Libby's Way: A Family's Caribbean Adventure

By Elizabeth Richelsen, John Richelsen and Patricia Wyble

“Libby’s Way” all started when my mother yelled in exasperation “Let’s get a boat and sail away.” This was in 1949 and the beginning of a crazy family adventure. The boat became an 80 foot navy surplus PT #614. My mother with her trusty Remington typewriter kept a running story of our adventures. Her literary skills are full of wit and humor as she relives this journey. We went from New Jersey to Nassau to Port au Prince Haiti. We had a horse, goats, chickens, dogs and other livestock as we lived amongst the Haitians enjoying their meager existence and struggling to build a charcoal factory.

This was a fascinating journey with many turns in the road and a GREAT read for all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781312701441

Book preview

Libby’s Way: A Family’s Caribbean Adventure

First Edition

Copyright © 2023 All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-312-70144-1

INTRODUCTION

By John Richelsen

The adventure you are about to embark on is different than any other you have heard or read. I am safe in saying this because no family has lived the adventure that I did in my youth. The original manuscript was written by my mother over 60 years ago and it is time that you too should be able to enjoy and marvel at this family saga. It all began when I was about seven years old and my mother, tired of being a mother and housewife, on a whim said Why do we live like this! Why can't we have a boat and sail away from it all. These may not seem like immortal words but to my dad it was music to his ears.

It was 1949, I was about seven years old, my older sister Lise was eleven and my younger sister was just getting ready for formal schooling. In fast forwarding the next few years this is what happened. My family, The Richelsen's, consisting of three children and a Great Dane found that boat and sailed away throughout the Caribbean. We converted it into a houseboat and traveled down the inland waterways to Florida.

By now you must be wondering what backgrounds my unique and seemingly crazy parents came from. My mother moved from her hometown in New Jersey to New York City when she was in her mid 20's. She started out by living in Hell's Kitchen and worked as a puppeteer at a Day Care center. From there she became interested in being an artist and attended the Art Students League. My mother continued to pursue a career of painting and writing while living in Greenwich Village with four male roommates. Her art was considered modern during that era and Bohemian in nature. My sisters and I have kept many of her paintings. A good example of her art is one that she painted in 1938-40 that is about 6ft tall. The background is a mountain with a black person walking up a trail with a white child in tow. The foreground is a group of black people lynching a white person which typifies the description of Bohemian. Another painting shows a mother nursing her baby with blood droplets coming out of her breast. Mom had this painting hanging in our home in New Jersey way up high on the wall of a circular stairway. She added blood droplets down the wall and a small puddle of blood on the steps.

My Dad meanwhile went to the University of Buffalo and got his degree in mathematical logic. After graduating he worked in a variety of jobs such as a radio announcer, reporter and writer for the newspaper, playwright for Broadway shows, and technical writer in a variety of chemical related jobs. Throughout his life my dad was always searching for that pot of gold moving from one venture to another. He typified the example of a self-taught person. When he met my mother in the city, he was preparing for a canoe trip from the New York City to Nome Alaska with two of his friends with the intent of documenting and reporting the expedition.

After falling in love with each other he paddled off with his friends. My mother would follow his progress on the map and then on the weekends would drive to his location and wave to him from the overlooking bridges. Needless to say, the headlines in the local newspapers said Cupid interrupts canoe expedition as they were married one weekend in Winnipeg Canada. The honeymoon was spent in a tent with the other canoeists. This then became the roots of our existence.

And now for the rest of the story in my mother's words.

FROM THINKERS TO DOERS

None of this story would have been written, had I not married into a family of professional writers. From them I learned that some people received money for expressing themselves. I had been expressing myself for years. It was not until after marriage that I became aware of writing as a source of income. I had looked on it only as something one puts into letters. I still think and write much better if I commence with a Dear So and So and polish it off with a Sincerely Yours. Along with my timid attempts at writing I found that I enjoyed to paint. Of course, nothing can explain away an attic full of paintings that I have expressed myself in at various times. I have been given to understand artists are not usually famous until after their death. With this in mind I stopped painting lest I weaken my market by over production. My only other self-expression was done with the cooperation of my husband Mark. We managed to turn out three children in twice as many years. This activity, like adolescence, has a tendency to dull other forms of creative ability. And so, we have three children fondly blessed as Lise, John and Emee. With the youngest being Emee finally able to tie her shoes and button her pants it was only natural that expressing myself should crop out again.

