Getting my 'mojo' back

Nearly everyone has a drinking story from their younger/wilder days that they tell with a mixture of nostalgia and nausea.  Such stories invariably recall a particular liquor/mixed drink by name... and usually end with words to the effect of "... and I haven't been able to even look at [insert name of liquor/mixed drink here] since!"

I consider myself lucky in that my first real experiment with drinking took place with my best friend, and involved mixing a shot of nearly everything in my parent's liquor cabinet into a soda bottle.  I call this 'lucky' because when one embarks on such a right of passage alone with a close friend, there is none of the false bravado that normally accompanies drinking in a more public setting.  I also use the word 'lucky', because there were so many competing flavors in that soda bottle (everything from bourbon to kirschwasser to rye to banana liqueur) that when the inevitable happened, I had no single culprit at which to point my finger and say "I'm never going to even look at that again!" 

I am fairly sure that this childhood friend will read this here, so I'll play it safe with the details.  Suffice it to say we each drank about 14 shots of this vile mixture... insisting the entire time that neither of us felt any different... and then decided that it would be a good idea to take a break after said 14 shots for a brisk walk in the newly fallen late-evening snow (he was sleeping over at my house that night).

I lived on a dead-end street in the middle of the woods, so we had the honor of walking through the virgin snow in the silence of a snowy New England night.  I don't recall either of us talking during our walk up the street... we simply walked side by side... straight up the middle of the snow-covered street.

On the way back down the street I noticed that our tracks in the snow were far from straight.  There were several places where one or both of us had either fallen down or perhaps tried to execute an impromptu face-down snow angel.  There were also a couple of steaming splashes in the snow that looked amazingly like asterisks where one or both of us had successfully purged our young bodies of the poison. 

When we were nearly back to my house my older sister drove down the street from wherever she had been for the evening and stopped to ask us what we were doing.  It was only while we stood talking with her that I realized I had no shoes on!

If you believe in the axiom 'G-d looks after drunks and children', then we benefited from double protection that evening. 

The only reason I am sharing this story with you is because that evening taught me a very valuable lesson about over-indulgence, and I can count on two hands (OK, maybe toss in a foot) the number of times in my life that I have gotten 'shouting at my shoes' drunk. 

Not bad for 44 years.

I was hugely impressed/scared by the almost total loss of control which came with large-scale alcohol consumption, and I can honestly say it has tempered my behavior ever since.

From that time to this I have never had to swear off a particular beverage/concoction.  I went through a period of over two decades where I couldn't even look at pineapples (a story for another time), but the rum with which the offending pineapples had been mixed never bothered me. 

In fact, one of the more memorable drinks (one that was responsible for at least 5 of the fingers mentioned in the paragraph above) was one I discovered while I was in the Navy (in the Philippines, to be exact) which was a mixture so wicked that I actually bribed a bartender for the recipe before finishing up my last tour through the Western Pacific.

The name of that drink was 'Mojo'.

As far as I can tell, Mojo was invented at a bar called Jolo's in Subic Bay (on the famous/infamous Magsaysay Drive in Olongapo).  A lot of sailors called Mojo 'the sitting sickness', because you could sit and drink it for hours and not feel any the worse for wear.  But the moment you got up and tried to walk...

A few years after I got out of the navy I tried out my recipe for Mojo on a bunch of college friends at Yeshiva University.  Not only was it well received, but many of the guys from the dorm immortalized the recipe on a t-shirt that closely approximated the color of the drink. 

Making up that shirt was one of those childish things that college boys do... and for years most of us cherished that t-shirt.  Long after mine had started to come apart at the seams, I couldn't bear to throw it out... so it sat in my dresser drawer.  But during one of my many moves it either got lost or tossed [looks accusingly towards wife]. 

So, imagine my delight when an old college friend (and recent addition to the treppenwitz roundtable) sent me an e-mail to tell me that he still had his Mojo t-shirt... and even sent along a picture of his lovely daughter Meital modeling the shirt:

... and of course, the recipe on the back (click to enlarge):

For those who can't make out the recipe:

Mojo:
6 oz. Gin
6 oz. Rum
6 oz. Vodka
4 oz. Whiskey
16 oz. Cherry Liqueur
2 bottle San Miguel Beer
16 oz. Pineapple Juice
16 oz. Orange Juice
12 oz. 7-Up

Serve Chilled

It speaks volumes about this beverage that my friend managed to hold on to the shirt for almost 20 years... through college, medical school, residency, marriage and kids! 

Perhaps you also have a fond (or not so fond) memory of youthful overindulgence you carry around with you.  Care to share?

[Note:  This post is not intended to encourage or sanction drinking to excess.  In fact, if anything... I would hope it would do quite the opposite!  Please keep your health - and your sense of humor - intact.]