A minor erratum
I take no pleasure, of either the snarky or the smarmy variety, in reporting that neither Jacky nor your man, there, is in fact not the originator of the translucent-liquor-and-juice beverage. Indeed, the gimlet has been known to the rabble and ruffians, along with the cool jazz-heads and the post-war post-teeny be-boppers, since 1947 when it was invented by one Walther P. Smythe, a bar-keeper in the then-undiscovered Soho district, at the request of an unnamed drunk who could not pronounce "gin with lemon." While the flame burns forever at the Tomb of the Unknown Drunkard, yet his drink flows marching on.
One might wonder how the present author himself has come privy to this trivial snippet. One need wonder no more: I was Mr. Smythe's bus-boy during my doctoral schooling at the now (alas) defunct College of Antiquities of the now (alas) defunct Civic University of New York. Well, one simply must pay one's way some-how. The GI Bill goes only so far when one is living, as was I, la vie bohème. And, even at that time, the liberal arts were being relegated to a mere relicary status, much to our civil decline and, at the time, my own loss of a position as an assistant professor. There was no one to whom to profess, and barely any to whom to profess assistant-ship.
I also happen to know that Smythe "invented" the drink at my behest. It was no stretch of the imagination, for I had beaten the other authors at this current web-site (I happen to know as well that Miss Jones considers herself the originator of the Hot Facial, some un-godly concoction involving licks of flame and milk of cocoa-nut) and Smythe in concocting what I then called The Drink of A Single To-morrow, comprising equal measures each of juice of lemon and lime, and a double measure of the Neder-lands' finest, Ketel One. (I spent a fort-night or dozen in the low-lands during the War, let it be said in short, lest I impugn my own character.) These citrus were the only fruits on hand to stave off the scurvy in a mal-nourished populace.
Years later, as one after an other of Ian Fleming's novels were translated to the silver screen, I re-christened it, in a phlegmatic fit, the Pusy Galore.
One might wonder how the present author himself has come privy to this trivial snippet. One need wonder no more: I was Mr. Smythe's bus-boy during my doctoral schooling at the now (alas) defunct College of Antiquities of the now (alas) defunct Civic University of New York. Well, one simply must pay one's way some-how. The GI Bill goes only so far when one is living, as was I, la vie bohème. And, even at that time, the liberal arts were being relegated to a mere relicary status, much to our civil decline and, at the time, my own loss of a position as an assistant professor. There was no one to whom to profess, and barely any to whom to profess assistant-ship.
I also happen to know that Smythe "invented" the drink at my behest. It was no stretch of the imagination, for I had beaten the other authors at this current web-site (I happen to know as well that Miss Jones considers herself the originator of the Hot Facial, some un-godly concoction involving licks of flame and milk of cocoa-nut) and Smythe in concocting what I then called The Drink of A Single To-morrow, comprising equal measures each of juice of lemon and lime, and a double measure of the Neder-lands' finest, Ketel One. (I spent a fort-night or dozen in the low-lands during the War, let it be said in short, lest I impugn my own character.) These citrus were the only fruits on hand to stave off the scurvy in a mal-nourished populace.
Years later, as one after an other of Ian Fleming's novels were translated to the silver screen, I re-christened it, in a phlegmatic fit, the Pusy Galore.
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