Dear Old Dad
by Steve Loiaconi
From The Magic of Modern Mixology: Bartending for Sorcerers and Sorcery for Bartenders:
Serves: One
Preparation Time: Seven minutes
The Dear Old Dad was developed by bartender and amateur wiccan Cash Wexler in New York in 1963. His father had died unexpectedly from a heart attack hours earlier. They had not spoken in years, and there was much that had been left unresolved between them. Upon returning to his childhood home, Cash sought closure and an opportunity to say goodbye. The spell worked, but the conversation–a fraught debate over faith and sexual identity with an understandably confused and irrationally angry undead septuagenarian–did not go as he hoped. If prepared properly, a single serving will revive a deceased father or grandfather for exactly seventeen minutes.
This drink is best prepared soon after your father’s death, before any significant decomposition sets in. It is inspired by the Old Fashioned, which had been Martin Wexler’s favorite cocktail. The smokiness of the scotch is balanced by the sweetness of the cara-cara orange and the bitterness of the liqueur.
Ingredients
2 oz. your father’s scotch
1 oz. coffee liqueur
3 dashes chocolate bitters
1 sugar cube
Golf tee and cara-cara orange slice for garnish
Goat’s blood for sigils
Instructions
Carefully paint sigils on floor or ceiling in front of bar. (See photos on opposite page)
Place sugar cube in a rocks glass. Pour bitters over cube and muddle.
Add scotch and liqueur.
Add ice. Stir seventeen times with a copper cocktail spoon, counter-clockwise.
Impale orange slice on golf tee and place carefully in the exact center of glass.
Read paternal summoning incantation. (See Appendix II: Aramaic Spells and Syrups)
Drink it all in one gulp.
Accept that the old man will never, ever change.
For variations, see Mother’s Little Helper (pg. 73), Brother’s Keeper (pg. 75), and Sweet Child O’ Lime (p. 79).
NOTE: Do not, under any circumstances, prepare if your father has already been buried.
Steve Loiaconi is a journalist and a graduate of George Mason University's MFA program. His fiction previously appeared in Griffel, True Chili, the Good Life Review, Samfiftyfour, and the Saturday Evening Post, as well as the anthologies “Dracula’s Guests” and “P is for Poltergeist.”