This family adventure had its beginning while the whole family convalesced from my latest operation.

I should interject here that my mother will occasionally lapse into her homemade poetry throughout this story most of which I found informative and amusing.

The convalescent is seldom effervescent.

I was not an exception.

"The convalescent is a horrid creature,

Lines and bags surround each feature.

Lipstick to bright, in a face too white,

A conversation ends in a fight.

Her hair's a mess, her clothes don't fit,

And she complains too much of it.

She's either restless or needs rest,

The convalescent at best's a pest."

I think I can claim the only hysterectomy in medical history that brought about a change of life for an entire family, including the biggest member, Guard our Great Dane.

It all started one morning when I was in a hot tub, feeling sorry for myself. Partly because I was ill, but mostly because Mark had left the shower gadget turned on, and I had planned on a tub bath. I discovered this by the simple method of getting my head soaked when I turned on the water. Suddenly dripping with sorrow and suds I bellowed, Why do we live like this! Why can’t we have a boat and sail away from it all.

Poor Mark, already uneasy, due to the unexpected shower, on his unreasonable wife, thought it probably was just some additional ravings of my mechanical change of life. However, having tried for twelve years to sell me on the idea of a boat, he was only too happy to humor me. Hardly giving me time to dry, much less complete my recovery, he dragged me off before I could change my mind. In his other hand, luckily, he clutched the World Telegram classified section, with the boat ads.

Folks usually settle back and wait for their ships to come in, but we did not. We charged out after ours so we could use it for sailing away purposes. What a summer we all had. Our children, Lise, John, and Emee (or Mark Ellen for scolding) were at ages running from ten on down to five and Guard the Great Dane was a babe of three. Mark and I were married in our late thirties after having eloped at a late date in our youth.  We had to look at many sizes and shapes of boats in order to find one to accommodate us all.

In the beginning my total nautical knowledge was that some boats need pieces of cloth to make them go and that others did not. The only kind I had ever been in were propelled along with sticks that looked like stretched out ping pong paddles.

Many boats that we saw were in such condition, as to be hauled up on shore. I hoped (out loud) that we did not buy one of these, because it seemed such a long way up the ladder and over the side. It was then I learned that boats in water, like icebergs, have more to them than meets the eye. I took my fresh new surgical job up so many ladders and over so many sides that I soon became tough and a renewed joy to my family.

We were home long enough to sleep and earn a living. Home to us at the time was Nutley New Jersey where Mark commuted to New York City to earn our living as a technical writer. We had a Christmas tree farm in upstate New York that we used as a summer home.

Every weekend found us up and away. Like a sailor we had a sweetheart in every port. We paid a tidy deposit on a forty-seven-foot honey with rather elderly, but graceful lines. It was too small for a family of five, not counting the animal, but it could do. It took the owner quite a while to make up his mind as to our price. We had ignored his.

During this period of waiting Mark found what was to become the joy of our lives, PT #614. She soon charmed us so completely on all counts, that we forgot about the forty-seven-footer. She was as much too large for us as the other was too small. She was eighty feet long with a twenty-foot beam. What really clinched the deal was that she was owned by two young men, fresh out of the Navy, who wanted a farm, and we had a farm. So, the impossible trade happened, they took our one hundred and twenty-five acre Christmas tree farm and we took the PT. This to me was the epitome of bartering for no money exchanged hands. I hope they had as much fun out of their end of the bargain as we had with ours.

We promptly named her Hyacinth, not knowing at the time that water hyacinths were such pests in southern waters. In the beginning our intentions of owning a PT were of the mildest. As this story unravels you will find that as a family, we Richelsen's treated life the same way. While everyone else seemed to know that PT stood for Patrol Torpedo, I did not and had to be informed. Thanks to my limited knowledge of such matters, I treated the whole business rather lightly.

I remember the first time we were to inspect her I merrily threw a trip to the zoo into the days already crowded plans. The results were somewhat like jamming jelly sandwiches into a full picnic basket. I did not seem to realize that visiting a PT was a major expedition in itself.

