The Thirstin' Howl

Holy Hanna, it's been awhile

Hello All,

Sorry so few (alright, no) posts in a while, but I warned you at the outset that I was a lazy procrastinator And while that's still true, this latest bit of silence is brought to you courtesy of an opposite impulse. I was feeling ambitious and started doing a little Spring cleaning on the ol' HardDrive when I apparently moved or renamed (or more likely, deleted) a little tiny 2Kb file that must have been fairly important to the upkeep and maintainance of this here patch of Blogistan. In the future, I will not touch files with inscrutable names like XC00BF197.dll, so help me God. Hopefully everything is working again, and if you're reading this, than it is. So you can expect a veritable spray of new material in the next few days, but don't get used to it-- you can count on me to get lazy as sure as you can count on the Red Sox to go into a slump after the All Star Break.

I'd all but finished a big and long post for last Saturday about the Mint Julep, replete with themes of heritages lost, traditions stolen and the rise of The Kentucky Mint Julep Hegemony. But that ship, as we say, has sailed. So I'll spare you the details. There is a story about Mint Juleps that surrounds our spiritual mascot, General Neal Dow, however.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Dow, a reformed Quaker, financed formed a regiment of Tee-Totaling Mainers, who found their way into the campaign to secure New Orleans. Upon his arrival in the Crescent City, Dow checked into the City Hotel, where he paints this vignette in one of his letters home.

"The head waiter, a darkey, is a character, and is very deferential to the 'General', and hopes he is 'comfortable.' This afternoon he brought me a pitcher of ice water, and, with Landlord Woodward's compliments, a tumbler of mint julep, iced, minted and dusted with pulverized sugar and with a glass tube, 'all ready.' He waited as if to see me take it, but I told him to set it down, which he did. Just before dinner, he came up to notify me that dinner was almost ready, and, seeing the julep said: 'Oh, dat's all dead now!'
'Well,' I said, 'I never drink at all.'
'Ah, I tought you was one o' dem dat indulged.'
'No, I never do.'
'Oh, all right.'
'Yes, I mean to keep all right' Exit waiter with the 'dead' julep, to appear probably at the bar with an empty glass."

The insinuation here, of course, is that the waiter surreptitiously downed the 'dead' julep on his way to the bar. Unbeknownst to the general, however, a New York City journalist was sitting in the lobby and recognized Dow, the most famous Tee-Totaler of the day. His account goes something like this:

"A day or two ago my eyes were attracted by a diminutive little man, carrying the significant shoulder-strap of a brigadier-general. I had great confidence in his skill and courage and in his military knowledge...... The general came to my hotel and proceeded upstairs. In a few moments, the attentive landlord, hearing that he had a live brigadier-general in the house, without asking the clerk for his name, only asked for his number, which obtaining, said landlord rushed into the bar-room, and had a julep mixed, of standard strength, and ornamented with an immense amount of 'greens', which ostentatiously stuck up, making the 'institution' look more like a flower-pot than a genial beverage. This chemical and vegetable combination, sustained by a waiter of unusual politeness, was handed in at '21' with the landlord's compliments.
In due course of time, the tumbler returned as dry as a gourd, the mint all wilted; in fine, it seemed as if a sirocco had passed over it. And what of that? Only, gentle reader, that the general was General Neal Dow, the author of the Maine Liquor Law, the commander at Fort Jackson, whose orderly, no doubt, appropriated to himself the landlord's hospitality."

Thus from little acorns, minor scandals are born. As one wag put it:

"This is frightful. Neal Dow, who but a few years ago was not contented unless all mankind foreswore eternal enmity to mint juleps and all other peculiar 'vanities' compounded by liquor sellers; Neal Dow, who called out the police of Portland to shut up the liquor-shops; Neal Dow, who was never weary of poking his nose into other people's business, like a true New Englander; Neal Dow, succumbing before the seductive influence of a mint julep. Oh, tell it not in Gath, and proclaim it not in New England!"