how to mix a planter's punch

COREY FORD

being a slightly weteyed reminiscence of nassau, seen through a tall glass, darkly

• PLANTER'S PUNCH: Use tall glass. Squirt in the juice of a fresh lime, two portions of sugar, a pony of water, four portions of old Jamaica rum. Fill glass with shaved ice, shake well, add a dash of red pepper if desired, and serve very cold with long straws.—From Cheerio, a Book of Cocktails by Charles of Delmonico's.

• And it doesn't work. Follow the recipe to the letter: select only the tallest glass and the freshest lime, measure just the amount of sugar and water, shave your ice never so fine, add four portions of Jamaica rum that is fit for a Congressman's satchel; and still you will not have a Planter's Punch. Still, at best, it will only be lime and sugar and rum.

Not that I haven't been conscientious about it. I have tried it before lunch in a basement speakeasy in the forties. I have tried it in a Park Avenue penthouse during that evanescent hour at dusk when a huddled group of abouttowners touch glasses and then scatter again to the four winds before dinner. I have tried it at night on the stone verandah of a Westchester club, with the iced glass breathing smoke into a heavy blanket of heat draped over the Sound. And always some key-word in the formula seemed to be lacking. Always there was some rare ingredient missing from my witch's brew, some magic incantation forgotten, some slight but necessary entrail of a frog without which my cauldron would not bubble. Try as I might, it was never the Planter's Punch that I sipped once under a striped awning on the terrace of the New Colonial Hotel at Nassau, staring between the hibiscus hedges toward the very blue water that is found in the Bahamas and nowhere else in all the world.

• I suppose the secret is that blue water. No climate could harbour such a color in its heart, and be practical or prosaic or hurried. As you sit on the terrace of the New Colonial of a late afternoon and sip a Planter's Punch through a long straw, the corner of your eye catches a glint of blue at every turn, flashing astonishingly between the green leaves like the tail of a peacock. It is a little exotic and unreal; it hypnotizes you with a fixed blue eye, and you unbend and relax langourously and bask like a salamander in its warm spell, and your gaze wanders automatically toward the attractive young lady who is seated alone at a nearby table and growing steadily more attractive by the minute. They say it is the Planter's Punch that does it; but I am inclined to blame the blue water.

Well; that's life in the Bahamas. You sip another Planter's Punch through a long straw, musing on life in the Bahamas and staring amiably across the harbour at the white yachts and Hog Island and the white sky beyond. The soft stamp and chop of a tennis game is at your left; at your right a few couples drift lazily across a smooth platform to the discreet rhythms of a. tea-orchestra. In the distance the jingle of bells and honk of horns along Bay Street mingle drowsily with the interminable crowing of the roosters, that never cease crowing day or night in Nassau, until you are moved to wonder when they ever accomplish their hellish designs. The ocean, as you lift your glass, is shattered by the lens at the bottom of the tumbler into a thousand fragments of turquoise, ultramarine, cobalt, emerald. You set the glass down again. The water rolls placidly out from shore once more in an ordered sequence of apple-green, greenblue, then an electric-blue that suddenly drops into the deepest midnight purple at the horizon's edge; and you gaze again at the lady.

• As a matter of fact, by this time the lady will also be colored quite blue, and so will the table, and the terrace, and the royal palms overhead. The blue has climbed off the water like mist from a mountain lake and mounted into the air; now the air is blue and alive; it shimmers and vibrates and distorts the green trees and red flowers and yellow awnings, and the white dress of the lady, and surrounds it with a corona of blue fire. There is a blue shadow in the curve of her tan arm, and, what is more significant, the bar steward has a bright blue head as he bends over to take your order. Anywhere else but Nassau, this alone should make you suspicious.

So you sip another Planter's Punch, speculating idly whether the bright-blue lady would care to dance and whether you would have energy enough to dance with her if she did, and absorbing meantime the curious culture that exists about you. For there is no doubt that the terrace of the New Colonial has a civilization all its own. It is an ancient civilization; it has seen plutocracies crumble, season after season, and leaders battle to the death under these striped awnings, the air ringing with the martial tinkle of spoons upon glass and the subdued clank of pearls as bosom-loads of reserve ammunition are hurried to the front. It has seen the Cincinnati pretender who invested heavily in Montgomery Ward at 86 topple the throne of a blooded monarchy whose family for generations has been coming here from Montclair, N. J. It has developed in the course of its civilization a life and a language all its own. This is a distinct tongue that is spoken on the terrace, you reflect; a slower inflection than the beaches of Miami, and a nicer feeling for 'a' and the participial ending. The terrace has even its own code of ethics: it is not considered quite nice, for example, to whistle with the orchestra, peel your sunburn, seduce a waitress before dinner, wear yellow buttonshoes with a dark suit, dance with your wife, address picture-postcards, or topple sideways off your chair. On the other hand, there is no moral sentiment whatsoever to prevent one's strolling over to a nearby table and asking an attractive young lady to join one in a Planter's Punch.

