Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2006/01/20/barretts_mixology.php
Friday, January 20, 2006
Depth Charge
1 mug of beer
1 shot of whiskey
Drop the shot of whiskey into the mug of beer, cowboy up, and chug.
Uncle Bucky McLean always has a story to tell me about the war. On one memorably cold Thanksgiving, he pulled me aside to offer his advice on how to stay warm. I was getting warm enough cuddled up to his large encapsulating gut, which surely had taken effort on his part to create. It was truly something to aspire to, but difficult to escape from, like that soft couch you can never get back up from. I could never escape the grasp of his strong orangutan-like arms anyway, so it was no use trying. His breath was thick with gravy and stout, with a touch of a sweet something else that I couldn’t quite place. I could also never tell whether it was his limp from the injury he sustained as a prisoner on a Japanese submarine, or the massive amounts of beer he consumed that made him walk the way he did.
Stumbling, he began his narrative with a burp, and a muddled, “My sah-gents wouldn’t know how to dodge a tahpedo if was flyin straight up deh butts.” His south Boston accent was especially strong tonight, so I buckled down and prepared for what was sure to be a dubious, but entertaining story. “We were stuck in the wahtah fah days, before the Japs picked us up. Of cohse, the Japs didn’t seem to know that you couldn’t pahk a sub under an American destroyah. The depth charges rained all around us, until a wicked pissah knocked us all on our ass. We woulda drowned if a Jap by name of Iseki hadn’ta let us free. I fit through the very hole the charge had blown in the side of the sub,” and at this point I was having real trouble believing the story: my Uncle Bucky McLean fitting through something? He concluded, “I swam to the destroyah, they pulled me outta the watah, and there was General Ike himself, standing on deck with a beer in his hand. He said, ‘Here son, this will warm you up’,” as he trailed off into a long, and loud sleep. Running outside to escape his now unbearable breath, I thought to myself, “Uncle Buck sure tells some tall tales, but then, it could just be Uncle Jack talking.”