In the Land of Cocktails

Dads who Don’t Drink, Father’s Day Libations

Posted by on June 18th, 2009

My dad, J.R., is a semi-permanent tee­to­taler, mean­ing that it’s pos­si­ble he might have a drink on occa­sion but highly unlikely that he will.  I have seen him tipsy exactly once, when he lipped a cou­ple of flutes of cham­pagne at a wed­ding recep­tion.  After­ward,at a restau­rant hav­ing din­ner with our fam­ily he got all outta con­trol and started tap­ping his but­ter knife against the water glass to the beat of the smooth jazz that was play­ing.  My dis­ap­prov­ing Mom fixed her power-bore stare on him, grabbed his wrist and whis­pered in pure fire, “John…”  As if he had been really doing some­thing larger than mak­ing a slight clink­ing sound within earshot of the near­est 3 din­ers.  “Stop that!”

So it was a big sur­prise to me, and the rev­e­la­tion of a neu­ro­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non, to find that my Dad could take three rapid slugs of straight scotch on the rocks when under stress and not get the least bit woozy.

JR and the Next Generation

Kind of like when you are buzzed and some­thing scary, or in some way alarm­ing brings you to a sud­den state of utter shock­ing sobri­ety in an instant.  What intense stress was he under for this epic mir­a­cle of the body to kick in?  After I had a suc­cess­ful 10 year career in stand up com­edy, he came to see me per­form for the first time when I had a gig booked in my home town.  The bad part for my Dad was the toxic com­bi­na­tion of me per­form­ing stand up, and the fact that the engage­ment was at a Demo­c­ra­tic National Com­mit­tee fund rais­ing event.  As sev­eral notable Democ­rats got up to speak, my Dad started ask­ing for the scotches-as if to ward off the words of the Devil him­self.  He sat in the very back of the room and leaned back in his chair so far that the front legs of the chair were not touch­ing the ground, clearly no amount of scotch would be able to pen­e­trate that degree of ulti­mate defense of the very self.   I told some jokes, got a stand­ing ova­tion and all he could say after­wards was, “Why the Democrats?”

There is a lot to love about a man who is com­pletely imper­vi­ous to spir­its and capa­ble of belt­ing straight scotch with­out feel­ing the effect when in the pres­ence of his enemy.  My Dad.  Happy Father’s Day. Let’s see if the next gen­er­a­tion can get you to drink…

- Geor­gia Mintzas

PS:  I attach my favorite Old Fash­ioned recipe.

1 orange slice
1 Maraschino cherry
1 sugar cube or 1 tea­spoon gran­u­lated sugar
3 dashes Angos­tura bit­ters
1 1/2 ounces Scotch
1 ounce club soda

Mud­dle together the orange, cherry and sugar in the bot­tom of a rocks glass.  Add the bit­ters and the scotch and stir well.  Add ice to the glass and top off with the club soda.  Serve immediately.