Hey, Pups. Let me buy you a drink!
Drink it fast or drink it slow,
But your lips have gotta touch the toe.
I can’t remember where I first read about the Sour Toe Cocktail, the liquorous specialty of Dawson’s Hotel in the Yukon. The original toe belonged to a rumrunner, Otto Liken, who got frostbite fleeing the Mounties with a load of merchandise. He and his brother holed up in a moonshine shack and Otto got blotto so Louie could amputate the frozen digit before it went gangrenous.
They put the toe in a jar of rum and let it mellow in the shack for, like, fifty years until the building was bought by “Captain” Dick Stevenson, a local fleecer of tourists. The cocktail was his idea. He loaned the toe to a local bar and dared tourists to drink from a glass filled with booze (of their choice) and The Toe as a way of proving themselves worthy of the Yukon. He was repaid in drinks.
About 30,000 suckers have “done the toe.”
The original toe — and several subsequent ones — was accidentally swallowed. But such is the generosity of the human spirit that surgically amputated toes are forever offered as replacements.
I consider it no accident that an article about doing the toe should surface in the Toronto Star just in time for Pupster’s 40th birthday.
Dude. Lemme buya drink. It was meant to be.
Posted: April 16th, 2007 under blogging, booze, history, international, personal.
Comments: 14
Comments
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: April 16, 2007, 10:10 am
Not as a first drink. I am, however, helpless before the Double Dog Dare.
Comment from SteamBoat McGoo
Time: April 16, 2007, 1:01 pm
“…the building was bought by “Captain” Dick Stevenson, a local fleecer of tourists.”
I always wanted to be a fleecer of tourists.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: April 16, 2007, 1:03 pm
Hey, check it out! Monday’s zodiacal sign is also Toe. Quick! Somebody pick me a lottery number.
Comment from Enas Yorl
Time: April 16, 2007, 1:51 pm
Number 8. Now you can’t say I never gave you nuthin’.
Comment from Enas Yorl
Time: April 16, 2007, 6:15 pm
Ace blogged about your dwarf alien dude and didn’t hat-tip you or anything! It’s almost as if he doesn’t read your blog everyday.
Comment from SteamBoat McGoo
Time: April 16, 2007, 10:05 pm
How rude of Ace. I am chagrined and disappointed.
However, there is no way Ace can keep up with Weasel – who can effortlessly produce arcane and wonderous items at the drop of a toe.
BTW: my b-day was a few weeks ago. I noted that my sign was “nand gate”. You will never know how much this pleased me. I can’t wait til the next time a chick asks my sign.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: April 17, 2007, 6:44 am
Mine’s coming up in a few weeks. It’s not a milestone birthday, though, so I’m not too fussed. I was lucky enough to be born in a decade year: 1960. So if this is 2007, I must be 47. See how easy that is?
If I’d been born in ’57 or ’62, there would be real math involved and I’d never be able to figure out my age.
Comment from Pupster
Time: April 17, 2007, 1:15 pm
Thanks for the company last night Weasel and Weasel readers, I had big fun.
Fraternal Grandpa Pupster was born in January of 1900, I always thought that was cool…no math at all.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: April 17, 2007, 1:57 pm
Yeah, the grandmaternal Weasel was born in 1900 (though I’m not sure what month). They never got around to naming her, so her birth certificate was blank on that subject. She renamed herself every few years growing up. Whatever the fashionable name of the day was, that was her name. She was Maude for a while. She finally settled on Marie.
Comment from Pupster
Time: June 26, 2008, 8:10 pm
All roads lead to Weasel. I clicked on your link at The Hostages and got to see my name in the headlines.
What a long strange thread its been. And I ain’t even drinking.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: June 26, 2008, 8:17 pm
Happy belated birthday, Pups 🙂
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: June 26, 2008, 8:22 pm
Yeah, Pups! Happy BD!
Um…where are we? This was not on my tour agenda…or on the map…
Comment from Pupster
Time: June 26, 2008, 8:28 pm
Thanks guys.
Looking back on it, live drunk blogging my 40th may not have been my proudest moment. But it’s easily the most fun I’ve had on the Internets that did not involve porn.
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