History Items of the Canal Zone

Ron Carta Vieja Ramble

Is rum Carta Vieja still available? I haven't found it in DC or Virginia...

Regards

Dale
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It IS, but why bother? The good Panamanian rum is Abuelo.

Guy
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Like someone said we look at the past through rose-colored glasses.

Walter Monroe, Pio Schultz, Frank Stewart, John and Chris Carlson, Eddie Idol (he was playing bongos on the beach) and I got totally s--tfaced at my house on Mango Street in Balboa one night. Romie Stiener staggered out on the front porch and fell off into the front bushes. I found him hanging upside down the next morning as I went under the stairs to get my Lambretta to go to school. That was Carta Vieja.

One night we were already s--tfaced and sitting in my kitchen by the back steps in the same house. We leaned against the sides of the room sitting on the floor until our drink was done -- then we crawled to the center of the room where the cans of Pineapple Grapefruit juice and gallon of rum sat to make another room temperature concoction and then crawled back. Next morning my dad woke to go to work and his feet stuck to the floor in the kitchen. We had spilled rum and it took the varnish off the floor. That was Carta Vieja.

I think it was Romie again but I could be wrong... We were on Taboga and drank so much that Romie decided to swim the 12 miles back to Balboa -- at night -- with the tide going out... We watched incredulously as he stripped and finished his last rum and coke. Stark naked he then did a running racing dive into the water off the sandbar. His scream sounded kind of bubbly but definitely LOUD. He stopped swimming and burst out of the surf ran up the beach an collapsed with one screamed word -- NETTLES... We conferenced for a moment and Monroe allowed as how he had heard you were supposed to wee on jellyfish stings. Soooo... we rolled the supine Romie over and over in the sand and took turns prodigiously peeing all over him... Romie was drinking Carta Vieja and almost died... We wouldn't have had the pee power to cure him had we not been drinking; you guessed it, CARTA VIEJA!

I'm not going to spell check this mess... I think I'll go see the Star Trek movie, Nemesis....

Later folks...

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Postscript: Today I saw Lord of the Rings -- The Two Towers, and Nemesis... The Nemesis was Great, especially the crash scene... The Two Towers was beyond comment. The first Lord of the Rings movie was great! This one was superlative