Tweet of the Day, Print The Legend edition.

I don’t know if this is true, and I will not be checking to see if it is. I don’t care if it’s not true, either. If it isn’t, it should be. This is part of our founding mythology; and that’s a truth all on its own.

Moe Lane

4 thoughts on “Tweet of the Day, Print The Legend edition.”

  1. It’s better not to look to deep at such things that feel so true, so you don’t have to check, but as a bartender and a historian I can confirm it’s truth. I have a collection of old bartending guides and drink recipes and our forbearers but modern Americans to SHAME.
    Teetotaling was the first expression of totalitarianism in this country and far to many of today’s social ills trace their roots directly to it.
    Drink more, and trust know one who doesn’t for a happier and healthier America.

  2. I’ve seen this verified twice (by both a journalist and a historian) by people who able to find documents to back it up here in Philadelphia. The Founding Fathers put us to shame, as Bensdad00 says (remember, in those days, a certain amount of drink was considered “fortifying” or “medicinal”).
    The one that really got me was the estimated throughput in Tun’s Tavern, where the Marine Corps was born. That sounded more like an automated pickling operation than a neighborhood watering hole.

    1. We laugh today at Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, but sailors before the mast in the age of sail lived a life that was – to coopt a phrase – nasty, brutish, and short.
      Anyone with a yen for high-seas adventure and connected and qualified enough to be a Marine did so, since doing so sidestepped the more tedious and dangerous daily activities (holystones, three or four watches a day, sail and rope work) and replaced them with the less tedious – albeit more intermittently dangerous – life of a soldier.

      PS – are we founding a local chapter of the ML fan club here in Penn’s faire towne or does one already exist of which I am unaware?

    2. And drink really was healthy in comparison to the other options of the day. Water wasn’t flouridated. Milk wasn’t pasteurized (Lincoln’s mother died due to drinking milk that had been tainted by something that the cow ate). The wide array of flavorful non-alcoholic drinks that we enjoy today largely didn’t exist (and the ones that did were highly seasonal; when out of season, they became… /drumroll … alcohol!).

      So alcohol was your primary option.

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