BY JUNIPER!

Students of alcohology have offered many theories to explain the antipathy of the average American girl toward juniper juice or deadeye, trequently sold under the trade name of gin.

Mention the word gin to the average girl. on the way to your apartment and she bristles at once. She pictures you staggering, completely stoned, your, decks awash, clutching her arm with one hand and a bottle of gin with the other. The very word gin rattles her sense of decency. It reminds her of gin lane in London and drunken charwomen. It tastes like paint and smells like formaldehyde. Her back stiffens. "We'll go to the corner drugstore," she says in a perverse command. 'Til have a vanilla frosted before I go home."

There are many such case histories. Alcohologists, however, point out that most of these case histories become obsolete as the average American girl grows into the average American woman. As her education progresses, she discovers such ungirlish flavors as gorgonzola, garlic and oregano.

One evening when cocktails are being passed, she is given a golden blend of four parts of gin to one part dry vermouth. She holds the am ber drink in a thin cold shell of glass. She drinks it warily. and there are no ill effects. Then she munches the meaty pitted green olive and feels for the first time the wonderful soft afterglow of a martini. Eventually at the age of about twenty-five, on a hot summer's afternoon, she is introduced to a gin and tonic. Her pleasure is unbounded as she quaffs the tart semi-bitter drink for the first time.

Of course, the average American girl isn't what she used to be. Early Dutch settlers in Colonial America were miserable with the muddy beer they brewed from pumpkins and corn. Life only looked up when they imported their own liquor from Europe. They wouldn't hesitate to give their young children a sip of their beloved gin. Young gir ls drank beer at mealtime.

A young lass of seven together with her maid were sent from the Barbados to live with the girl's grandmother in Boston. The grandmother insisted that the girl could have nothing to drink but water at mealtime. The irate maid and girl immediately left the grandmother's home. Sometime later the grandmother received a letter from the girl's parents explaining very precisely that their daughter had been reared as a young lady and was, therefore, accustomed to both wine and beer with every meal.

For that matter, the average young man isn't what he used to be either. Take Harvard students, for instance. During the 18th century beer was served at both breakfast and dinner in the college commons. Gin, of course, was an extra-curricular matter and had to be bought off campus.

But what group of Harvard graduates today could compare with the class of 1760, all of whose members were suspended en masse for drunkenness? What modern host could hope to set up a punch bowl like that created by the Hon. Edward Russel, captain general of the English forces during the reign of William III? Russel once used the fountain in his garden for mixing his drinks. The recipe included 560 gallons of brandy, 25 thousand lemons, 1300 pounds of sugar, 20 gallons of lime juice and 5 pounds of nutmeg. His bartender rowed about in a small boat filling up the punch cups as required.

Russel's monarch, William Ill, introduced gin to England. It was William's favorite beverage. In time London was beset with the gin fever. It was estimated that one house out of every four was a gm shop. Typical was the sign that read: "Here a man may get drunk for one penny and dead drunk for twopence. Straw provided."

In spite of these historical changes certain facts remain as they always were. Summer follows winter. Hat bands begin to steam. The dog days of August turn us all into a panting, limping herd. Nothing trickles from the office cooler but flat, unquenching water. You drink iced soda, and tlw sweetness only makes your throat sticky. You try beer but the grunting thirst continues.

At 5:45 the girl waiting impatiently in the lobby barks hello and says let's move at any cost. You return her volley with some chatter about the busy day at the office, knowing damn well that in this lind of humidity you can't possibly appease her with words or dinner or tickets.

It looks like a nothing evening at the end of a nothing day. And then, quite suddenly, you're inside an air-conditioned bar, escorting her to the darkest booth. You leave her there and ask the bartender to fix a sloe gin ritz for the lady and a Tom Collins for me.

When the sloe gin fizz is delivered, she's intrigued first of all by the bright red color. It looks just like cherry lemonade. As she sips the top frost, she smiles in relief. You wait until she takes the first complete gulp. Then you tell her she is drinking gin-a sloe gin fizz.

"It doesn't feel slow, darling," she says.

"Not s-l-o-w," you explain, "S.l-o-e. It's gin made from the sloe berry."

Of course every honest student of liquor knows that sloe gin isn't gin at all, but a sweet liqueur made by distilling spirits with the sloe berry and then adding a heavy syrup.

