There’s not much more to be said of the past year, and since the new one isn’t even a week old, I’d prefer not to comment too much or even try to predict any turn of events. Life has not felt normal for a long time and frankly, I’m tired of trying to make any sense of things right now. Instead, I just want to reflect on something small. A martini.
My dad’s regular drink was a dirty martini. Medium dry, Beefeater’s Gin, with a drizzle of Vermouth, a splash of olive juice and as the piece de resistance, those gorgeous, juicy, green olives with just a peek of red pimento winking at me. He’d come home from work, call for my mom to join him upstairs while he changed clothes and they spent a few private moments together. Then it was back down to the kitchen to mix that perfectly glamorous drink while my mom finished preparing dinner. I’d hang around, hoping for a taste of the olive at the end. Year after year he’d simply tell me I was too young, while I watched him sip that tantalizing concoction. Finally, the day came when he handed over the olive. Aaaah! I’d finally made it! I took the fruit from his toothpick and popped it into my mouth, sucked on it for a few minutes, then nibbled it bit by bit, savoring the tang of the gin with the saltiness of the olive.
To this day, a dirty martini is my decadent pleasure. Just the look of the triangle shaped glass with the olives perched on their toothpick inside the slightly cloudy drink of gin and Vermouth, makes me think of my dad driving into the garage in his Chevy Malibu, of our Delta Green shag carpet, our paneled den where I’d watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show, my mom made up, hair done, dressed for going out. Yep, the late 1960s and early 1970s were groovy times, at least to me.
In retrospect, though, they were also troubled years filled with social unrest, presidential scandals, assassinations, air pollution and some really groundbreaking protest songs. As a late baby boomer, I was ill equipped to participate actively in the struggles of my older cousins to move the needle from the heady post-war (WWII) years to bridge the Generation Gap and herald the new age of technology just on the horizon. But I watched from the sidelines as they marched, protested, chanted and sang about the wrongs they believed needed to be put right. Those years shaped me, too, just like my dad’s dirty martini. Part bitter, part tart, a little sweetness and at the end, an olive plucked from that marinade. Every evening mix and repeat.
About Barbara Dab
Barbara Dab is a journalist, broadcast radio personality, producer and award-winning public relations consultant. She is the Editor of The Jewish Observer of Nashville, and a former small business owner. Barbara loves writing, telling stories of real people and real events and most of all, talking to people all over the world. The Jewish Observer newspaper can be read online at www.jewishobservernashville.org .
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