Quote:
Originally Posted by wodin
Ahhhh, Ouzo... Bottled psychosis, generally available in Mediterranean ports of call. The stuff used to be (before about 1970 or so) laced with some form of opiate, and would put the hardest drinkers down hard. It was declared "off limits" to American sailors, but that didn't stop us from partaking.
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The stuff the lady I mentioned earlier brought wasn't Ouzo - it was distilled in Finland.
An old friend spent a summer in college working for a crazy Greek outfit that had a contract to paint a bridge over the Delaware between Philadelphia and New Jersey. It was a long term contract - they'd start at one end, and by the time they got to the other, the start side needed attention again.
The workers would go to a Greek bar on South Street in Philly and drink Ouzo. At one point, a painter had apparently had a little too much Ouzo the previous night. He managed to knock his bucket of paint off his scaffold.
As it happened, there was a tugboat pushing a barge upriver, and a deckhand laying back on the barge sunning himself. The barge passed under the bridge at just the right moment and he got a full body paint job.
Another old friend has a part time job as a representative of a French spirits importer. (The owners are old friends.) They import Armagnac, Cognac, and a French single malt whisky. They apparently now also import a brand of Absinthe, banned here because of adverse reactions like psychosis. The stuff the French outfit imports apparently
doesn't contain the active ingredient that can produce such reactions.
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Dennis