Ugly Green Glasses
Thomas Jefferson hoped that America would become a nation of wine drinkers. He believed, and rightly so, that wine exerts a civilizing influence on society, whereas whisky and rum tend to provoke the baser instincts. Now, I’m all for a snort of bourbon now and again, especially on Derby Day, but on the whole, I’d rather have a glass of wine.The Fourth of July isn’t much of a wine holiday. No, it belongs to baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. And beer, lots and lots of beer. Again, I like a tall, cold, frosty one as much as the next guy, especially after a day spent spitting out lousy wine, but on the whole, I’d rather have a glass of wine with my food.
Every Fourth of July my parents would throw a huge party that most of the neighborhood attended - we were the first house on the block to have an above ground pool and every kid was my pal, at least during summer. These parties often involved the police as the few pinched up neighbors who couldn’t bother to come always thought we were way too loud. Famously, my Uncle Wick, drunk as a skunk, invited the officers in for a beer - which they accepted once their shift was up. They, too, had had enough of the whiny neighbors.
As the years faded, so too did the party. The whole warp and woof of it was for the neighborhood kids to have a safe place to hang out, and for their parents to drink their fill without getting in a car. By the time I am 16 the parties have stopped and the Fourth settles into a quiet family BBQ.
Move forward a bit. I am in my early thirties. My father has shifted his drink to wine from beer and when I return home for a meal he trots out these enormous, pale green plastic wine goblets. “Hey, man, they may be ugly, but they won’t break,” he laughs. My father and mother and I eat and drink at the picnic table they bought thirty years earlier. The wine is always sweet, the food is generally grilled and though I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend some of the pairings, they were delicious in the moment.
There is a photograph of me, my father and my brother standing in our backyard. Each of us is holding one of those ugly green wine glasses and we are happy. Especially my dad. In the photo he is thin, a bit wobbly, with great whoops of fatigue below his eyes. He’s been through his first round of chemotherapy and is home for the Fourth. My brother and I are scared at the change in him, but not him. He is beaming, glad to be surrounded by his sons, his knobby hands holding onto his wine. It was his last Fourth of July.
If Jefferson hoped for a civilizing influence he couldn’t have found a better ambassador than my dad. By the time that photo is taken I had worked as a wine steward, opened up Charlie Trotter’s, ran several small restaurants and basically passed through the deep snobbery associated with such places, but had yet to meet someone who simply loved a glass of wine like my dad. He didn’t care about stemware, or vintages, or histroy or culture, he just like the way it tasted.
Completely civilized.
So, because of my father, I think of the Fourth with a glass of wine. Preferably in an ugly green glass.
Be safe.