The Glasses Being Charged ...

March 2, 2008

Eric Felten

The Wall Street Journal

200 Liberty Street

New York, New York 10281

RE: Potables, William F. Buckley Jr., saloons, and Phoebe Snow as outlined in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Felten,

First, let me tell you how much I enjoy your column particularly since I am observing my Lenten fast of things alcoholic. I believe I will end it this year with some French 75. I don’t think you have written about them but we still have a way to go before Easter.

As a long time fan of whisky and whiskey, either one served neat, I have a special place for an occasional drink that is usually described as needing an umbrella in the glass. When our children were younger we would go to the Caribbean for Easter vacation. One day of foamed drinks that were served like malted milks that made you knees want to operate independently of each other would convince me of the values of small glasses of dark liquid with some beer close at hand

A lesson learned and shared is that when you make a French 75, or a Heartstarter a la David Niven, or a Rusty Nail, the house brands, the well liquors, simply will not do. Pour good stuff or don’t pour at all. The obverse of that is from a scene in Fort Apache when Victor McLaglen after tasting some horrible whiskey tells Henry Fonda “Well sir, I have had worse”. He then takes a second swig and pronounces that it is “better than no whiskey at all”.

About the recent loss of William F. Buckley…I was in Charley O’s in Manahattan hard by the skating rink in Rockefeller Center, a half a block from Saint Patrick’s and Sak’s Fifth Avenue, where the two bartenders were named Pat and Mike, with my dear friend and bumper tosser Bob Brown, some 35 years ago. [It wasn’t our only time there.] Bob, dead 10 years this October, saw that Buckley and 2 other people were at a table, forgive me, across a crowded room. He walked over and said that he would be honored to stand his table for a round of drinks. Buckley said that he would be honored to accept such an honor. I cannot, under threat of being waterboarded with light beer, remember what he drank.

Peggy Noonan quotes Samuel Johnson in her moving tribute to Buckley in the same edition of The Wall Street Journal that has your musings on Brandy Alexanders. Alas, the only tale I can tell about Brandy Alexanders and its first cousin the White Russian would not pass muster for a family newspaper

Let me toss in the one about saloons from the original Doctor J.

“There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by

which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.”

As to the aforementioned Phoebe Snow…

“…she wears her dress of white,

we run our trains on anthracite.”

PS – As to Lent, “abstinence is as easy as temperance would be difficult”. Also, thank you for reintroducing me to the wonders of Tanqueray and Schweppes in August, 2006. Serendipitously my increase in fresh lime intake has shielded me from the scourge of scurvy.

Mecca delenda est