Once upon a time, drinking was not a vice but a social phenomenon. We gathered in groups and celebrated. Maybe too much. But our culture of taverns, supper clubs, home bars, and travel drinking items has left a wonderful, fanciful and somewhat demented legacy of objects for collectors sober enough to enjoy them.

Advertising was creative, if somewhat appalling by today’s standards. Animated film shorts of cartoon animals motivated liquor salesmen. Songs were more than jingles, but music sold to the public — recordings and sheet music for playing and singing at home (talk about “three sheets to the wind,” hmm?).

For example, Under The Anheuser Bush, which went as follows (feel free to sing along with the download!)

“Talk about the shade of the sheltering palms,
Praise the bamboo tree and its wide spreading charms,
There’s a little bush that grows right here in town,
You know its name, it has won such renown,
Often with my sweetheart just after the play,
To this little place then my footsteps will stray,
If she hesitates when she looks at the sign,
Softly I whisper, “Now Sue Don’t decline.”
Come, come, come make eyes with me,
Under the Anheuser Bush,
Come, come, drink some “Budwise” with me,
Under the Anheuser Bush,
Hear the old German band,
Just let me hold your hand … Yah!
Do, do, Come have a stein or two,
Under the Anheuser Bush.”

(Words by Andrew B. Sterling, and music by Harry Von Tilzer.)

Of course, every good host and hostess knew that a cocktail party was only as good as the well-stocked bar — and the liquor companies liked to help out by supplying cocktail recipe books.

Decanters, coasters, steins, cocktail sets, swizzle sticks, crates, advertisements, drinking songs, and even photos — there’s so much to collect for those interested in what author Barbara Holland calls, in her book The Joy of Drinking, “the social glue of the human race.”

This is from her interview in the Washington Post:

As soon as humans stopped wandering around looking for berries and settled down to raise crops, they started creating wine and beer and, not coincidently, civilization.

“Probably in the beginning, we could explain ourselves to our close family members with grunts, muttered syllables, gestures, slaps and punches,” she writes. “Then, when the neighbors started dropping in to help harvest, stomp, stir and drink the bounty of the land, after we’d softened our natural suspicious hostility with a few stiff ones, we had to think up some more nuanced communication, like words. From there, it was a short step to grammar, civil law, religion, history and ‘The Whiffenpoof Song.’”

You may not agree with Holland, but I sure think she has a point. Drinking can be a civilized activity.

But of course, as with drinking liquor itself, the collector must know when to stop.

Or have a partner willing to take the role of designated buyer. For example, hubby won’t let me buy old tavern signs.

Maybe when we get a larger house.

Or maybe I can just try out a few of those fancy drink recipes and get him in the mood…

For now, I just settle for the photos.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 3:59 am and is filed under collecting fyi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.