For some reason the Central Park animals in the city were allowed to sleep late on Sunday morning. With the exception of an occasional restless Polar Bear or Gnu, all we saw were lazy balls of fur in the corners of the cages. We spent the morning feeding the pigeons in the park. When the buildings finally opened at eleven o'clock, swarms of pigeons tried to enter with us. Our time was so short, that we had to romp through the works like a family of antelopes, in order to get back downtown to meet Daddy for lunch.

The boat was anchored at far away Flushing Bay, near the site of the 1939 World's Fair. Even as we crossed the wide parking lot, she looked immense in the distance. To my dismay, I could see no fence around her edges. I also noticed a complete lack of portholes. I thought they let water into the bowels of the ship, at high tide, and this naturally gave me some misgivings about them. Now that I understood their proper function as a peephole, I was not willingly buying a boat without any. The fact that we had to travel over water in a small boat, in order to reach the ship, did not please me at all. At this stage I looked on water outside of bathtubs, only as something I might fall into, or worse yet spill our children into. With this in mind I insisted then and there on the purchase of lifejackets. The only size the harbor master could produce were life size, something our children were not.  We bundled them in anyhow, and they looked all the world like football players without legs. They now extended so far and wide, that the danger of falling over the side was much increased as they exuberantly bumped each other.

Having been taught as a small child to remain seated while in small boats, I uneasily climbed in and conducted myself properly. Little did I know then, that this very dinghy was to contain me for the rest of my natural life at sea. When we reached the side of PT #614 she loomed up at me like a huge white elephant. I had been up plenty of boarding ladders all summer, but the absence of a handrail on deck made me less enthusiastic about this one. Since I could not possibly use the ladder in a sitting position, I was forced to stand up in order to climb the darned thing. Having been conditioned not to ever, I hated standing up in small boats. They all felt so loose under me. Feeling about as secure as a stocking without a garter, I climbed aboard our future home.

The children had already been handed up and were bouncing around on deck like animated balloons. Not me however (I know it should read I, but me better describes my feelings at the moment) walking as on eggs I herded them to the center of the ship, least we capsize it by all being on one edge. Mark naturally stood by anxious to show me all eighty by twenty feet of her deck. My chief concern was with keeping my own two from getting wet. Gingerly I viewed the deck with my husband and suspicion.

I was happy and surprised to go below. Surprised because I thought the absence of portholes would render the below useless. Light came in through the hatches, and through the deck ports, which were little squares of glass inserted flush with the deck. The hatches were doors that opened like Jack in the Box lids on the deck. The light from these revealed living quarters about equal to a six-room house. The entire interior was ventilated by a system of blowers. A large lazarette and engine room were also below. The lazarette seemed to be a cross between an attic and a cellar, with a few of the qualities of a hall closet or piano top thrown in. The engine room occupied a greater part of the ship and was as full of engines as a round house. In an effort to admire them, my knowledge was so slight that I could only say, Yes aren't they.  I was soon to learn much more. One fact quickly learned and never out of mind, was that they cost seventy-five cents every time they carried us a mile.

I was later also to discover, that the housewife (that's me) doesn't always see eye to eye with the Navy in planning a ship. For one thing, I was not counting on a crew of sixteen. I did not know then as I do now, that sixteen bunks usually have sixteen people in them if you just invite them.

The day of our second inspection trip was more carefully planned except that Mark thought we should include Guard, Great Danes being such sensitive beasts. We thought he should be introduced to the boat at once so he could start overcoming any resistance he might have. He had some and it showed plainly as soon as we reached the dock. He shared my views on dinghy rides. Fortunately, there was a ramp for launching speedboats and there we were able to launch Guard. So far so good. He sat still except for violent trembling. He seemed to sense that any further activity on his part would end in disaster. When we reached the side of the PT we struck a snag. I climbed aboard with the kids, for safety and to encourage Guard. He having been designed for all fours was not graceful on only two feet. He reluctantly put his forepaws on the deck of PT #614 but the ladder failed to interest him. He shunned it as if it were a wet umbrella. In doing so he gave a lusty push that sent the dinghy, containing his rear end with Mark balanced behind it, several yards in the direction of the shore. A mad scramble followed with both of them at last on all fours in the bottom of the dinghy. At this point Mark was ready to give up and Guard had certainly made up his mind. He as much said, It's a fine boat, but I'll be damned if I'll have any part of it till you get it home, under a tree on the lawn. We have been unable to change Guards mind many times in the past, but we never tried it while standing in a small boat in open water. We decided against it and rowed him back to the dock. From there tied to a gas pump, he howled his regrets all afternoon. We gathered from his protests that he wanted us ashore before we all drowned. He did at long last learn to relax and get in and out of dinghies like a man, but that first try discouraged us all.

