These drinks change over time, but back in my day a champagne cocktail was just a glass of champagne with a couple drops of bitters in it. The whiskey sour is one shot of whiskey and two shots of bar sour (lemon) shaken and garnished with an orange slice and a cherry. Asking for a whiskey sour cocktail is like asking for a oh, hot dog sandwich. In the story my idea was once in her golden youth she had been offered a drink called a whiskey sour cocktail and it was the most delicious thing she had ever had. Subsequently whiskey sours had not tasted so good so she was under the impression that maybe there was a whiskey sour cocktail which was a different drink from just a whiskey sour and that is why she always asks for it by that name, but she is always disappointed because they are ok, but they never taste as good as the whiskey sour cocktail of her golden youth.
The woman of the song Montego Bay is not as fortunate since, as the bartender supposes, she has never actually been there. Maybe she is stringing along her beau or maybe she is wishing for something she can never attain. So you see my story, like much of what we see on the silver screen is about hopes and dreams. Sigh.
The bartender of the story is not me, but I have to admit he is not far from the way I was. I was a surly bartender, the arrogance of youth I suppose.
I had a Champaign buddy stay with me overnight a month or two ago because he had to go to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for a procedure and he was a little wobbly, so instead of going to a restaurant we had the guys at the little store downstairs fix us up a couple sandwiches. Well of course you want chips with your sandwich so I volunteered to pick some up for him at the rack on the other side of the store. I asked him what kind he wanted thinking of the dizzying array of flavors: BBQ, cheddar cheese, sour cream and onions, the beat goes on. But not for my buddy, he wanted plain.
Plain? And then I remembered that about him, through all those years being served by other surly bartenders whenever he was in a mood for chips, he always ate them plain. I have to say that while I, myself, would never forgo the pleasure of artificial flavors, I had to admire the purity of my buddy's preference for the pure unadulterated taste of potatoes.
There are many people who like art that doesn't look like art, and music that doesn't sound like music seems to crowd the airwaves, but we are speaking of Uncle Ken's Credo here and to Uncle Ken. less is not more, it is less.
And now I'm done with this topic since I think it's a philosophical issue that will never be resolved to everyone's satisfaction.
Of course it will never be resolved to everyone's satisfaction, is that not what keeps the Institute cranking out posts night and day, year after year? Even if we were discussing a fascinating topic like ice cream machines there would be aspects that we would never agree on.
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