Tastes of honey

We didn’t go straight from Sid Caesar, Speedy Alka Seltzer, the Rosenbergs, “Heartbreak Hotel,” Sputnik and hula-hoops to “Valley of the Dolls,” bell-bottoms, love-ins, Tiny Tim and “Hair.” In fact, in between the great Eisenhower yawn and the Nixon nightmare were long years marked by sleek cars such as the Corvette Sting Ray, feel-good TV shows--think “The Andy Griffith Show”--and the crooning of Trini Lopez. I call it the Era of Pentimento, which reached its apex in 1965. In the next few years, Peter Max began painting over Norman Rockwell’s romanticized Americana with psychedelic Day-Glo colors and left us with a decade-long hangover known as the somnambulistic ‘70s.

Before adolescent boys like myself had “Barbarella,” we had Dolores Erickson. In 1965, Dolores was the model on what is undoubtedly the most famous album cover ever shot: “Whipped Cream and Other Delights” by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Though I was only 10 at the time, she was my first girlfriend. I met her--or at least that remarkable image of her, looking coyly at me, salaciously covered from mid-bosom down in thick mounds of whipped cream--on a steamy night in August. I was under a sheet-covered pingpong table that was doing duty as the bar for my father’s surprise 30th birthday party.

He was a Frank Sinatra/Jackie Gleason/Nat King Cole type of guy, so the party theme was “Swingers.” But that night, Dino and Sammy got lost in the brassy swagger and slightly sleazy come-on of Herb Alpert and, of course, Dolores. My dad must have received four or five copies of that album as presents, which is how I managed to squirrel one away for perusal beneath the pingpong table.

What a night it was. In flannel PJs, lying on my stomach, I watched my parents dance--a rare thing. My dad wore a metallic blue suit and my mom was in heels and stockings and they laughed and held each other tight, and no one would have imagined that in a very short period, these cool times and their marriage would be over. Not even me.

In between songs my dad, playing bartender, made highballs--that’s what he called them, never cocktails, even if they weren’t served in tall glasses--for anyone hot and sweaty from dancing. Because this was something of a costume party, with everyone invited to come dressed as his or her favorite Rat Pack member, the drinks were special: cooling gin fizzes, exotic sazeracs (my mom was from New Orleans and this was her favorite summer drink) and tart daiquiris--not those awful frozen alcoholic snow cones that come out of drink machines in tourist bars, but the classic Hemingway-esque daiquiri made with rum, fresh lime juice and simple syrup.

Like Dolores Erickson, those mostly forgotten cocktails are an indelible part of my memory of that night, a buoyant summer bash of sharkskin suits and spaghetti-strap dresses, brassy horns and marimba bands. The next year, everything changed. The death of Nat King Cole the previous February seemed to close an era of innocence. In 1966, the first hippie festival was held in San Francisco, bell-bottom blue jeans hit the scene and my parents separated. That summer, on his birthday, my dad took me to see the Beatles’ second movie, “Help!”

“I just don’t get it,” he said as we came out of the theater. But I did. The British were coming. Herb Alpert was fleeing into the sunset in a Tijuana taxi.

As people age, they often become frozen in a particular period. They stop changing their hairdos, get stuck listening to the same music, wear the same style of clothes. For my parents, I think that time was 1965. Ten, even 20 years later, when I’d go to my father’s house for dinner, he’d put on “Whipped Cream” and sit in his La-Z-Boy recliner, tapping his feet to “Bittersweet Samba,” and the image of that avocado green album cover with the dark-haired whipped-cream beauty would come back to me. My dad would look at me and smile, and I’d wonder if he was thinking the same lascivious thoughts that I was about brown-eyed Dolores.

As for my mother, I became officially in charge of making her a sazerac on special occasions. She said no one else made it correctly. Even at my own wedding reception, she asked me to go behind the bar, in my tuxedo, and make her “a proper highball.” It wasn’t a highball at all; it was a cocktail, one that for me will forever be associated with a steamy August evening 40 years ago this month; a cocktail made with a dash of bitters and a twist of lemon that, nonetheless, always leaves me thinking of Dolores and a taste of honey.

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Sazerac

1 serving

In New Orleans, this is usually made with a local anise-flavored liqueur called Herbsaint, but if you don’t want to make a trip to the Big Easy, you can use Pernod.

Coat the inside of a 10-ounce old-fashioned glass with 1/2 teaspoon of Pernod. Discard the excess and fill the glass with ice.

Fill a cocktail shaker with cracked ice and add:

2 ounces single-batch bourbon, such as Maker’s Mark or Knob Creek

1/2 ounce simple syrup

2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

Stir all of the ingredients and strain into the glass coated with Pernod. Garnish with a twist of lemon.

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Gin Fizz

1 serving

A very refreshing summer drink that, unfortunately, has gone out of fashion.

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and add:

2 to 3 ounces gin

1 ounce fresh-squeezed lemon juice

1 large teaspoon (or more) powdered sugar

1/2 cup club soda

Orange slices and maraschino cherries, for garnish

Shake gin, lemon juice and sugar and strain into a 12-ounce rocks glass filled with ice. Top with club soda. Garnish with an orange slice and maraschino cherries.

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Daiquiri

1 serving

As classic as a little black dress.

Fill a cocktail shaker with crushed ice and add:

2 ounces light rum

Juice of 1 lemon and 1 lime

1 ounce simple syrup

Lime slices, for garnish

Shake the ingredients and strain into a 12-ounce highball glass filled with 3/4 cup ice. Garnish with a slice of lime.