Naturally such an unwieldy swap as one hundred and twenty-five acres of farm for a PT took time. Days and weeks of it, involving untold numbers of phone calls, telegrams, papers and letters. We had long since decided the whole affair was a joke, on us of course. The sudden impending ownership of the Hyacinth so startled and amused us, that we could only sit and laugh at ourselves. When we could laugh no more, we woke the kids and took them for an ice cream cone, pajamas and all.

We really would have been smarter that night, had we stayed home and enjoyed our living room in its natural state. It was never to be the same again. By the end of the week, it took the appearance of an Army-Navy surplus store. The coffee tables had been buried all summer under copies of Yachting, Rudder, and Motor Boat.  Now these were to be smothered by life jackets, rope, compasses and anchor chains. With the possible exception of armed men, our living room looked ready for May Day. We rapidly accumulated an assortment of things we might possibly need, ranging from signal flares to insect bombs.

With the arrival of the barometer, we were overflowing into the dining room. The barometer was lovingly installed on the jam cupboard, in front of the maple clock which seemed like a safe enough place.  But all evening Mark frequently inspected it to see if it was falling. I was puzzled at this because the kids were all bedded down and Guard was outside. As far as I knew things weren't in the habit of falling in the dining room, though the floor did sag somewhat. It took a while though before I sputtered, Why don't you hold the darned thing in your lap and quit worrying. How was I to know that if the barometer fell, it didn't necessarily mean on the floor.

Mark had done some sailing in the Great Lakes but never had managed a vessel that was even half the size of our future home. This atmosphere of nautical necessities continued until the arrival of the Hyacinth in the Passaic River that was in New Jersey, practically at our back door.

So, in the summer of 1949 my parents decided to alter their lifestyle by acquiring a huge boat and chasing that dream of packing it all in and sailing away.

MAIDEN VOYAGE

In order to get our boat home to work on it we made plans for our maiden voyage. The trip from Flushing Bay to Delawanna, New Jersey on the Passaic River proved to be quite an outing. We rolled up the prospective passengers like a snowball. All our friends and relations were happy to join us in our maiden voyage. We learned early that possession of a boat was not unlike ownership of a summer cottage. The former owner kindly agreed to convoy us to the dock that we had engaged in the Passaic River.

He like us, arrived at Flushing Bay Yacht Basin, complete with guests. Fortunately, his guests included a skipper to pilot us through the busy Manhattan Island waterways. Except for the slight confusion as to which owner acted as host, we all enjoyed ourselves. The engines were started, and our takeoff made such a vast blast that I fully expected to join the transport planes in the sky over La Guardia Field. From the water New York City looked much more like a picture of itself, than real. Mark spent a great deal of time below, with the departing owner, writing instructions to himself all over the walls, (Bulkheads I learned later.)  I spent most of the trip standing by the wheel, because there I was away from the edge, which still had no fence around it.

From here I was also trying to learn the connection between the chart and where we were going. I found one always used a road map. This piece of information was to serve me well in the future, so I made an attempt to learn to read one. I learned about buoys. I did not believe they were stoppers to keep the water in the bays. I had always looked on them as bathrooms or comfort stations for the seagulls and was surprised to learn that underneath it all were numbers and instructions to be read and followed.

Most of the numbers were read with difficulty, if at all, somewhat as one reads a road map on a bumpy highway. The buoys were placed at strategic places along the waterways, because while water was evident all over it was spread very thinly in someplace. The buoys had many strange names, such as nun, bell, can, whistler, etc. according to the shapes or the sounds they emitted. A great deal of attention was given to them, by the driver, who kept to port or starboard of them as indicated on the chart. Port and starboard I had to learn also, they being nautical for left and right and red and green respectively. I also took in the fact that stern means the rear of the boat and not just that which we sometimes sit on. In fact, we always do when we sit. I will not bore you with all the nautical terms absorbed that afternoon, but you will see for yourself how aptly I fling it around as the story progresses.

