My Texas Mickey

I found myself telling this story more than once this week. At this late hour, I can’t even remember how it came up, much less how I told the same story twice. Did I force it into the conversation? I must have. Now I’m forcing it into my blog.

The story goes like this….. Once upon a time in my earliest of 20’s, I was invited to a Stag & Doe, or Jack & Jill if you prefer. If you’re not familiar with such an event, it’s a pre-wedding party for the bride and groom which for all intents and purposes is a cash grab, or more politely put, a fundraiser to help pay for the wedding. I have no qualms with these types of events because I like to hang out, eat & drink, and enter raffles. What better place to do that?

The Stag & Doe in question might have actually been the first one I ever went to. I wasn’t at the age where friends of mine were getting married yet, but I was at the age where I could drink legally, so that would have put me anywhere between 19-23. I don’t remember much about this party except that the items that were being raffled off were not as desirable as one would hope. There was however, a HUGE bottle of Canadian Club Whiskey. I could tell that whoever won that item would be the envy of every man there, and would be best served to high-tail it out of there before being asked to share. I never win anything (oh I remember how this conversations came up….. we were talking about the roll up the rim to win contest at Tim Horton’s and someone asked me if I won, and I told them that I never win anything which segued into this story), so you can imagine my surprise and elation when I won this Texas Mickey of CC Whiskey. The thing is I don’t drink Whiskey.

I just learned from the Urban Dictionary that they don’t have Texas Mickeys in Texas. Apparently it’s a Canadian thing. Go figure. So if you still don’t know what it is, picture a bottle of booze the size of a small child. It comes with a pump because you couldn’t actually tip it to pour or Whiskey would go everywhere. The name is a play on words…. Mickey being a small pocket-sized bottle, but everything is bigger in Texas…..it’s supposed to be funny. If you’re male and under 25, you want this as a strange status symbol of some sort. I had it, but Whiskey wasn’t/isn’t my drink. So how was I going to consume this much Whiskey?

One night a couple of friends and I got together to sort out my Whiskey problem. One of these friends was having a house party that was fast approaching. It was slated to be the highlight of the summer. We’d be drinking Whiskey, but how? We bought a bartender book, and tried to find some drink recipes that suited us, and we couldn’t come up with anything. So off we went to the corner store, and came back with a variety of sodas, mixers and fruit juices. Like a bad grade 11 science project, we started experimenting. The details got sketchy fast. We did settle on a drink, and I’ll share the recipe with you because the world needs to benefit from something I’ve done, and why not this?

Recipe for a Rye and Austin (my name is Ryan Austin…. this is supposed to be funny)

– Rye Whiskey (I’m not gonna tell you how much, I’m not your daddy)

– Wink (If you don’t know what that is, it’s a citrus soda bottled by Coca Cola. Drinking it straight will rot your gut, which I think is why it’s harder to find now, but it’s a great mixer)

– 2 kinds of fruit juice (the catch is that each juice has to contain at least 2 kinds of fruit, like Orange/Banana…..you heard correctly, 2 varieties of multiple fruit juices)

If you can even find these ingredients, much less mix them properly, then you will have tasted the greatest Whiskey mixed drink known (or unknown) to man! Drink Responsibly!