In another thread, Havana Moon and I got to discussing Frank Sinatra. I mentioned an essay I had written (that got published by a couple of newspapers)...and decided to post it here. It was a personal remembrance of Sinatra on the anniversary of his death. The voice was unmistakable even though he was speaking rather than singing. He was saying, “Excuse me, sir. Sir!” I turned and saw Frank Sinatra heading across the lawn toward me. He had his arm extended in my direction—a half-filled rocks glass in his hand. “Would you mind freshening this for me, please,” he said, “just some ice, no more booze.” The part about “no more booze” was delivered with that mischievous grin he used at least once in almost every movie he ever made. The thought that ran through my mind was, “Would I mind? I’ll brag to my friends about it!”, but the professional bartender in me took control and all I actually said was, “Sure thing, Mr. Sinatra.” Bartenders and waiters doing gigs at posh parties often get to rub shoulders with the stars and movers of our world—and I was encountering the great Frank Sinatra at this particular get-together. It was being held on a magazine-cover estate in the Hamptons owned by Mrs. I-Got-Lotsa-Bucks who was just back from China with a couple of lion statues that everybody was gushing over. Sinatra was the guest of honor—accompanied by his wife Barbara, Gregory Peck and his wife. Peck, by the way, declined my offer to get him something from the bar with, “No thank you. A young lady is already getting me a beer.” His voice was the same deep, mellow velvet you hear in his movies and I swear to you, it sounded like a line from Shakespeare. At the time, I was an instructor at a bartending school in Manhattan. The call for five experienced waiter/bartenders for the private party had come in two weeks earlier and I quickly put together a crew of three instructors, myself being one, and two advanced students. Mrs. Lotsabucks had called the school personally and had gone out of her way to stress that Sinatra was to be her guest of honor—so as you can imagine, we were all very excited. And she had made an unusual request: Would we make up a drink to honor her distinguished guest? Well, we were the largest bartending school in the world and on any given day there were more than 100 student bartenders working behind three very well stocked (with colored water) bars. We certainly had plenty of talent to work on the request; so we had a competition. As the supervising instructor, I was the sole judge. And in an incredible stroke of good fortune, I also won the contest. Hey! Lemme tell you about it and you decide if my decision was on the mark! During the setup to the contest, I told everybody to concentrate on the name of the drink. Ingredients are secondary to names when dealing with fad drinks. A Harvey Wallbanger, Fuzzy Navel, Sex on the Beach and all that lot didn’t get popular by tasting better than other drinks. They just had names that attracted.
Nobody listened to me. They all put together weird concoctions (mostly with Jack Daniels, Sinatra’s favorite liquor, as a main ingredient) and almost none of them tagged a name to their entry. I, on the other hand, simply dropped a shot of Blue Curacao liqueur into a standard Vodka Collins and claimed victory. Blue Curacao is a liqueur made from the peels of tiny blue oranges grown on the Caribbean Island of Curacao; including it gives every drink a beautiful, pale blue color. So we had a pale blue drink in a frosted glass filled with ice…and the name, Ol’ Blue Ice!” Tell me that ain’t a winner. Sinatra never did get to taste one. In fact, when we got to the gig, which featured two beautiful mermaids (they wore tails, but no tops) sitting on a structure built into the center of the swimming pool, the hostess decided not to go with the special drink and didn’t even want to know what we had come up with. I guess she didn’t want the other famous guests (Peck and Cary Grant were there) thinking they were not special.
At one point late in the party, Frank and Barbara Sinatra again approached me. He didn’t want anything; she did, but didn’t know just what. While she was mulling over her choices, I had the perfect opportunity to suggest an Ol’ Blue Ice, but lost my nerve.
I think the hostess and I both screwed up big time. Now he’s gone, he would have turned 100 in December of (the year I wrote this) and all I have is this story. I enjoyed the PBS special on him last month; I suspect many people my age did. Anyway, sometime this week I’ll make myself an Ol’ Blue Ice and sip it down in his memory. I know where I keep the Sinatra CD’s…now I gotta remember what I did with the Blue Curacao?