Having never made trips in anything but row boats or ferryboats, I felt like a frog in the wrong puddle. The open deck made me feel dreadfully exposed to the elements, as well as to the busy New York waterway traffic.  We picked our way under the bridge of Manhattan, past Staten Island, to Bayonne, up Newark Bay and in to the Passaic River. In all my growing years in Essex County I had never been in a boat on the river. As a taxpayer, I can truthfully say I never knew greater joy, than at the first bridge we opened in New Jersey. The loud shrill blasts, all three of them, nearly blew me into the river with astonishment. I recovered in time to savor the majesty of that slowly opening bridge, as it held back a long line of cars on either side. What a treat to have the shoe on the other foot for a change. Unfortunately, the novelty of the bridge soon wore off and I began to worry what has become an obsession with me - What if it doesn't open? Of course, they all did, all ten of them, and we arrived in good order at the King Oil Dock in Delawanna, where we were to make our changes in the Hyacinth.

We came in with high tides, and our pilot skillfully turned us around and brought us dockside. As we tied up and prepared to leave, the tug chugged by and waved what we took to be friendly greetings about the water. The watchman had assured us of five feet of water at low tide, so it was not until hours later, when we found ourselves sitting on the muddy river bottom, that we knew what had been waving and shouting about.

What to do? What to do? Here we were with a rail to fashion and a cabin to build over the flying bridge, and no water at our dock. We had to solve it by pulling ourselves out near the channel to anchor. At high tide we could come in to take on supplies of lumber and pipe. This complicated matters no end and necessitated hanging out a lighted lantern each night to warn the passing river traffic of our presence. It also meant that I had to escort workman and contractors to the in the dinghy. This job fell to me though I lost no love for the dinghy, because Mark had to commute during the week to his agency job in New York City. In making the ferry trip at high tide, we could easily scramble down the dockside to the dinghy, but at low tide it meant traveling down an Indian trail through the woods and muck and down over slithery rocks to board it. The usual comment, after watching me operate the oars was a wild-eyed, Lady can you swim?  and me an Eagle scout. I was spared proving that I could, the smell of the river being enough to encourage me to keep an even keel. We only spilled one helper and one hammer into the river during the entire project.

This fact, however, made us decide against using a long gangplank as we worked. Our friend was testing one out when it parted, and he and the hammer fell in. The dinghy made me quickly aware of river tides. I learned to stow the oars ashore after I lost one when I tied the dinghy up to short at high tide.

The South Three Highway Bridge over the Passaic River was completed while we were anchored just north of it. Every PT man who crossed the bridge spotted us and came a calling. I was soon convinced that the PT personnel of the Navy outnumbered all the other services. and they each came to see us at some time or other. It was also our observation that skippers, and engineers were the only ranks used on PT's. All the men we talked with had been either, or. Some of our visitors were quite helpful since we still had the original Packard engines. In return we had to listen to many tales and waste a lot of time being shown where they slept, ate, and directed their crews. After a while we learned that a boat was like a home, and that personally conducted sight-seeing tours were not required for every stranger.

Our friends and neighbors out did themselves and it was through their efforts and not the contractors that we were able to put up a sturdy rail and build a respectable cabin over the exposed flying bridge. With the money thus saved we were able to greatly enlarge our stock of tools. We learned that there was more to carpentry than the nail and missing your thumb. A glance at the finished cabin gave indication that we still had more to learn.

While we saved money and spent money, we did not save any time at all. Before we finished the summer had ended. It was our hope to take the south before the frost was on the pumpkin. Mark had been saving vacation time, and we planned, with the help of our friends, to take the boat as far south as we could on a long weekend. Then we were to return home and use the vacation early in November to transport all the family on to Daytona Beach Florida. We would remain there unless the cold weather drove us further south. Mark was to return at the end of the vacation, to carry the load until spring. With the coming of spring, we were going to take off whether or no and travel as far as our money would take us.

In order to do all this with the least financial tension our house had to be rented. In our customary never a dull minute lifestyle the house was not rented until the very eve of our departure. If all things had worked out as planned this would be a much duller story.

Meanwhile the busy work on the river continued. I became chief errand girl and cook. My gang there were always hungry and many, and for some reason there seemed to be no time to install my new stove in the galley until the day we left. Compared to my stove at home it looked like a little dolls stove. Thank heavens I insisted that it have an oven. I soon lost track of who would sleep and eat at home, and if so when.