As you set down your glass, you shift your position slightly so that you can glimpse the tiny slippers that dangle by their heels from the rung beneath her chair. Her legs are bare and very tan. An outdoors girl; that might be a little unpleasant. Perhaps she would insist upon tarpon-fishing with you; and womenfishermen are one of the great, great crosses of modern life. Perhaps she is a Girl Scout. Perhaps she would want to take long walks. No, you sigh with relief; she is a blonde, and blondes always ride places. Perhaps she would be content merely to lie in the sun on the forward deck of your cabin cruiser, while you grasped the wheel and stared across her, stretched at full-length before you, with her hands clasped behind her neck and her ruffled blonde hair blowing and spanking in the breeze, toward the endless chain of little islands that would beckon you on and on.

• That was a very pleasant paragraph. You are so pleased with yourself, in fact, that you start with her ankles and build the whole romantic picture all over again, sipping a Planter's Punch dreamily (you needed just this one more Planter's Punch to buck you up before you actually walked over and spoke to her) and steering your hypothetical cabincruiser in and out between the random cays, through sheltered lagoons, over deep-sea gardens waving their purple and yellow fronds beneath several fathoms of crystal water, past white beaches and the white ribs of ships buried and exhumed endlessly by the restless sands, exploring the incredible blue of the Bahamas under a benign sun that makes the islands a permanent Paradise.

The charm of these coral islands is swinging your imagination onward. Perhaps you will drop your hypothetical anchor at Andros or Abaco, and explore their long shores for Blackbeard's hypothetical gold. Perhaps together you will drift lazily outward upon a surf so buoyant that you might he floating in air, staring underwater at a school of Martian fish, striped grotesquely in orange and black and blue. Perhaps you will weave in and out among the Berry Isles, thrilling anew at each succeeding mirage of seven or twenty cocoanut palms grasping suddenly out of the sea toward a retreating sky. Perhaps you will drop down the islands to Inagua, gathering the native folk-songs for their highhearted melodies and the rich, careless legends that they tell. Perhaps you will cross to Bimini, where the anything-but-hypothetical Fountain of Youth is kept busy day and night supplying the thirsty tonsils of Florida and Florida's customers, and where a small group of loyal citizens labor mightily with speed-boats and airplanes and underground pipes, performing their modest share in America's colossal campaign to make the world safe for hypocrisy.

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Just one more Planter's Punch, steward. One more Punch, and then you will get up and go over and speak to her. What are you going to say? "I wondered if you were all alone." That wouldn't be very bright. Something bright. Something like "Didn't we meet on the steamer?" or "Have you heard the latest one about the Scotchman with a bump on his head?" or "Are these your galoshes?" Well, let that take care of itself. Thank you, steward. Maybe something bright will come. Plenty of time.

Where were you? Bimini. It would be nice to be in Bimini again, where Van Campen Heilner, famed authority on bone-fishing in the Bahamas, rules in solitary glory as the King of Paradise Point. Nice to go bone-fishing with Van again. Maybe this bright blue blonde doesn't care for bonefishing. To hell with her. You and Van would go anyway, sailing across the bay with Benjy chewing up the chum in the stern of the dinghy. Quiet! Let down the anchor as softly as possible; Benjy's eye has caught a flash of blue shadow fifty feet ahead. He heaves out the chum and waits; you rig your tackle nervously. All right. You cast out a whirring line toward the spot where the chum has settled. You tense. Your line is dragged slowly out, an infinitely slow strike, three or four measured clicks on your reel; then suddenly the reel bursts into a demoniac shriek as the bone-fish suddenly hooked, rips off a hundred, two hundred feet of line and majestically plunges across the bay with the bit in his teeth. . . .

"Well. You drain your glass and set it down with finality. Now or never. You rise and lurch unsteadily toward her table, tossed a bit by a sudden squall that seems to have sprung up from nowhere and whipped the Terrace into veritable whitecaps; and then you halt. Her chair is there, pushed back; her empty glass rests in a little ring of moisture, and the crumpled straw leans unconcernedly against the side. A silver coin lingers dutifully for the steward in the center of the deserted table.

You sit down heavily in the chair where she sat; and then, because there is something about the climate of Nassau that makes for fatalism, you push the coin casually toward the steward' as he approaches and order another Planter's Punch.

No. It is not the mixture of lime and sugar and rum that is the secret of it. Those things we can assemble as well at home. It is not the thoroughness of the shaking you give, nor even the dash of red pepper if desired. Our formula goes deeper than that. For a Planter's Punch requires blue water, the catholic sun that blesses Nassau daily, the soft stir of life murmuring and smiling carelessly beneath the palms in the lazy, languorous climate of the Bahamas.

And therefore, for those venturous connoisseurs who wish to experience a Planter's Punch as it should be tasted, I offer the following revised recipe: PLANTER'S PUNCH: Use tall suitcase. Toss in one pair of white flannels, two clean shirts, a toothbrush, and one ticket to Nassau. Dash aboard the S. S. Munargo the following Friday, shake well for sixty hours, land and proceed directly to the Terrace of the New Colonial; and, if an attractive blonde happens to be seated at a nearby table, order your Planter's Punch served with two straws.