DUST MY PUMICE

Old Crow

A Bigger Winner Than You've Ever Suspected

(R. Meltzer is, in our opinion, one of the true luminaries of the literary scene. He has appeared in these pages often over the past few years, as well as those of other magazines too diverse and numerous to name. He has had several books published as well, including a new one, Gulcher, which is reviewed elsewhere in this issue. His surreal, ubex-conscious autobiography, entitled Caned Out, is supposed to be published as a Fusion book by Outerbridge and Lazard in the not-too-distant-future. The purpose of all this is to introduce Meltzer’s column for CREEM, the first of which is here before you. If you are not already familiar with his style, this should give you a taste (or perhaps we should say swig) of what he is up to.

By the way, Meltzer’s first name is Richard and he lives in the wilds of New York City. - Ed.)

Is it possible to puke in mid-sneeze? If not, then you would hold back the vomit by sneezing and let snuff supply the sneeze. You can’t sneeze if your eyes are open — that’s a rule of science — so don’t keep your eyes open if you can help it. And certainly don’t drink anything that will have this effect on your peepers. Barfing is often an occupational hazard for the non-professional drinker, the drinker for pleasure who suddenly finds his stomach in sad shape due to some miscalculation or other. But let’s leave such inevitability for another day.

Old Crow is no eye opener, that’s for sure. Nor will it, if used correctly, lead you to the barfroom floor. So observe the rules yourself and, if you’d,like to play a trick on others, here’s a good idea. Take the distinctive Old Crow bottle itself. It’s the one that’s more than just a bottle, even in pint size, what with that real great crow emblazoned on the glass itself. No not on the glass, it’s more like in the glass or part of the glass. Mighty handsome piece of glass is what it is. You can keep and use it for a long time after you’ve finished off the contents. And that’s the point. Here’s what you do: you take that famous bottle and fill it up with an alcoholic liquid of undependable nature. The unknowing drinker will be fooled into thinking it to be the world famous Old Crow, which he has come to expect great things of. Instead, won’t he be in for a surprise!

And just what is this outstanding reputation all about? Even a child knows that the greats of our North American past preferred Old Crow over all other bourbons far and wide, even though the very name bourbon has the sting of French royalty. But dudes the likes of Andy Jackson, Daniel Webster and Hank Clay sure were bluebloods in their own right. So you wouldn’t expect them to settle for just anything in their glass. Are you big enough to step into their shoes? Say you are because this is a free country and you’re in for a real treat., hpnest to God!

Does it taste like shampoo? No. It tastes more like shampoo in a bottle that used to contain rubbing alcohol. And it looks like Breck shampoo, not a true major league shampoo at all. All I know is it’s easy to drink, real easy, too easy if you ask me. Look, I been published, publicized, all that, but I tell you I’d rather drink Old Crow than write a famous book. It has a heck of a lot to do with how easy it is to drink. How surprisingly easy.

It’s so easy to dump down your throat that a) either it’s a baffling new and exciting event for the long-time drinker or b) it’s some nice and easy first hit of bourbon for the uninitiated boozer, maybe even a poor first which will only lead to disappointment at the occasion of other whiskeys. Maybe it’s even a below-average bourbon but it hits the right note: below average is the whole (booze) story anyway, so how can you lose?

Folks used to gather around the,TV set to discover “dope films” they had seen before but never realized the import of. But how about booze films, there have been a pretty large number of pure booze films you know. Them is one of the great booze films of all time, including 1954. It stars not only James Whitmore but also James Arness (Peter Graves’s brother) and Edmund Gwenn, who once played Santa Claus (Miracle on 34th Street). Add to that the fact that it’s all about giant ants and you’ve got a suspense-filled monster thriller booze movie. One of the great stars of the whole movie is the guy who identifies that it was ants from the drunk ward of someplace or other. He even says that it was “ants,” no doubt about it, and then he tells em what it is he really wants: “Make me a sergeant, give me the booze!” One great guy. Another great booze line occurs when Jim Arness first hits the scene. They ask him why his FBI (he’s an agent) hasn’t come up the any clues. He says something about when he made out his application he never bargained for whatever it is, and neither did the FBI. Edmund Gwenn is the world’s greatest vermicologist, not even just an entomologist' or even a lepidopterist. James Arness asks Edmund Gwenij’s daughter: “Why don’t we all just speak English? Maybe then we’d know what we’re talking about.” A great movie and just imagine if you were watching it on Old Crow!

There’s another great movie, Not of This Earth, where these drunken guys off the street get invites to this creepy guy’s house and then they get zapped by his eyes (a killer ray). There are three of them, 2 get it first the third guy sees it and says they’re dead drunk. Also: The Invasion of the Saucer Men, it’s about teenagers vs. outer space weirdees, teenagers don’t drink but everybody thinks they do, it gets verified when these outer space guys inject pure alcohol into their system and then they get caught for drunken driving and nobody believes em about aliens or anything. Tough luck, that’s what drinking’ll get ya. Booze has been respected for generations, seeing films will show you that, so if you’re juiced up while you see them you’ll really get the point.

