Things to Read, Drinks to Drink: Nostalgia Edition
Nostalgia has a bad rap. Sure, hearing your friends go on and on about how much cooler they were in high school, and how they had Pavement's Slanted and Enchanted—on tape—before anybody else even knew about it, gets really old. But we've all got our secret, nostalgic indulgences, don't we?
Last weekend, I was inspired by a friend to pick up William Golding's Lord of the Flies, a book I hadn't read since grade school. I couldn't put it down. I mean, it's not just interesting subject matter, but it's incredible writing. Somehow, I'd managed to convince myself that no book from childhood or early adulthood would stand up to an adult reading. In fact, just the opposite was true; the book was better this time around.
This necessarily made me reexamine a few other points of serious nostalgia, and this one's more embarrassing than Lord of the Flies. Like a lot of drinkers, when I first picked up a bottle, I liked bad booze: sweet stuff, crappy vodka that you could cover up with fruit juice, etc. The Rum & Coke was a standby: it more or less tasted like cola, and boy could it get your ripped. Now older and wiser (and, again, at the urging of a friend), I recently found that the Rum & Coke has something going for it after all, especially if you use decent rum.
I suggest using Don Q Cristal Rum and Coke or Diet Coke: Fill the glass with ice, pour in equal parts rum and coke and garnish with a generous slice of lime (rub it on the rim to make it extra lime-y). When it's hot out, it's totally refreshing, which is probably why this is an old standard in tropical locales.
Pair with a book about British boys gone savage on a tropical island, and you've got a winning combination for a hot summer day.
Last weekend, I was inspired by a friend to pick up William Golding's Lord of the Flies, a book I hadn't read since grade school. I couldn't put it down. I mean, it's not just interesting subject matter, but it's incredible writing. Somehow, I'd managed to convince myself that no book from childhood or early adulthood would stand up to an adult reading. In fact, just the opposite was true; the book was better this time around.
This necessarily made me reexamine a few other points of serious nostalgia, and this one's more embarrassing than Lord of the Flies. Like a lot of drinkers, when I first picked up a bottle, I liked bad booze: sweet stuff, crappy vodka that you could cover up with fruit juice, etc. The Rum & Coke was a standby: it more or less tasted like cola, and boy could it get your ripped. Now older and wiser (and, again, at the urging of a friend), I recently found that the Rum & Coke has something going for it after all, especially if you use decent rum.
I suggest using Don Q Cristal Rum and Coke or Diet Coke: Fill the glass with ice, pour in equal parts rum and coke and garnish with a generous slice of lime (rub it on the rim to make it extra lime-y). When it's hot out, it's totally refreshing, which is probably why this is an old standard in tropical locales.
Pair with a book about British boys gone savage on a tropical island, and you've got a winning combination for a hot summer day.
Comments
i wish we were sitting on a porch by a lake, sipping rum & cokes, and i wish someone had a banjo, and that there were citronella candles flickering on the railing. and then nate spontaneously jumps off the porch and runs down the dock (past our sail boat) and jumps into the lake with his clothes still on. and there are crickets chirping and the smell of just-cut grass...but instead i'm in an air-conditioned-to-meat-locker-frigidness maze of cubicles with a bag of dried apricots instead of a rum & coke, and no one has a banjo... boo.