ETHANOL AND INSTANT KARMA It was 1961, and at age 13, I was attending the Annual Meeting of the Idaho Medical Association with my parents. My father was the President and it was a busy week. He and my mother had many receptions, banquets, and meetings to attend. As such, I was often left unsupervised. One afternoon I was alone in our room at the Sun Valley Lodge. The Presidential Suite had three rooms with balconies overlooking the ice skating rinks. One of the rooms was a large reception area with fancy lunch tables stacked with crustless sandwiches, potato chips, and hors d’oeuvres. The beverage table had carefully arranged straws, soft drinks, beer, and a variety of alcohol in all sorts of bottles that I had never seen before. My mother and Scottish grandmother often spoke of the evil associated with liquor. But they weren't there and I was. I sampled a few of the little sandwiches that were skewered with a baby dill pickle and pimento-stuffed olive on top of a long toothpick and found that I preferred the rare roast beef to the ham and Swiss cheese. The potato chip chaser made me thirsty and I decided to have a soft drink and found a bottle opener, and popped the lid off a bottle of Coca-Cola. About the time the bubbling soft drink reached halfway up the glass, my little mind realized I was probably standing next to every kind of alcoholic drink known to man. Here was my chance. A tall bottle of clear liquid caught my eye. On the label was a smiling fellow dressed in a long red topcoat with matching tights and red shoes with big buckles. His pleated white collar matched his white gloves and he held a long spear in his right hand as he marched along. "Beefeater" is the nickname for the ceremonial guardians of the Tower of London but I did not know that, nor did I understand the innocent appearing liquid behind the label that said that the clear liquid was distilled in London.
A small sip would have sent me down a more comfortable road, but I was thirsty, so I took two, big, teenage gulps before I realized something was awry. My mind told me that I was chasing salty potato chips with a refreshing cool drink. My esophagus had not seen that memo and was telling me that I had swallowed a can of turpentine. This is not too far off, because Beefeater LONDON DRY GIN is primarily composed of fermented juniper berries and probably could be used to strip paint off old barn wood. The debate between those two organs ended with a powerful, spasmodic evacuation of the little crustless beef, ham, and cheese sandwiches and potato chips--admixed with Beefeater Gin and Coca-Cola. After the transit up the esophagus, the slurry spewed violently from my mouth and nose. There I was, standing by a fancy bar table, drooling uncontrollably, unable to swallow, gasping for breath, wondering why this awful mess had just flown out of my mouth and nose. I later learned that it is the soft palate that splits the stream coming back up the esophagus. Those who wonder why this is so, and find the answers, often become doctors.
We left Sun Valley the next morning, July 2, 1961. My father began asking about why I was not feeling well. He was an excellent diagnostician and I began to worry that he would make the correct diagnosis. As we drove into Ketchum, we turned south and began driving toward Hailey. My father suddenly pulled off to the side of the road and listened as the local radio station announced that Ernest Hemingway had been shot earlier that morning at his home in Ketchum. Outloud, my father instinctively wondered if we should turn around and go back to see if there was anything he could do to help. After all, as a surgeon in WWII he had seen plenty of gunshot wounds, had an Idaho license, and may have been the only qualified surgeon within miles of Ketchum at that moment. He pulled back onto the road when the radio announcer from Ketchum said that Mrs. Hemingway found him dead from a shotgun blast to his head and she thought it must have been an accident while he was cleaning his gun. My father said that he did not think it sounded accidental and that more likely it was alcohol-related and self-inflicted, and said in a very clinical, matter-of-fact tone that it was impossible to clean a loaded shotgun, especially with the gun barrel in your mouth while you are pulling on the trigger. He was the Jefferson County Physician and had seen this sort of thing before. His stories got us through Hailey and halfway to Carey before he again asked how I was doing. I told him that I was feeling much better--this was especially true since we were on the road home, rather than on the trail leading to my experiment with ethanol back in Sun Valley.
My parents and my Scottish grandmother remained in the dark about my ethanol experiment--from my perspective, the less they knew about it, the better. However, I remained keenly aware of what had happened and I have not forgotten that instant karma can make believers of us all--if we are ever-vigilant. Ever vigilant, RT
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