Save Room for Pie

You should never drink whiskey alone, unless there’s nobody else around and for research purposes. The research in this case being to get to the bottom of why I like whiskey so much. But not to the bottom of either of the three bottles I am researching in. If I were to reach bottle bottom and enlightenment simultaneously, or concurrently, I might not feel the same way about my conclusions, or even remember them, in the morning.

My research so far: a sip of Jack Daniel’s, a sip of Wild Turkey, and a sip of Bulleit Bourbon, which is new to me. They were all good. Plenty good enough. I like those single-malt scotches and special reserve bourbons, but unless somebody else is serving them, they cost too much for me to enjoy.

One thing about whiskey is, it has so many great names. Old Overholt, the Famous Grouse, Black Bush, Heaven Hill, Tullamore Dew. And let’s face it, it’s what they drink in cowboy movies. You don’t see white hats or black hats tossing back shots of vodka or rum or taking a bottle of sauvignon blanc to the table.

Usually, when I drink whiskey, it’s Jack Daniel’s, Tennessee sipping whiskey. I just had a sip from the bottle, and it was good. But you know what Jack Daniel’s doesn’t have that Wild Turkey and this Bulleit Bourbon do? A cork.

A cork is a great thing in a whiskey bottle, for the pleasure of pulling it out. Let’s see if I can spell the sound: f-toong. That’s if you pull it straight out. If you give it a little twist as you pull it, there’s a squeak—no, a chirp, a tweet even—that drowns out the f and even some of the t. Interesting. That never really registered with me before. Sort of squee-(t)oong.

A good thing about whiskey is that you can drink more of it than you can martinis. “Razor-blade soup” is what somebody called a good dry martini, and I enjoy one (not flavored with chocolate or whatever, bleh), but two of them is about a half of one too much for me. I can’t remember ever doing anything rousing or having any very interesting conversation after two martinis. On the other hand, I can have two or three whiskeys, occasionally (never more often than six or seven nights a week), and get relaxed rather than poleaxed. I can even write. See? Drive, no, but there’s no way you can run over anybody while writing.

Maybe I should work up something to say when I take a sip or, okay, a slug of whiskey. In Easy Rider, Jack Nicholson says this: “NICK … NICK … NICK, ff ff, INDIANS!” That’s a little too elaborate for me. Not to mention ethnically insensitive. Here’s to everybody! Whoops! Or, no, this is more cowboy: whoopee!

I like Wild Turkey, and this Buillet, no, Bulliet—Bulleit (why put an i in it for God’s sake, there is no i in whiskey; okay, there is literally, but)—isn’t at all bad, and by the way the Bulleit comes in a flask-shaped bottle that is pretty cool. Jack Daniel’s (okay, there’s an i in that too, and, all right, an apostrophe—but you know where to put them), however, is just 80 proof, whereas the Buillieit is 90, and this Wild Turkey I have is—whoa—101. So you can drink more of the Jack Daniel’s. How much more? Well, I never said I—Here’s twenty dollars says no man ever lived who—could drink and do percentages.

Love those corks, though. Too much, for their own good. I’ve pulled them so many times now tonight, trying to decide which one has the better tone, that they’ve lost their music. At most, one of them may go sort of foop. It’s sad. I’ve worn them down; they’re not tight anymore.

I am, though. To the point where I’m feeling sorry for corks and have forgotten what I was researching. But how many researchers can say this: I thoroughly enjoyed it. Do I live near here?

Swansea University, Wales, has sold at auction, for £798,000, a heretofore unknown manuscript in handwriting certified as that of the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Those verses that are mostly legible go as follows:

A gentleman never boils his handkerchief for soup.

He knows that he is part of a sophisticated group,

And though they may be fun,

Some things are just not done,

So …

A gentleman never boils his handkerchief for soup.

A gentleman seldom farts in company aloud,

Especially when surrounded by a closely gathered crowd.

And when he does, he has the grace to own up to it proud—

Oh …

A gentleman seldom farts in company aloud.

A gentleman never carries cheese bits in his hat.

He knows what will develop as a consequence of that:

Soon there will be mice in there and after that a cat.

Oh …

A gentleman never carries cheese bits in his hat.

A gentleman never drinks to excess home alone.

Behavior such as that is something he cannot condone.