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Hence, Old Crow will do the job for you in one big hell of a jiffy. Lickity split in fact. One swig after another and it all adds up, you can even feel it in mid-swig as the addition that puts you over the hump, into oblivion. Even after clarity has been exhausted, each new additional post-clarity hit will let you feel its presence, and how! You’re way past causality, you won’t know a cause from an effect from Adam. But every once in a while (maybe you’ll even skip a shot or two) it’ll all come crystal clear as the physicality of the hit opens your senses for a micro-second or 2. Maybe every other causal link you end up with will be mere delusion, great! Not only does it distort for you but it only temporarily

distorts, or even occasionally distorts, basically it’s just a matter of sleep and minor moments of being awake. Some stuff!

Drink enuff of the stuff and it’s easy as dust to see how Andy Jackson got all his ideas and butter and that US Grant was the best president of the one the only USA. He was drunk all the time and in later times idiots said he was drunk cause he had cancer and was trying to kill the pain: causality! Weird as a pillow, just weird that’s all.

In Birth of a Nation they show you what reconstruction did to the world and how it led to barefoot spades in Congress drinking their pints, what a great metaphor, like if it only were true! That’s almost as great as the Mr. Peabody fake histories on the Bullwinkle Show: the alcoholic history of alcoholics superimposing other people’s alcohol on other people’s history.

If you light a stick match, blow it out and stick it into water right away you can sniff it and what do you think it will smell like? It’ll smell like ham!! Can you belive that? You’ll probably believe it right off the bat if you’re on Old Crow, whereas if it was anything else it would take two sniffings. Can you hallucinate on it? Well, it all depends upon how you define things, what would you say about thinking that Sayre Ross and Nelson Rockefeller were one and the same? And it would have to be some stuff to make you forget that Fess Parker was also in Them, wouldn’t it?

There was a party last spring. On top of an entire whole building on Manhattan Island. The Beekman Towers, 49 floors or something. It was a press party for It’s A Beautiful Day, they gave out flowers, they gave out booze. They gave out so much booze and they gave it out on order: Columbia must’ve told em to refill every glass under the sun, get em drunk so they’ll like the product. But nobody knew to expect that, booze was used as a surprise, people were barfing, people were throwing glasses over the side, everybody loved It’s A Beautiful Day, they couldn’t help it even if they never heard it. Booze is what did it and in years gone by folks would’ve brought their own. Nowadays they neither bring their own nor expect it. Specially not for free. Sometimes you gotta pay a buck a drink. And more than half the time they have one or fewer brands of bourbon aboard. Old Granddad, Jim Beam, if it’s ever Old Crow who’d believe it? Jack Daniels sometimes makes the scene, every mother drinks it but not one time in NYC was it Old Crow. There’s no reason for this,' if you complain by mail and sign your name in ink they might reconsider. It’s up to you. The name of every record company is in the New York telephone book. Either look them up one by one or use the yellow pages. That way you’ll get both the address and the phone number. You can write directly to the companies by mail or phone directly over the wires and ask for the publicity departments or the promo departments or whatever department it is.

Make believe you had a dream last nite. Paul Williams was there dressed in red velvet and his usual hair telling a large crowd to take acid. But someone must Tiave told him similarly. It could have been six months ago, it could have been four years ago, but somewhere along the line there was an Owsley who said drop acid to Paulie himself. And Owsley himself looks up at Hoffman. So people respect precedents, and with Old Crow no one knows who invented it. So the only people you can ask about it are the men of the Old South. They were some Jim Dandies, they knew their oats and they did not drink mint juleps. They drank Old Crow; they did Mad used to do a parody on Old Crow ads, they called it Old Craw and the only other booze ads they made much of was Canadian Club: both ads boast a lot. Canadian Club boasts geography. People the world over drink it. Old Crow boasts history. People within a few hundred thousand square miles of each other once had a rave-up over it. Those people are all dead and gone. If they had a bad word about it you’d never know in a million years. All you know is once upon a time they had a real good word about it. If you can think of a reason not to try it then mister you’re a better man than I. I say drink the stuff right now or, if the stores are all closed at this late hour, first thing tomorrow.

If you think your comrades on the jbb will jeer you if you hit the scene with a pint of Old Crow then just smile back and, when you get the chance, offer them a swig. If they reject you and laugh take a swig yourself and show them how, even laugh back at them Watch the envy on their faces as they see you enjoy. You may get fired when the boss or his flunkies see the fun you’re having on office time but it’ll be worth it. You’ll dare but you won’t care. Remember the name: Old Crow.