Writer's Poison

From my latest purchase.

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James Baldwin

" At four o'clock in the morning, when everybody's drunk enough, then extraordinary things happen."

In Paris, Baldwin spent many long nights in cafe's drinking and arguing with writers James Jones and William Styron, fellow compatriots with a similar fondness for booze. A Jone's home, where they would often start out and end up, Jones had a bar made out of an old church pulpit. Late at nihjt, Baldwin, who in his youth had been a preacher, would entertain his friends by delivering mock sermons on the evils of drink.

Shandy Gaff 
The Shandy Gaff is a beer with ginger ale. Originally created in Great Britain, shandies have been around since the 1800's.


8oz. Larger Beer or amber ale.

8oz. ginger ale
Pour beer into a chilled beer mug, add ginger ale.

From:Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone 1968
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Our mother returned and she poured the drinks. I wasn't really permitted to drink and luckily, in those days, I didn't like to drink, but this prohibition, like all my parents prohibitions, was rendered a dead letter by the fact that my parents knew very well that I did whatever I wished outside. Now, my mother said, "I'm making your real weak Leo," and handed me the glass of ginger ale only faintly coloured by whiskey. "That's just so you can feel part of the family." she said, and handed drinks to my father and Caleb and sat down. Caleb and our father looked at each other, but neither of them smiled. I drank my ginger ale. Thought of a girl I knew. Tried to think of everything but the room I was in, and the people I was with.

PS! I've never read Baldwin but having read this passage I now I reckon I have to look him up.
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Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers.(Workman Publishing House 2006)