But surely others elsewhere can, so—off to parts unknown!

Oh …

A gentleman never drinks to excess home alone.

Proceeds of the sale will go toward renovation of the university chapel.

DRINKING WITH KATE SMITH

It lurked, for many years, in the back of my mind: that weird drink Kate Smith served me. Her special drink. I was determined, as God was my witness, to summon that drink from my own raw memory, eventually. No longer.

You want to be able to reach way back in your mind and … and … bingo. It’s a rush. But that doesn’t always happen. At the Nashville Public Library recently, Rick Bragg and I held forth jointly about the writing life. After many years of reporting, he said, he had lately been getting paid for remembering. I hear that, I said, but here’s my problem: I might have already written everything I remember.

Of someone whose former life as, say, a majorette-slash-assassin has come to light, we say, “Her past has caught up with her.” At least she has stories to tell. I am haunted by the notion that I have caught up with my past.

Oh, there was breakfast this morning, but that’s already a little hazy, nowhere near unforgettable enough to turn into literary fodder. The next thing I recall from this morning, I was looking at the clock and it said 9:30. That memory is pretty dern vivid, I must say. I can feel the texture of the kitchen tablecloth against my elbows. But that could be because I’m still sitting here.

Just live in the moment? Nice if you can afford it, but it doesn’t work for a Southern writer. The past is our bread and butter, or at least our indigestion. “The past is never dead,” Faulkner wrote. “It’s not even past.” (I have always wanted to come up with a variation on that famous utterance. How about, if you get a gerbil for Christmas and the cat eats it. You could say, “My present is not alive. It’s not even present.”)

And yet the past may be this much like the future: you can run out of it.

Had I been prudent, I would have stashed away some nostalgia to trot out in this my anecdotage. But what if I hadn’t lived this long? What if I had gone to my grave without getting mileage out of, for instance, all of my dogs? How could I know I was recalling them prematurely, so when Garden & Gun suggested I write a dog reminiscence, I had already squeezed every conceivable word out of every blessed dog I ever had, from Sailor to Pie. What I did was, I wrote about not having a dog, in these my fool’s-golden years. Down that rabbit hole, not much left to sniff.

Time for a flashback to Kate Smith, the Songbird of the South. FDR once introduced her to King George VI of England: “This is Kate Smith. Miss Smith is America.” Her head was a moon, the rest of her a mountain; and her theme song was “When the Moon Comes over the Mountain.” She also had huge hits with “God Bless America” and, God help us, “That’s Why Darkies Were Born.” In the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, she was Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, and Lady Gaga rolled into one—except Miss Smith was actually from the South, unlike Miss Swift, and Miss Smith would never have ridden a swinging wrecking ball naked, like Miss Cyrus, and Miss Smith didn’t need to wear an outfit made of meat, like Miss Gaga, because she was packing plenty on her own big bones.

In the mid-1970s, I was working for Sports Illustrated, and Kate Smith had become an icon of ice hockey. Her “God Bless America” before games had inspired the Philadelphia Flyers to triumph after triumph. She was notoriously wholesome, a spokeswoman for Jell-O and for Swans Down flour. (There’s something nice about the image of flour as swan featherlets. It makes you want to go tp, tp, but so does eating, say, popcorn.) The Flyers were not wholesome. They were known as the Broad Street Bullies. So I could have taken a snarky slant. But I liked her. I liked the way she belted “God Bless America.” During my visit she was cheery and sociable and said not one quotable word.

Milk,

Unless you are lactose intolerant,

Is a universal swallerant.

So I didn’t write anything. Then one day I was drinking with other reporters, and one of them claimed to have had scotch and milk with Adam Clayton Powell. Another one claimed black coffee, two sugars, and Dutch gin with Ray Charles. I thought I could top them. “Kate Smith and I had her special…,” I said. And I had forgotten what it was. Over the years, I racked my brain. I would lie on my back pretending not to care, hoping that drink would drift accessibly by. It was like trying to get your late great-great-grandfather to remember where they buried the silver.

Finally, just moments ago, I gave up. Typed in “Kate Smith drink,” and there it was, in an old AP story. A London Fog, she called it. Half milk, half Coke. “It looked awful,” said the reporter. I had remembered it as weirder than that.

The past is not dead; it’s Googlable.