Posted on 03/05/2010 6:22:51 PM PST by dynachrome
It’s 1952 and Mel Johnson is hustling his dream. His audience is captive: the dozen businessmen, self-styled playboys and wealthy widows sit in a reserved club car of the Denver Zephyr, hurtling between Chicago and its namesake. Mel’s lanky frame, youthful face and nervous energy bely his 40 years—from ten paces you’d swear he was some goofy kid in his late-20s.
Mel has spent the past hour getting the potential investors liquored up and it’s time to make his pitch. He has no charts, blueprints or prospectus to show them. What he does have are matchbooks, cocktail napkins and drink menus from bars that have never existed—ephemera from fantasy land.
Just imagine, he asks his audience, a resort entirely centered on the culture of alcohol. A boozer’s paradise built expressly to facilitate drinking and the good times that naturally follow. Where the bars, clubs and liquor stores never close. Where the police force is there to help drunks, not hassle them. Where even the street names salute sweet mother booze: Gin Lane, Bourbon Boulevard and Scotch Street. An adult playground like no other. Just imagine.
The Quest for El Dorado
“Mel loved to drink,” says Emma Halverson, Mel’s cousin and heir. “He started pretty young, I guess. He didn’t have much parental supervision.”
(Excerpt) Read more at moderndrunkardmagazine.com ...
Funny/sad. The guy died in a mental institution. Booze won.
...but we still have Vegas!
From the 50’s to the 1970’s that was Catalina Island - 26 minutes off the California coast.
Put-In-Bay, Ohio. One of the Lake Erie Islands. At one time in history (may still be true for all I know) it had more bars per acre than anywhere in the US.
...and the Kennedy compound.
I’m just about to evict an alcoholic girlfriend because she just will not seek help.
I just can’t find humor in this stuff anymore for now.
Evict her, it may actually help her.
I’m sober, by the grace of God, for almost 29 years now.
I hadn’t realized until just recently that Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was very conservative.
Sometimes some personal experience leads to reality which is not humor at the expense of an individual. That said, I am sorry you are having the experience.
I thought it was about Vegas at first.
Thanks.
LOL!
Weren’t most people conservative in 1935?
Theoretically, I suppose. They sure weren’t conservative enough to keep FDR out of the White House.
I believe it also has the time the Longest Bar in the World.
The Beer Barrel Saloon has a bar 405 feet 10 inches long.
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