Your deception is entirely legal. Like any liquor, the sloe gin gives leeway to her nerves. You plant your elbows squarely on the table and look the girl in the eye. Her tension is completely untied. She asks you how your drink tastes and this is your break, the good thing on ice for which you've been waiting.

"Taste it," you say. For the first time, her lips meet the pick of the summer-drink-crop, the cool, lemony, ice-tinkling draught that tops every other liquid concoction, the best man-size drink on earth for cooling a heat wave. She tastes it thoughtfully. "It's good," she admits, "but I don't know. It's a little sour, isn't it?"

"Try a little more." She takes a long deep swallow. Following the sloe gin fizz, the Tom Collins feels like cold, fresh lake water after a tepid bath, like an open-top car on a winding road after a hot taxi ride, like cold, thick honeydew melon after canned fruit. In a word, it's superior.

At this turn of events you order Tom Collins for both. You can assure her she needn't mind mixing drinks any more than she must avoid mixing foods. The idea that different kinds of liquor will upset one is a myth. It's tne quantity of alcohol you take and your own capacity to tolerate it that determines your ability to imbibe safely.

As she continues to drink the Tom Collins you will notice one preeminent fact. She doesn't get tired of this drink. It will never bore her. People, of course, have passed out after scooping in unlimited quantities of the tipple, usually in the form of martinis. But this is just a natural part of their education. It simply proves Dr. Johnson's observation that nobody ever died of drinking though a few have perished in learning the art.

Actually, as any professional bartender will tell you, drinkers seldom fall under the table drinking Tom Collins. The long drink fills but does not ruin. Straight liquor will send a man on a bender quickly. The long tall drink, slowly imbibed, will only make him happy.

She finishes the Tom Collins and asks for another. This will be the third drink and her last. You are aware that litquor is not a stimulant but actually a sedative. You want her to acquiesce, not pass out. In a little while you will order steak sandwiches on toast and hot coffee.

Only when she asks, "How do you make a Tom Collins? ' can you congratulate yoursell on the fact that you are no longer entertaining a problem child but a woman of unmeasured promise and possibilities. First of all you tell her somethmg about gin. It isn't raw alcohol mixed in a rusty bathtub by a Kentucky moonshiner. It's distilled, colorless liquor made from corn, rye and malt, and flavored with juniper.

Gin originated in Holland where it was first discovered by a professor of medicine at Lyden in 1660. It was then imported into France and was called Genevre, the French word for juniper. The Dutch called the drink Geneva and the English shortened it into gin.

Over the centuries the greatest varieties of flavoring ingredients have been used to make gin. Different brands have included angelica and anise, liquorice, coriander, cinnamon and turpentine. At the present time in the Umted States gin is made from distilled grain and is flavored with coriander and juniper.

There is a vast difference between imported and domestic gin. Most of the imported gin, from Holland and England, is distinguished by the fact that it is aged, just like whiskey, in wooden vats. The aging process makes it more subtle in flavor and infinitely more mellow. One American brand called Ancient Bottle is the aged variety, and this resembles the finer imported gins. But for making Tom Collins or any other tall summer drink, any of the nationally advertised domestic gins will fill the bill perfectly.

The young lady may at this point ask, out of pleasant curiosity, what 'Tom Collins" means. You should be prepared to explain the meaning of the term. "Collins," you can point out, is the name of the tall glass holding from 12 to 16 ounces of liquid. Old Tom gin is an English gin named after an automatic drinking machine once used in London. It was in the shape of a large tom cat, and when one inserted a penny, a stream of gin issued forth from a pipe in the eat's paw, just like one of our modern vending machines.

To serve a proper Tom Collins you should have the proper glassware. A collins glass should have a thick base, but the glass itself should be thin crystal and should be fluted so that you can get a wholesome grip on it. It needn' t be expensive glassware. You don't have to buy it in a shop specializing in ancient Chinese poison cups. But neither should your glassware be an odd assortment of discarded jelly glasses or colored glassware given away free with each half pound of cottage cheese. Remember, when you present a Tom Collins, that we drink with the eyes as well as with the mouth.

