Letter from Dee — middle page describing Puck's mock-cocktail 'one of Gam's drinks'
Book 3, Page 16 ·1953
Transcription
[Middle sheet of the letter; blue fountain-pen cursive on ruled letter paper, top to bottom of the page.]
get it good & flat. Then into a cheese glass goes half a small jigger of bourbon, 1 piece of ice, a dash of water for melted ice, and flat ginger ale. He thinks its wonderful. There are two things, Tressie, you have to answer for — (1) How did he know about your drinks; (2) don’t you think it’s a terrible heritage to give a child — a taste for flat ginger ale? You’ll never hear the last of that one!!
Tom Dast said today Puck is going purely on will power — that he can’t see where he
AI Notes
Middle page of the multi-page letter from Emma Dee Walker Corbell (cf. p012 opening, p014 final, p013 side-by-side spread). Blue fountain-pen cursive on ruled letter paper. The writer details the elaborate mock-cocktail she serves her sick young son Puck — flat ginger ale, a single piece of ice, a dash of water ‘for melted ice,’ and half a small jigger of bourbon — to satisfy his fixation on ‘one of Gam’s drinks.’ She teases her sister/relation ‘Tressie’ as the original source of Puck’s taste, and closes with the verdict of the family doctor ‘Tom Dast’ that Puck ‘is going purely on will power.’ The letter places these scenes in the final weeks of Puck’s life, autumn 1953, before his death on Wed. 2 Dec 1953 (cf. obituary on book-002 p227). The word ‘flat’ is doubly underlined by the writer in ‘a taste for flat ginger ale.’
Continues on p014 — ‘has anything left to breathe with at all…’. ‘Tom Dast’ (read ‘Dast’ with low-to-moderate confidence; capital ambiguous, possibly ‘Bast’ or ‘Bost’) is the family physician attending Puck during his final illness. The double underline under ‘flat’ is the writer’s own emphasis.