A little more gin and everybody wins

JOSEPH N. BELL

One of the more significant contributions of my generation to the

Midwestern culture, in which I was raised, was the domestic cocktail

hour.

It took root in Indiana and Illinois, where I lived after World

War II, then was exported wherever we moved, causing some resistance

in other American cultures less advanced -- like that of my wife, who

was raised in Southern California and had no grasp of the blessings

of the cocktail hour in the early years of our marriage. As a result,

it has taken 20 years to establish itself as de rigeur in our

household even when we aren’t entertaining guests.

Sherry’s conversion has been moved along by our visits to cocktail

hour disciples of my generation living in other parts of the country.

In Brevard, N.C.; Portland, Ore.; suburban Chicago; and Fort Wayne,

Ind., the glasses and hors d’oeuvres have been cracked out promptly

at 5 p.m., followed -- in most cases -- by civilized conversation.

There are unwritten rules. No conversational subject is out of

bounds, but shouting is frowned upon, and civility is maintained at

all times. Dinner is served before anyone drinks excessively. The

preferred drink is a dry gin martini, straight up, with none of the

ridiculous variations that nonpurists have made popular. A bit of a

buzz tends to liven up the conversation, but drinks are always by

choice, and no derision is ever directed at anyone preferring a soft

drink. There is a tendency among born-and-bred Southern Californians

to choose wine at the cocktail hour, which suggests that they aren’t

quite ready to accept this new culture but are pleasantly disposed to

it.

Nothing in my formative years suggested I would come to this

place, and I suspect that is true of most of my Midwestern

generation. Mine was a near teetotaler family. Only my Uncle Charley

-- of German heritage -- broke this code by brewing beer and creating

wine in his cellar during the years of Prohibition. This was never

discussed within the extended family. My mother would not allow

visible drinking in our home, and I can still remember stumbling on

my father down in our basement secretly tapping his cache of beer. I

went back upstairs, and no word ever passed between us about this

encounter, even long after my mother was gone.

I introduced Sherry to the cocktail hour shortly after we were

married, assuming -- since she was clearly intelligent -- that she

would recognize its value and embrace it, even though she was raised

in California and her modest intake of spirits was limited to wine.

She tried, but she clearly wasn’t ready -- even when she left her job

as an editor at the Los Angeles Times to freelance, so she could be

at home for the formative years of her son, Erik. In those years, as

I grew to look on Erik as a son, Sherry was caught between his early

evening needs and my cocktail hour, and he won.

Thus, the cocktail hour -- except when we entertained guests --

was moved offstage in our lifestyle and remained there even as Erik’s

needs changed and finally after he left for college and a life of his

own. Its reappearance was a provident accident. There was no crisis

in our life that had to be addressed, but there was a drift toward

leading separate lives, as we both worked out of our home and passed

like ships in the night in our hallway. I admit freely that this was

mainly due to my growing iconoclasm, aided and abetted by the demands

of Sherry’s work commitments.

Then, late one afternoon, we needed to discuss some lifestyle

decisions, and I suggested a drink while we talked. Two hours later,

we were still at it, and dinner had been forgotten. We settled the

original topic quickly but then found ourselves, mellowed by the

setting, exploring other matters that we had parked in our

subconscious. And sometime that evening, we realized we were

rediscovering the domestic cocktail hour.

That was three months ago, and we’ve been observing it virtually

every night since. No pressure to come up with either profound

subjects or minor irritations. No rules. Even occasional silences.

Satisfactions of the day can be enjoyed by the telling, and bad stuff

can be flushed out. Language doesn’t have to be guarded or judgments

fair. When excesses are articulated, they tend to self-destruct in

their own absurdities. So do domestic irritations. And if they don’t,

at least they aren’t eating away at our insides.

As her endorsement of this new practice, Sherry is working to

learn how to drink a martini. She had converted some years ago from

wine to gin-and-tonic, but has now authorized me to increase the gin

and lighten the tonic until it finally evolves into a martini.

This leads to temptation to load her drink in the expectation of

consequences that might follow, but the need for dinner usually

prevails. I sometimes ponder the ethics of all this but have firmly

decided that if comfort with a martini is the only legacy I leave

her, our life together won’t have been wasted.

If all this sounds spacey and idealistic, try it before you knock

it. The cocktail hour simply offers an environment for talk. The

people doing the talking have to take it from there.

I have thought many times during this ongoing crisis over the

filibuster in the U.S. Senate that if a dozen of the more rational

and less rigid Senators could sit with a drink and a plate of good

cheese and crackers in our backyard in the dusk of a May evening and

just talk to one another, this matter could be settled. That such a

group managed to find its own mellow setting in Washington must have

contributed to the compromise.

Communication lives best when we provide an environment that

nurtures it. The cocktail hour does that superbly. Just don’t be

fooled by those fake martinis.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.