June 14, 2013 

Some temperance crusaders could give as good as they got. Prohibition advocates from the late nineteenth century loved to tell the tale of Paul denton, an itinerant Methodist preacher who held a camp meeting in 1836 in one of the roughest, most disreputable districts in Texas. denton issued handbills promoting a grand barbecue to take place in a shady grove, promising that “to all who attend, the best drink in the world will be furnished, free.” A huge crowd turned out for the feast. When the rougher element demanded to know where the liquor was, Denton gestured to a spring near the grove and said, “There is the drink I promised! Not in the simmering stills, over smoky, fires, choked with poisonous gasses, and surrounded with the stench of sickening odors and rank corruptions, doth your Father in heaven prepare the precious essence of life, the pure cold water, but in the green glade and grassy dell, where the rd deer wanders and the child loves to play, there God brews it.” The crowd’s reaction to Denton’s tick is not recorded.

—Robert F. Moss, Barbecue: The History of an American Institution.

 June 10, 2013 

As soon as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude. There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

—Samuel Johnson, via bookofbourbon.

 May 31, 2013 

It is wrong. A people whose patriotism needs to be forced into activity and life by the stimulants of alcoholic liquors and rich dinners may make good subjects, but not good citizens.

—The editor of the Cheraw Gazette, in response to the question “Is it right or wrong to attend a barbecue?”. The Cheraw Gazette, July 1837, quoted in Robert F. Moss, Barbecue: The History of an American Insitution.

 May 22, 2013 

Did you ever see a Barbecue? For fear You should not, I’ll describe it you exactly:—
A gander-pulling mob that’s common here, of candidates and sovereigns stowed compactly,
Of harlequins and clowns, with feats gymnastical
In hunting-shirts and shirt-sleeves—things fantastical;—
with fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masquing
And other things which may be had for asking.

—A letter from “Barbecuensis” in the Southern Advocate, July 1827. Quoted in Robert F. Moss, Barbecue: The History of an American Institution.

 April 29, 2013 

Th’lowest man I know is the one who wins your confidence, buys your liquor, and then turns you in. I believe there’s a special place for people like that after they die.

—A moonshiner, quoted in The Foxfire Book, “Moonshining as a Fine Art”.

 April 3, 2013 

BARBACUE.

The subscribed respectfully informs the citizens of Fayette and the adjoining counties, that he will prepare an elegant Barbacue Dinner, on the Fourth of July, at his own house, on the Limestone road, nine miles from Lexington…. The subscriber furnishes foreign liquors of the best quality for the LADIES—the gentlemen will have free access to the use of domestic liquors. Tickets of admittance, two dollars—there will be no expense nor personal trouble omitted to render his entertainment brilliant and interesting.

—An 1815 advertisement in a Lexington, Kentucky newspaper, quoted in Robert F. Moss, Barbecue: The History of an American Institution.

 September 25, 2012 

Well, anyway, when Repeal came and mailmen had to use Mack trucks to haul the applications for licenses over to the City Hall, Slade got a license. He got a license immediately, and he got a swell location, and he got the jack to put in leather chairs kind to the femurs, and a circular bar; and Slade, who never had a dime in his life after he paid rent and protection, not stands in the shadows under the murals of undressed dames in the midst of the glitter of chromium and tinted mirrors, wearing a double-breasted blue suit, with what’s left of his hair plastered over his skull, and keeps on eye on the black boys in white jackets who tote the poison and the other on the blonde at the cash register who knows that her duties are not concluded when the lights are turn off at 2:00 A.M., and the strains of a three-piece string ensemble soothe the nerves of the customers.

—From Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men.

 September 23, 2012 

I like bars just after they open in the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar—that’s wonderful.

—Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye. via bookofbourbon.

 September 22, 2012 

A funeral parlor at midnight is ear-splitting compared to the effect you get in the middle of the morning in the back room of a place like Slade’s if you are the first man there. You sit there and think how cozy it was last night, with the effluvium of brotherly bodies and the haw-haw of camaraderie, and you look at the floor where now there are little parallel trails of damp sawdust the old broom left this morning when the unenthusiastic old Negro man cleaned up, and the general impression is that you are alone with the Alone and it is His move.

—From Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men.

 September 19, 2012 

To be without a grievance is in their case to be powerless and insignificant; to be without a trumpet to blow a blast upon is to be miserable; to have nothing with which to make a noise in the world is to have nothing worth living for. So they have taken up the liquor question, and resolved, if they can, to make us all abstainers by Act of Parliament and of Congress.

—Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1867.

 September 16, 2012 

There was a time when it was fashionable in England, Scotland, and Ireland to get drunk—when “six-bottle men” boasted of their achievements, and when the host at a dinner-party did not think his guests did justice to his hospitality unless they fell reeling under the table.

—Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1867.

 September 14, 2012 

To remedy these evils, a sect of fanatics has sprung up on both sides of the Atlantic, whose principle is, that because some men drink too much whisky, no man, if they can prevent it, shall be allowed to drink any whisky—and, most tyrannical and unreasonable prohibition of all, any wine or beer.

—Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1867.

 September 10, 2012 

It is well that a Sportsman, without being anything of an epicure, like an old campaigner, know a little of the art of the cuisine; otherwise, in the country, even in this country of abundance, he is very likely to fare badly, where, with a very little knowledge and a very little care, and having the precaution to carry with him a few simple condiments, he can live like a prince.

In the first place, he should always carry his own black tea with him, if he would not be compelled to drink execrable rye-coffee.1 I commend him also to be his own liquor-bearer, as the spirits in country places are usually execrable, especially the rye-whiskey of Pennsylvania and the West.

If, however, he determine to take his chance in this matter, I advise him, in all cases, to eschew brandy, which is the most easily adulterated of all liquors, and, when adulterated, the worst.

—Henry William Herbert, Frank Forester’s Field Sports of the United States, and British Provinces, or North America, 1849.

  1. Rye coffee was a coffee substitute used at various times when it was difficult to get actual coffee. Someone writes in from Oak Grove, Gwinnet County, Georgia during the Civil War:

    Sugar and coffee are getting scarce and high. The sugar we are learning to dispense with, and we have an excellent substitute for coffee, very cheap and abundant. It is rye—we have been using it in our family for six weeks, and I think it equally as healthy, and as palatable as the Rio. It is prepared in the same way as coffee, being browned and parched, and afterwards ground fine. So you see as far as coffee is concerned, we don’t care a straw about Lincoln’s blockade.

    From the Savannah Republican, September 9, 1861. ↩

 September 8, 2012 

“Have a drink?” said a gentleman, holding a high official position, whom the writer met in Washington, and with whom he had a long and interesting conversation in the street, or various matters, social and political. “Is it not a little to early? It is not yet noon,” was the apologetical turn which the refusal assumed. ” Oh, nonsense about too early,” replied the official; “it will be my fourteenth drink this morning!”

—Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1867.

 September 6, 2012 

In England everybody drinks. An Englishman is made up of so many cubic inches of mutton-chops and so many quarts of beer.

—George Francis, 1862 quoted in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1867.