TOM COLLINS RECIPE

Before mixing Tom Collins for two or twenty persons, you must assemble all the materials necessary to process the glass that cheers. Besides glasses, you'll need ice, a bar mixing-spoon or an iced-tea spoon, coasters, a large kitchen towel, lemons, gin, sugar and carbonated water. There is a prepared Tom Collins mix which eliminates the lemon juice, sugar and carbonated water, but like all synthetic preparations, it misses the straight up and down flavor of honest fresh lemons and is something of a sham.

For a single Tom Collins do this: Squeeze the juice of one good sized lemon (size 300 or 360 to the box if your vegetable man gets technical). If you use a glass fruit Juice reamer, rub the lemon on the kitchen table with the palm of your hand. putting your body weight on it to soften the fibres of the lemon and make squeezing easy. Extract the juice, but do not squeeze the lemon until it hollers Uncle or you will get some of the bitter oil oil of the rind into the juice.

Pour the juice into the Tom Collins glass. Add a heaping teaspoon of sugar, more or less to taste. Stir well to dissolve the sugar. Then add a jigger of gin. A jigger is a measuring unit of one-and-one-half ounces. This too, you may increase or decrease to taste. Fill the glass with cracked ice or ice cubes. Then pour in cold carbonated water or seltzer water. Don't fill the glass to overflowing. Stir vigorously with the mixing spoon until the glass feels icy. Deliver at once to a low cocktail table alongside a lounge chair.

An alternate procedure which professional bartenders usually follow is this: Put the sugar, lemon juice, gin and ice into a cocktail shaker. Cover the shaker and shake vigorously. Pour, without straining, into a Tom Collins glass. Add the carbonated water to fill the glass. Stir and serve. If you re not in a gin mood, you may substitute whiskey for a Whiskey Collins sometimes called Colonel Collins. A Pedro Collins is one made with rum in place of gin. A John Collins is made with Holland gin in place of the usual London dry

GIN FIZZ

Tough young brother to the Tom Collins is the gin fizz. It's breezy, dry and almost always ordered by male rather than by female bar polishers. No sugar is used to make a gin fizz. It is served in an eight-ounce glass rather than the twelve-ounce Tom Collins glass. I t's tart, peppy and to the point-the favorite of sweaty commuters who have four-and-a-quarter minutes to catch the train.

To mix this refined panther with the least amount of bother, fill an eight-ounce glass with cracked ice or ice cubes. Then squeeze the juice of half a large lime directly into the glass. Drop the fruit into the glass. Add a jigger of gin. Fill the glass with cold carbonated water. Stir well. Serve at once in the vicinitv of heavily salted almonds or freshly roasted peanuts.

GIN AND TONIC

Years ago this was a drink known only to Singapore colonials or to members of private men's clubs near Bond Street. Quinine was a specific against malaria. Gin was a specific against boredom. Lime juice and ice were added, thereby catapulting the drink into one of the smartest swizzles known to civilized man a gin and tonic.

In 1953 the sales of quinine tonic water in the United States were 3 million cases, about one third ahead of 1952 showing the strength of this delightful revival.

To make a gin and tonic, fill an eight-ounce glass with cracked ice or ice cubes. Squeeze the juice of half a large lime into the glass. Drop the lime into the glass. Add a jigger of gin. Fill with cold quinine water. Stir well. Deliver to guests waiting in comfortable yacht chairs.

SLOE GIN FIZZ

This drink is mainly designed for the uninitiated, for bar cubs and for wagon riders who condescend to take a drink now and then.

In a cocktail shaker squeeze the juice of half lemon, one heaping teaspoon sugar and one jigger sloe gin. Shake furiously. Strain into an eight-ounce glass. Fill with cold carbonated water. Stir well. Place the glass on a paper lace doily. Pass dainty tea sandwiches.

GIN BUCK

Bar flies pushing fifty will remember this drink popularized by booze peddlers during prohibition. When made with respectable dry gin, it will restore your Dutch courage and slake your thirst. To make a gin buck, squeeze the juice of a half lemon into a Tom Collins glass. Add a jigger or a jigger-and-an half of gin. Add 3 ice cubes. Fill the glass with cold dry ginger ale. Stir well. Twist a small piece of lemon peel over the drink and then drop the peel into the glass. Particularly pleasant for one who has been niubbling on thin slices of cold Smithfield ham.

Written by Thomas Mario in "Playboy", USA, volume 1 issue 9, August 1954, excerpts pp. 36-38 + 46. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.