The Cooper had himself quite a setup; business had been brisk before the Panic but with Fort Dickerson drawing down things had been doubly quiet. That is until I showed up in town or time or whatever. On the other hand I knew this was the start of the National recovery and that it would be a hell of a good bounce back. I didn’t need to look to history to know that, you could see it all around if you watched for the signs. Human folk loved capitalism and when given it with the appropriate socialist support they were literally unstoppable.

Either approach, Capitalism or Socialism, left on its own seemed to wallow and fail in deep misery but together – wow! My take on it was that given a level playing field true winners would emerge by the legion rather than the weak offerings the European aristocratic societies offered up from their tilted fields of competition.

Blah, blah, blah! If you know me you know my feelings: Level play field, strong rules and excellent referee’s. The true winners will emerge regardless of background if all things are made equal. I roused myself, I was done with thinking about that; meanwhile Sincereclaire and Amos were looking at me like I had suddenly become deaf and dumb.

I shook myself out of that moment and got on with something fun, I wanted a tub for a bath and I wanted it now.

Of course my luck held. The Cooper just so happened to have…

…Yup, he had an oversized barrel that a now defunct brewery had custom ordered for a Bierfest they wanted to have. Back in ’19. The order fell through and he was stuck with a gigantic beer barrel.

Mind you at a proper Bierfest there aren’t a multitude of options, usually there’s a large barrel of beer and hopefully a barrel of wine. The festival ended when that barrel was empty, that philosophy carried over to the modern world. “The party is over when the keg floats!” Was the norm across a huge swath of the world in modern times.

I was worried about transport and such but was once again reminded that I had people for that and they had it under control. The Cooper himself was excited about the idea of a bathing tub that size and his consideration of the amount of items I just purchased probably had a ‘small’ influence on that attitude. I just climbed back into my carriage and let Amos take me to where-ever they thought I needed to go next.

Perhaps I was grumpy and really needed a day off, perhaps it was time to go find that obstinate rocking chair again. So that was where we went.

**** ****

So what did I manage to do that day aside from putting folks back to work again? On a day that I would have sold your grandmother for a piece of Vonnegut’s fabled Ice-9, I found blocks of ICE!!!

Ice Cold Beer and Ice Water. I became obsessed and I happily paid seventy-five cents a block for the only three blocks they’d part with. That was after the two dollar side bribe. Yes that made me the market maker of the moment and yes that was three day’s wage per block for the average man. But I would have Ice Cold Beer this afternoon and it was just lottery money.

‘Lottery Money’, that was still the attitude I took from time to time. A lot had come and gone in the short time since then but it felt good to splurge on that ice. The blocks were wrapped up in thick straw with a burlap covering to prevent melting and we rushed them into the small beer cellar as soon as we arrived.

I called for advice on how to best use this treasure on a hot summer’s day in humid Missouri. I had an idea of my own but with-held that I had even the smallest of inkling until many other’s had spoken. For once my first take wasn’t wrong and we found a small tub, added cold spring water and a single block of ice.

We then set two pitchers of beer, a pitcher of water and one of white wine within to chill. Heck that was my take on it but I kept out of it aside from the final “Make it so.” A quote stolen from past and future, a fun part of this life I guess.

Now that spring water may have been slightly cool, but I’d not drink it. It ran down past St. Charles proper I can guarantee that at least one person emptied their overnight chamber pot in it. People were reliably irresponsible and lazy about emptying their waste safely, out of site and out of mind was the overwhelming rule. All I could say was: “Build upstream.”

What I did was to fill my mug with clean water from my water skin and set it on that block of ice that was chilling the water to cool our beer and wine. I was rewarded just a half an hour later with a cool sweet mug of water to sip while I worked through a cigarette and found the rhythm of that damned rocking chair again.

I limply rocked and watched the goings on out in the yard. I felt silly not being part of that work but the crews were organized and amazing things were happening. Before I knew it the first pitchers of beer were coming off ice and I was in heaven. Now heaven didn’t come without dinner; dinner in this case was by my special request since the local butcher had a fresh batch of liverwurst. When they asked about bread I opted for fresh lettuce instead, too damn hot for bread, so just cheese, liverwurst and mayonnaise.

Mayonnaise wasn’t particularly new to the scene at that time but was relatively unknown, it’s still a simple recipe and can be spiced a variety of ways. It had turned into another word for ‘bland’ in modern vernacular, as had vanilla; but unlike that ungodly modern ketchup the former two were actually magnificent culinary items. In modern times ketchup had become little more than sugar syrup with a bit of tomato flavoring and color added, kids loved it and put it on everything.

For that moment though, I didn’t care. I had a cold beer and a nice liverwurst wrap in my reluctant rocking chair.

I thought I might keep that damned chair.