Green Chartreuse

So, I was talking to this woman yesterday who was in town visiting from North Carolina. Not that this is integral to the story, but she was.

She was visiting her son and they were at the bar of the Cottonwood Cafe where he worked (or was a regular and/or where he once worked--I didn't catch exactly what) having predrink drinks, as they put it. He knew the bartender, and I just happened to be there having lunch (just lunch, not prelunch lunch) and dropped in and out of the conversation, which veered every which way, from work to napping to sleeping habits to family.

The talk turned to unusual liquors and how long it took the bar to go through this and that. (If you go there, don't order the Harvey's Bristol Cream--that hasn't been touched in years.) She then told this story about her father: She said when she was young, her father would take her out to dinner periodically and would always order green chartreuse after the meal for the two of them. She said it was awful, and she could never drink it, so he would drink her glass as well. (He knew what he was doing when he ordered it for her!)

After he died, she said, he had had a half a bottle left, so she poured it on his grave. What a touching tribute, I thought, until she added, "No one else was ever going to drink it!"