A story of a spirited lifetime

By Oliver B. Pollak

RICHMOND, California — We learn to drink from and with family, friends, and colleagues starting at the family table, temptations of fake I.D.s, followed by college, Navy, coworkers, restaurant wine tasting, and other influences. Turning 21 is a rite of passage. Alcohol socializes, but can also foster dependency and addiction. I’ve written about wine and restaurant wine pairing, but not about my personal journey of imbibing.

In my teens I picked up misconceived notions that Jews don’t drink much because it is wrong to alter your state of consciousness and senses. Sobriety was a blessing. Alcoholism we believed was not a Jewish problem.

An eight millimeter film of my 1957 Bar Mitzvah reception shows me being served a shot of Kümmel, a caraway seed based akavit. The hot and vile came hurling out my mouth. Uncle Hal filmed it with his Bell & Howell.

Alcohol played little role in my parents’ house, with the occasional exception of Mogen David, Manischewitz, Slivovitz, Green Hungarian, Blue Nun, and Zeller Schwartze Katz Rieslings, an Austro-Hungarian liquor cabinet. My dad and I shared a Guinness on New Year’s Eve. Mother liked wine, getting light headed, but not shikker. She made a fine under the sink kahlua.

My college repertoire included black and white Russians (a Cold War sweetener), Bloody Marys (with horseradish after 2014), Daiquiris, Screwdrivers, Whisky sours, Sangria (Chilean wine with strawberries in a galvanized trashcan); drinks tended toward the sweet side. I drank J&B, Dewar’s, and Cutty Sark with water on the rocks.

My UCLA college roommate introduced me to Karen whom he knew from Hebrew High and Fairfax High School. We were studying for finals in December 1964 in the library and decided to go for drinks at the Cork & Fork on Westwood Boulevard We warded off the chill with Irish Coffee. On our first date we played Scrabble and drank, she remembers Lancers, I recall Dubonnet.

Navy ships are dry except for exceptional circumstances. The captain orders “splice the mainbrace” and medicinal brandy is distributed. In my experience this happened once in two years. We welcomed the hot fluid flowing down our throats after a horrendous day of shipboard mishaps; our landing ship broached and lay on its side on the beach. My shipmate Reg vividly remembers being tugged 1,890 miles from Tuy Hoa, Vietnam to dry dock in Sasebo, Japan.

Liberty was emphatically wet. Sailors mobbed the bars. I served on shore patrol in Subic Bay, Philippines, complete with white web belt and night stick. My Navy years netted a taste for Pimm’s Cup, Singapore Sling, Mai Tai, Suntory whisky with water, Akadama, and Sake. Most of the people I enjoy drinking with have some military experience – a camaraderie. Veterans have enduring habits, they enjoy spirits and coffee.

Alcohol can cause mood changes, darker, lighter, louder, softer, argumentative, rude. I’ve overindulged with about a dozen hangovers, DWI none. Karen and I have different tastes and tolerances, she is the responsible one, the designated driver.

Karen and I married in 1966 and set up housekeeping. I acquired a 4th revised edition of Harold J. Grossman’s Grossman’s Guide to Wines, Spirits, & Beers (1964), the first volume in a small Scotch, wine and cocktail library. Eric Asimov in the New York Times and the monthly Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant Newsletter are fun to read. I get Wine Spectator based on unused Delta and United Airline mileage points. Hipflasks of a generation ago are now relics.

It’s not so easy finding people to drink with who are simpatico and have common interests. We don’t frequent bars, though on Fridays I may meet with my hardworking teacher children for a cocktail. Our machatunim are 1960s veterans, U.S. Navy, Soviet Air Defense, and Israeli Defense Force. The fathers of the brides brought prized bottles from the cellar, the Russians planted a Vodka bottle in an ice block at each table. Alcohol facilitates friendship. It lowers barriers and stiffness. It locates common denominators. Teetotalers, religious scruples, AAA, and ‘just don’t like it,” eliminate that connection. It’s sad, dispiriting, to see a friend’s health and medications eliminate the conviviality of alcohol.

Drinking invites exploring tastes. Wines, beers, spirits, cocktails, come in and out of fashion. We live through fads, trends and changing tastes. Traditions are revived. The cavalcade of drinks follows seasons, merchandizing, and the “Fried Calamari Index” disclosed in the 8/12/2014 New York Times (go ahead, Google it). Cuban Mojito and Moscow Mule in copper mugs are rising, despite politics. We are willing or unsuspecting victims of merchandizing as we embrace the brand favored at the moment. Small batch, single barrel bourbon and rye, are catch words.

Over the years I saved remarkable bottles. Dreck and detritus competed for space and dust. To show I was in command I dumped them…and started saving over again, and again. A light went on during a recent vacation. Travel, out of the ordinary environment, stimulates and foments new ideas. Alcohol mementos could be reconfigured without bulk or soaking off labels, which does not work very well; take a photo and keep an album. On reconsideration, maybe not, why bother. Dead soldiers are mourned, new recruits welcomed.

A Toronto collector claimed to have over 160,000 wine labels. A website claims a collection of 281,000 and estimates billions of labels in the last 200 years, an unconfirmable assertion. My wife spied a bottle with a big K on the label and adopted it as her kitchen sink guardian. No, it did not stand for Kosher. Finding an R and E brought us close to spelling Karen. Oregon Pinot Noir A-Z epitomized a wildcard. I saved bottles with numbers, such as 14 Hands, 37, and UNO.

Language and literature, writerly tasks, encompassed wines named Anthology, Auteur, Book Club, Conundrum, Epiphany, Ethos, Etude, Evolutionary, Faust, Fiction, Hypothesis, Irony, Karma, Kudos, Novel, Novella, Obsession, Opus, Paradigm, Poet’s Leap, Prophecy, Query, Quixote, Serendipity, Textbook, Trilogy, Well Red, and the hybrid 1000 Stories.

Some bottles are objets d’art. Artist labels, mostly from Kenwood Winery in Sonoma County, brighten our bathrooms. Cognac, grappa, single malt scotch, come in beautifully crafted glass bottles, which someday will be empty antiques.

This story has been aging in the bottle and on the body. “World No Alcohol Day” is observed Tuesday, October 2. I think I’ll stay home. L’Chaim! 

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Pollak, an attorney and professor emeritus of history at the University of Nebraska Omaha, is a SDJW correspondent now based in Richmond, California. He may be contacted via oliver.pollak@sdjewishworld.com