What The Vintage Is Going On?
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
I’m sure you have all had this happen, maybe even this morning. For no particular reason a song just pops into your head. You might be in the shower, in the office, or just walking down the street when suddenly you are singing at the top of your lungs and the neighbourhood dogs are howling.
Most people, I mean normal folks, not musical connoisseurs like you and me, would think ‘I’ve always loved that song’ and hum a bar or two until they realize they don’t know any more than a half-dozen words and not much of the tune either. So they look around as if they are trying to figure out who was ruining a good song when everyone within a hundred yards knows who it was and finally they fake a coughing fit.
This morning I found myself singing one of the late Johnny Cash’s gospel numbers, ‘He changed the water into wine.’ It’s a catchy tune and one of his best. The song is great, however I have a problem with it, not the music, or the wedding in Canaan itself. It certainly isn’t with the couple getting married, after all they had been living together for four years and had three kids, one of each.
My problem is the wine itself!
I’m sure it was much appreciated by the guests and the bride’s parents would be overjoyed. And why wouldn’t they be? It no doubt saved them a few hundred talents, shekels, camel pelts, or whatever they used for cash 2,000 years ago.
What kind of wine?
What if He turned the water into Baby Duck, Gimli Goose, or one of those dreadful little box wines of the 70s underage teenagers drank through a plastic straw after their fathers figured out where the rye was going and locked it up in the liquor cabinet?
Can you imagine being at a wedding and the host brought out a barrel of that crap? And don’t forget the poor bride and groom! Throwing up a gallon of that stuff after the toasts is no way to begin a lifetime of wedded bliss.
What about the wine snobs in the crowd, there are always one or two couples at every wedding? They are the snotty guests who delight in sniffing corks in some of the better restaurants and sending the server back to the wine cellar.
Of course they do, and loudly too because the first sample was just a touch off from the bottle they remember from that exquisite little romantic street cafe in Provence forty years ago. The wine steward smiles, goes behind the bar, and rams a new cork into the same bottle, pours it, and they sip it and declare it better, much better as a matter of fact, and announce they will recommend it, and the sommelier too, to their friends.
What would they say about this water into wine concoction? Even a pretentious ass would think twice about insulting this particular wine. After all, look who made it.
“Excuse me, garcon, but what year is this swill?
“It was decanted about 20 minutes ago, sir, and please say ‘hello’ to the devil for me.”
Another thing, who paid the corkage? They didn’t buy the wine there. In some restaurants you can bring your own, but there will be a charge for using their glasses, their corkscrew, their ice bucket etc. I believe a Holy Grail is exempt.
And don’t forget the taxes, the village of Canaan has got to make a few bucks out of this too. Most of the price of booze in Ontario goes to the government. The booze itself is just a few bucks a bottle. I’m sure the C. R. A. (Canaan Revenue Agency) had its claws in there somewhere.
What was the alcohol content of this wine? What if it was close to cognac? That stuff can be dynamite, between 40 and 60 percent. Imagine falling on your ass after falling off your ass on the way home. The Pharisees were not known for leniency in those days.
I got a 12-hour suspension coming home from Joanne and Wilf Arnold’s wedding and that was from an Orillia cop and he knew me. I suspect he was being kind.
An odd thing about that wedding, I noticed the bartender had a halo around his head. Although now that I think about it, I had been drinking at the time.
(Image Supplied)
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