Pappy Van Winkle

This promises to be a largely incoherent posting, mainly because it is informed by entirely different observations, which may or may not have something to do with each other by the time I'm done. First of all, I bought a bottle of Van Winkle 15 today. I was out in one of the town courts, and I stopped in a little store where I remember buying Lagavulin during the year when it was almost impossible to find. I just wanted to eyeball their inventory, and although they had no malts that were out of the ordinary, they had a single bottle of Van Winkle, an orphan, sitting all alone on the shelf, just waiting to be adopted. And the price was right, really right. So I brought it home, probably to give to one of the boys at some future date.

And then when I got the Winkle home, I pulled my other bottle, a twenty, out of the cabinet for a taste. The 15 and the 20 have a picture of Pappy Van Winkle, or someone posing as him, on the label, in profile, with his white hair, and a little goatee, and a cigar. And I thought to myself, how does one get to be that guy? How does one become an old guy, with white hair, and a beard, smoking a cigar on a whisky label? I mean, talk about a legacy; what better way to be remembered than that?

Later in the evening, I saw that the Sox were getting blown out for the second straight night, in their own yard no less. The string of eleven straight dominant performances in post-season games by Boston starters, which had begun in last year's ALCS, and had continued through the surprising victory over the Angels, seems now like a distant memory. First Beckett, then Lester, and now Wake have surrendered huge numbers of runs in three consecutive games. And in none of those games was the bullpen much help, or any help for that matter. It's looking like October might come to an early end.

So that led me to my second observation of the night. Even if I couldn't enjoy the rest of the post season, at least I'd have lots of free time to enjoy the fall. But no sooner had I that thought, than I realized that there was nothing much worth enjoying this fall. I mean, in years past, I'd be looking forward to the heart of the college football season, the conference schedule, and maybe the chance to play in a bowl game. Would we get the family together for another trip to some southwest city for a new year's day game? Umm, not this year. OK, well then how about the NFL? At least we could look forward to those play-offs, but really, without a team in the running, those play-offs don't carry much drama either. Now basketball season starts in only a month, but until we get into January, we aren't going to know whether this year's team has the stuff to play in March. The pre-season games are often fun, but they really don't count for much.

So now we're back to whisky, and Pappy Van Winkle. Will whisky alone carry me all the way to the new year? Do I really want whisky alone to carry me that far? Or am I going to have to go back to the movies, and see a bunch of films about relationships? That's a scary thought. I don't have the time this fall to travel to Scotland, and from what I've read, the weather is probably too lousy to see much of anything anyway. It looks like a lot of steak and whisky for the near future, and we'll also try to keep the pit fired up until the yard is buried under snow. Come to think of it, that's not such a bad deal. I can probably survive that.