Andersons of Colonial N. Carolina

Snyder, Texas… ca. 1960…

Dad liked his whiskey…he served in the Navy in the Pacific…. on the USS Chandelier (I probably butchered the spelling… it was pronounced Shan de Lou) the ship was built close to New Orleans or nearby… it was then sailed to California. My dad boarded in California… then off to war they went… 1942 or so. The ship was a sea plane tender… (not an aircraft carrier). He was a machinist. When I was very very young I asked him if he killed anyone in the war… he said no. I watched 12 0’clock High on tv… and the Rat Patrol… so I was very knowledgeable about everything about wars and such… he put up with me. My dad and I parted ways about 1970 or so… I got drafted to the Viet Nam War and he got his 4th DWI… so off to Louisiana he went. They sell whiskey in drive up windows in New Iberia… or at least they used to… by the glass.

Snyder at that time was a dry county. It was like a checker board in West Texas… dry county/ wet county… I went with my dad one time when he drove to Big Springs, Texas… right at the county line was a liquor store. He was bootlegging for the VFW… you recall I mentioned he was a Vet of the Pacific War. These guys did not give a shit about dry counties and such… they went to the VFW to get drunk. When you needed a few bucks you bootlegged to Big Springs to keep the well stocked at the VFW.

In 1980 or so Vernon Jones from Mississippi broke me out as a Driller in Southwest Florida… He said, and I quote, “if you are half the man your old man was, drunk or sober, then you will do ok.” I did ok until the United States Government decided that drilling for oil was not to it’s liking. Vernon is 83 now and lives just a mile or so from me… he has recently stopped drinking Old Charter which he had to special order. Like I mentioned… I prefer Old Crow… maybe its an Oil Field thing… Hughe’s bits, National Iron and Folger’s coffee… that’s the the oil field stud… and there ain’t no carpenters in the oil field.

I’m kind of a sissy by their standards… but then I have the internet…

My orange Old Fashioned…

a squeezed orange quarter

2 oz Old Crow Kentucky Bourbon

1/2 oz Demerara syrup

Ice… stirred

Veterans of Foreign Wars were veterans of an era when they did not put sugar in their whiskey. They treated their negro bootleggers with respect.

I did not know my dad’s bootlegger… he was, after all, a negro. And this was 1960.