon.

Next I considered sharing something "scary" of my own – like a failed attempt at first aid at the scene of a stabbing - steak knife through the carotid, definitely DRT "Dead Right There" (not to be confused with CTD "Circling the Drain") – again too grim. 

Seeking a lighter side, I trod the murky corners of my brain for other experiences.

I once worked as a night security guard in a medical complex in San Antonio, Texas.  At twilight, in a dark and deserted medical building, I was checking locks on doors. Finding one unlocked, I entered to check the office.  Immediately in front of me was a skeleton.  I will admit to being briefly startled – story too short and too dull.

Then there are the cemeteries I have visited, a must wherever I travel.  I have always said that cemeteries are people at their best – everyone getting along without regard for race, color, creed, or politics.  There are great cemeteries, large and small, all over the north and south.  In the southwest, many appear a

bit plain, but often have a stark beauty of their own.  At one clinic, in a dusty, dreary community, I would occasionally go to the nearby cemetery and eat lunch under the trees.  Very peaceful and the permanent residents were excellent luncheon companions.  No ghosts, noises or other signs of haunting – so a poor story.

Alternatively, while employed in a hospital, I became adept at placing the deceased into body bags by myself.  If that sounds easy, try it with a large individual, whose body is all "loosey-goosey," not stiff as a post, laying on a stretcher.  After "bagging and tagging," I would take them to the "green room," our morgue, which was actually painted blue.  To move the body through the hospital without disturbing the sensibilities of patients and visitors, we had a special gurney.  It had a metal lower shelf to place the body upon and an upper frame that was flat.  A large white, form-fitted drape was put over the top, giving the gurney the appearance of a rolling banquet table.  While prepping the body, bagging, and transporting to the morgue, I kept up a monologue with the deceased.  I spoke of events precipitating demise, visitors if any, where we were going and how we would get there.  After placing the departed upon a shelf, with others, I extended my best wishes and left.  None of my charges ever replied, or called upon me later – so that is a story of that takes the "long way around the barn" to be mundane.

Then there was the Halloween party with the theme "come as your favorite doctor or patient."  The most memorable costume was that of a nurse who came dressed in a body bag as one of our "frequent flyers" who finally managed to buy the proverbial farm.  Stories like that are too tasteless for lay people, and unless you have worked in an ER, law enforcement, or similar field, you will not understand the need to laugh at otherwise grim affairs.

Having established that "real-life" death is unfit for human consumption (but O.K. for zombies?); let us have some fun with drinks with death themes.

The first drink is "The Requiem."  Now for you non-Catholics out there, a Requiem or Requiem Mass, is a prayer service for the dead.  Its name comes from the opening line of the mass “Requiem aeternam dona eis" or "grant them rest forever..."  From the Requiem we also get "Requiescant in pace,"  “May they rest in peace” – the familiar R.I.P. on tombstones. The Requiem we are interested in is from The Flowing Bowl, 1898, by Willie Schmidt. It is a tasty mixed drink, rather like eggnog. The only addition to the recipe that I would recommend is a dash of nutmeg on top.

Following the Requiem, it is only natural to use a "Corpse Reviver" to get those synapses firing and animate our burned out, lifeless bodies.

By 1861, the Corpse Reviver was deemed "a celebrated drink."  A creation of the London Haymarket district, it was billed as an American drink.  In fact, about 1878 the famous bartender/author Jerry Thomas mocked the purveyors of liquor around Charing Cross for selling English drinks as American drinks.  He went on to say that he was about to open an American bar in London "and show the Britishers what's what. Then there'll be no need to brew bogus Yankee drinks!"

Recipes courtesy Boothby's World Drinks, 1934

Now that we have had our Requiem, and our Corpse Reviver, it seems appropriate to follow with the “Zombie.”  I have no interest in the flesh-eating ghouls of modern television and cinema.  Everyone growing up in the 1950's knows that a "real" zombie is merely a person, living or dead, under the control of a voodoo priest or priestess.  No flesh eating, no rotting body parts, pretty much a boring minion of the possessor. 

My preferred zombie, that of the "classic" black and white movies of the 1930’s, is indeed the only genuine zombie, so a pox on the rest of you.  As proof, I offer a Life magazine article.  We are cognizant that anything printed in a major periodical by reputable authors must be true – why else would anyone read the Sun or the Mirror?  In December of 1937, Life magazine did an article entitled "Black Haiti: Where Old Africa and the New World Meet."  Included is a photo by to "Zora Neale Hurston, Negro author with a Guggenheim scholarship…" and described as "the only zombie ever photographed." According to the author, the person/zombie died (or was drugged into a coma) and buried in 1907, returning "naked and demented" to her fathers farm in 1916. From the photo, she is clearly not decomposing or shedding body parts.  Indeed, with her unkempt appearance and her blank stare, she looks like the zombies in those classic movies.  Prima facie evidence that the old zombies my generation knew are the only genuine zombies.

As to the drink, the “Zombie” was the invention of Donn "the Beachcomber" Beach, who created it in the 1930's. Originally, it was sold no more than two to a customer.  Its claim to fame lies in its potency.  I can testify to this.  In my youth, when so many of us have manure for brains, I ill advisedly downed a dozen in a chug-a-lug contest in Juarez, Mexico, after an evening of drinking.  Fortunately, I did not drive nor ended up in a hospital.  After trying to pick a fight with a group of soldiers, it was the sickest night of my life (the cabrito burritos probably did not help) and I gave up any sort of drinking for almost five years.

The "Zombie," like so many drinks, has metastasized into many versions over the years.  I have chosen a version "from the land down under" – Australia, courtesy of The Australian Bartender's Guide, Stebben & Corsar, 1990. While not the most elaborate of Zombies, it is one easily made in the home bar and I would suggest no more than one to a customer.  In addition, the Juarez Zombies were blue, so if you want a 1960’s South of the Border version, substitute blue curacao.

Enjoy your Halloween celebrations and, please, remember "If you drink, don't drive."