Cooling off

I was reared in a family of inveterate George Booth fans, from my grandparents on down. Booth’s cartoons appeared for decades in the New Yorker and before that, during his Marine career, in the Marine magazine Leatherneck. I never saw a Booth cartoon I didn’t love, but a few stand out, and you can Google them because I refuse to use art I don’t have permission to use . . .

1. An amiable doofus sitting on the front steps of a city home, wordlessly gawping at a sweet young thing wandering by. In the doorway behind him, an older woman — likely his exasperated mother — exhorts him: “Whistle, you dumb bastard!”

2. The crackpot popping up out of a city manhole inexplicably wearing a knit pom-pom hat and thundering the immortal words of Percy Bysshe Shelley at the passing vehicles: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

3. Any cartoon of several cartoons featuring Mrs. Ritterhouse, allegedly based on Booth’s own crackpot mother. Mrs. Ritterhouse is a ferociously enthusiastic amateur musician, and these cartoons tend to feature her in rehearsal in someone’s living room in which there may or may not be featured an unexplained bathtub in the background. In one, the conductor says to the group, “From the top. Let’s slam it out and give Mrs. Ritterhouse a chance to really cook!”

So when I was a goofball of only 20 years of age, I came up with my own homage to Booth as seen here:

On both pages, I describe it as Booth-like, which was a gargantuan presumption on my part, but I did it out of an honest love of our George. I can’t recall if I sent it to him care of the New Yorker. I unearthed it when doing a super-thorough, weeks-long clean/organize session of my home office and what fun it was to see it again!

Cooling off can also involve a delicious cocktail I can almost guarantee you’ve never had or heard of. I invented it over a decade ago and gave it one of my daughter’s nicknames. I have asked four different bartenders of my acquaintance and not a one had ever heard of, or made, a cocktail involving balsamic vinegar. I really like it! And so does Sparky.

SPARKY COCKTAIL

YIELD: 2 cocktails

1 cup (8 ozs.) 100% cherry juice or cranberry-cherry juice — not “juice cocktail”

2 jiggers (3 ozs.) vodka

1 to 2 Tablespoons (1/2 oz. to 1 oz.) balsamic vinegar

Juice of 1 whole lemon (about 1 oz.)

2 Tablespoons (1 oz.) tart cherry concentrate

Several maraschino cherries, crushed

Stir together all ingredients except maraschino cherries. Divide evenly between two tall glasses already filled with ice. Garnish with maraschino cherries and serve.

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