Grasping at Straws

A drinking straw is a tube for transferring a beverage from its container to the mouth of the drinker. The oldest drinking straw in existence, found in a Sumerian tomb dated 3,000 B.C.E., was a gold tube inlaid with the precious blue stone lapis lazuli, used for drinking beer, probably to avoid the solid byproducts of fermentation that sunk to the bottom. Argentines and their neighbors used a similar metallic device called a bombilla, that acts as both a straw and sieve for drinking mate tea for hundreds of years.

In the 1800s, the rye grass straw came into fashion because it was cheap and soft, but it had an unfortunate tendency to turn to mush in liquid. To address these shortcomings, Marvin C. Stone patented the modern drinking straw, made of paper, in 1888. He came upon the idea while drinking a mint julep on a hot day in Washington, D.C.; the taste of the rye was mixing with the drink and giving it a grassy taste, which he found unsatisfactory. He wound paper around a pencil to make a thin tube, slid out the pencil from one end, and applied glue between the strips. He later refined it by building a machine that would coat the outside of the paper with wax to hold it together, so the glue wouldn't dissolve in bourbon.

Beer, mint juleps, bourbon...once again, proof that alcohol leads to greatness.

This week, a look at the history of the straw.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "The easiest thing in the world to be is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don't let them put you in that position." - Leo Buscaglia (US author and lecturer, 1925 - 1998)

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