I nagged and pecked at the boys until they got the record-player, rocking chairs, and Mark's Morris chair (which was like a vintage recliner) aboard. This had to be done before the cabin was completed because the furniture was too large to go down the hatches. It also was done in the dark of night, least someone might see the un-yacht-like rocking chairs put aboard. It all posed a neat problem later because there was no opening large enough to get them both back out. I discovered this the day I tried to put the Morris chair on deck to paint it. It is still not painted.

Through all the busy weekends the kids twittered around on the open deck. Oddly they proved more helpful than not. I had long since decided that if I was to have any peace, a relaxed attitude would have to be cultivated. What a task that was for me. I was of the school that chewed fingernails off up to the elbows. I assured myself over and over again that the kids were no more anxious to fall into the drink, than I was to keep them from in it. To date we only dunked one child. John later fell from the dinghy into Nassau Harbor. Swimming was, of course a must in our program, but our children learned slowly because they did not like to get wet, even in a tub. It seemed to have something to do with an aversion to washing. I could only hope it was not an inherited tendency.

One day Guard was enticed aboard from the dock at high tide. He clung to the deck with his toenails and headed for a door inside. He frowned on the three steps down into the day room, but a boot in the end not frowning got him started. Our ship had eight water tight compartments so our doors were man sized holes cut through bulkheads. Because of this Guard had to jump from section to section to see the whole ship. It was some of the most reluctant jumping I have ever seen. He looked on the entire ship as some sort of trap. To this day he has never been in the chartroom, engine room, or lazarette. These all have to be entered by ladders. He had a fit whenever I went into the engine room and always stood with his big head filling the hatch, moaning and scolding me. I think Great Danes were the farthest from Mr. Hubert Scott Paine’s mind when he designed our PT for the ELCO Company.

As the work progressed, the news went around that some crazy guy was taking his family to Florida in a PT. Of course, all sorts of people have done the same thing, but the Passaic River circles were conditioned to pleasure boats up to about thirty-five feet, so this expedition was definitely not old hat for them. One newspaper amused us by referring to Guard as a Saint Bernard, with my own tendency to exaggeration, I could see how it would make a better story.

One of our young neighbors decided to go along with us as the engineer. I was so appalled at the size of the engines, that I would have been happy to take ten young men, if they would come. Another dear friend offered to go along for two days’ worth, to get us started. His wife and children loved him also so we could only borrow him for a few days.

I was ready to have a nervous wreck over our impending departure.  The children and Guard were to be stowed at home while we made the first weekend leg of the journey to Norfolk Virginia. This was to give us a little private practice in handling the big boat, and also to keep the small fry in school as long as possible.

STORMY WEATHER

So, when most kids my age were preparing to go school for the first time my parents were off outfitting a surplus war boat, and preparing to pack up my family and sail off into the future. Of course, when you are that age, you’re not about to argue or challenge the wisdom of your parents. The visual memories I have are of my parents, mother standing in front of her dressing table combing her hair that truthfully came to her waist. She never had her hair cut, until cancer took it away many years later, and wore it in one huge snake like braid wrapped around her head. My Dad at that time had jet black hair and a thin moustache and bore a resemblance to Hitler in looks only. And so, our lives start to change course.

It took some doing to provision the boat while living offshore, and even more to figure out what clothes to pack and what to leave at home. On October thirteenth, Mrs. Carter, our combination babysitter, mother’s helper, and good friend, brought Lise, John, Emee and Guard down to the river’s edge to wave good-by to us. A pleasant supply of neighbors and friends also rallied round and with much ceremony I was given a real sailor's hat to compete with Mark's beaten-up old yachting cap. Since I have more than my share of women's crowning glory, a braid long enough and thick enough to tie up the boat in a blow, the hat did not suit my face. Since it had to sit atop my braid it rode too far above it. At best my face was never my fortune, but it was usually clean and had a kind look about it. The hat charmed me completely, but then I could not see it. The crew insisted, tactfully but firmly, on its removal every time we reached port.

We also received a partially full bottle of fine whiskey, to smash over our bow, for our private launching. While we were not alcoholics at heart, pouring good whiskey over the outside of something seemed too ridiculous. We therefore poured it into ourselves, sputtering a lusty toast as we tossed it back.