Guest writer

Dem booze blues

Pals brew up a business plan

Last summer, August I think, Barney and I were sitting under his Corona Beer beach umbrella in his backyard with our legs dangling in his new pool.

His old one had so many patches in it he couldn't keep it inflated, so he found one on eBay from some rancher in Wyoming. It was made of metal and had a picture of a cow on the side. He bid $35.75 and got it (plus shipping).

As we sat there swirling our sunburned legs in the tepid moss-green water to cool off, we were knocking down shots of rotgut on ice. No, that's not a euphemism. That is what it said on the label: "Rotgut." Barney found it on the bargain table in the back of the liquor store where he scavenges for cheap wine on Cheap Wine Wednesdays. The label also said it was distilled in some little Podunk in Tennessee. No, that's not a euphemism. That's the name of the town. Little Podunk, Tennessee.

The guy in the liquor store told Barney that he had been trying to sell the stuff for months. It was obvious that he was telling the truth because there were at least eight or nine orange mark-down price stickers plastered all over the bottle where he had been lowering the price on consecutive Cheap Wine Wednesdays, hoping that some sucker like Barney would stumble in and take it off his hands. At three bucks a bottle, Barney figured it was a pretty good deal, so he took all 27 bottles that the guy in the liquor store had in the back room.

As we worked our way through the afternoon, that bottle of Rotgut started to taste better and better with every ice-clinky sip. By the time the sun was calling it quits, so were we. We laid flat on our backs on the blue Wal-Mart tarp that Barney had spread around his Wyoming steel swimming pool with a picture of a cow on the side.

Barbie (Barney's wife) ventured out about midnight, not so much to see if we were OK, but to see if she could somehow quiet our dueling snore-a-thon. A second Wal-Mart blue tarp duct-taped over our heads muffled the reverberations enough to pacify the neighbors into putting down their cell phones, many of which were one digit away from calling the cops. Seems with all our snoring, they couldn't hear their dogs' incessant yelping.

I was resurrected the next morning to a clamorous Barney extolling the simple pleasures of life and what a beautiful day it was going to be with nothing but blue skies over our heads. After I tore the duct tape loose and pulled the blue Wal-Mart tarp from our faces, he realized that the skies were not blue after all. More of a sullen gray. Barbie had long since gone to work, so Barney and I slumped into my '86 Corolla and went to McDonald's for breakfast and coffee. Lots of coffee.

After the fourth or fifth cup of their lawsuit-hot house blend, Barney pushed his untouched Egg McMuffin aside and glanced at me with "The Look." It doesn't often occur, but when Barney flashes "The Look," it means a series (a series being more than two) of synapses just fired in his brain, and a grand plan was about to be pontificated.

"If some idiot in Podunk, Tennessee, can crank out rotgut that good, surely a couple of aficionados like us can do it too," he said as he pushed his Egg McMuffin over to me, remembering what happened the last time he introduced solid food to his morning-after stomach. He snatched a ballpoint pen from my plastic pocket protector and started scribbling numbers and diagrams on the back of a napkin. (He had read where some guy invented a computer while at Denny's doing the same thing.)

By the time we left McDonald's, our plans were set. We would be the first major distiller of whiskey in our part of the state. Barney even had our corporate name all figured out: POTGUT. He said he got his inspiration from me.

By the time Barbie arrived home, we had removed everything from their garage and stacked it on the front lawn. Barney had chalk lines drawn where all the supplies and machinery would go.

As you can imagine, Barbie was furious when she saw her pink golf cart parked by the mailbox. However, being a lawyer, she has long since divorced herself of any emotion and calmly asked us what the hell we were up to this time.

Barney explained our big plans for Potgut. When she finally stopped laughing, she explained to us that it would take years to file all the paperwork and permit applications with the federal and state bureaucrats.

You have to understand one thing about Barney. He is one of those instant-gratification guys. Long-term to him is a couple of days at most. "Years" is untenable. As Barbie's words slowly sank in, I saw it again. "The Look."

He ran to their bathroom and returned with a half-empty bottle of mouthwash. The little fellow was right. There it was on the label. The stuff was nearly 40 proof.

We wouldn't be needing any federal permits or state licenses. We were going to make mouthwash. Really good mouthwash.

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Bill Rausch is a freelance writer from Little Rock. Email him at [email protected].

Editorial on 07/26/2014

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