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Water Holes Turn to Reddish Wine As Dealers Take Pot Running Over

By Richard W. Wallach

For some of the immigrants to Cambridge today, a lost weekend may be looming, but not for the local purveyors of bottled in bond who one and all anticipate the usual empty shelves and filled cash tills associated with football fever.

No exact figures on the increment of the 1941 Yale weekend liquor consumption were available from a thorough tapping of sources and kegs. George H. O'Brien, genial provisioned of the Mount Auburn oasis, is relying on his memory and his well stocked cellar to meet the boom in demand.

In common with his competitors, O'Brien sadly affirmed that scotch would be unavailable for the great mass of eager purchasers. His advice to the frustrated, in the grand manner of a Bourbon queen of France, was "let 'em drink rye--of bourbon."

Realizing that such beverages would be more desirable in the Carolinas than in the Commonwealth, he pleaded extenuating circumstances, curtailed supplies, and offered reciprocal trade agreements with Canadian Club.

John O. Cate, manager of the S. S. Pierce rum refectory, has been conducting a sale of that West Indian brew for the last week. "Harvard men like scotch," he sighed, looking at the unsold rum, "but they will respond to Southern Comfort as well as General Grant."

A check with the New Hampshire Liquor Authority showed that rum moves much better in that state, and has ever since Elizar Wheelock of Dartmouth College went out to convert the Indians with one thousand gallons of it. Yale tastes, according to New Haven grocers, run from tomato to jungle juice.

The owner of the Varsity Liquor Store in the Square, Frank Purcell, disagreed with his colleagues on the prevailing undergraduate scotch propensity. "Harvard men will drink anything alcoholic," he remarked, hastily explaining that the turpentine on the floor would be used for the walls. He expected malt liquor to be in demand, and was stocking quart bottles of Pell's Light and Blatz' Heavy last Tuesday.

Sole sober note amidst all the Bachannalian preparations was sounded by Louis Croteau, executive secretary of the Watch and Ward Society, from the recesses of the Christian Endeavor Building in downtown Boston.

He implied that he would chase inebriation around the lampost, and even deeper than the gutter. "We work underground, but we work just the same," he said, refusing to outline his methods of combatting the evils of drink.

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