Behind the Scenes Minis: Drinks and Dyer

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V.

00:00:15
Speaker 2: Wilson. I have so many things to talk about for this time.

00:00:20
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm gonna go in order of what we covered on the eponymous Drinks at the Yeah. So I remember with such clarity my first Chirley Temple mm hmm. It was given to me on a plane and because it was like this cool looking beverage and I was on a plane and I felt super worldly. I think this might be where I fell in love with cocktails. Okay, Like I just associated it with like coolness and being like, you know, a globe trotter. Oh, I was nine, but in my head I was the coolest nine year old ever for a minute. That was also a trip where I lost one of my favorite toys and like we never found it and it was very troubling.

00:01:02
Speaker 2: Uh.

00:01:02
Speaker 1: But the the Shirley Temple stayed with me forever. I don't think I have ever had one because we were not a drinking family in any way, and so I like was never.

00:01:16
Speaker 2: Exposed to the idea.

00:01:18
Speaker 1: I mean I was exposed to the idea of a cocktail, but I was like, never in a place where cocktails were being served until I was an adult. Fascinating. Yeah, you could have come to my locker in high school. Don't do that, kids don't do that. Yeah, So I like I didn't really, I didn't really know it was even a like a drink with a recipe.

00:01:41
Speaker 2: I thought it was a thing people.

00:01:43
Speaker 1: Said to get something, Just give me something non alcoholic and fruity.

00:01:49
Speaker 2: Like I didn't.

00:01:50
Speaker 1: I didn't realize there was like a it was an actual oh yeah, yeah thing that it's clearly variation variations of the recipe, but like, I didn't know there was even really that. Yeah, I feel like most people, if you had to go with like this is the common one. It's the grenadine and the lemon lime soda with the Maraschino cherry on top. The other variations are all interesting and yummy, but like maybe the ginger ale, but I'm I always see it most of the time if I get it, which I occasionally do. It's the grenadine and the lemon lime. That's the basic. The others are variations. You can also, you know, throw a spirit in there and make it a whole other thing. Yep, I do a spirited version of it where I do just to splash a grenadine and most of the syrup is actually a rose syrup, and it's a very yummy into list that sounds good, listen. I love flour flavored drinks, nigronies, so nigronies are interesting. We didn't really talk about it in the episode, but they are not everyone's cup of alcohol.

00:03:01
Speaker 2: For sure.

00:03:02
Speaker 1: It's a very strong flavor. It's a very unique and strong flavor. Now, I did recently, and I've always had a hard time making friends with an agronie, but I did recently have I was on vacation and I had a bartender who was doing like a cocktail flight and talking through some stuff, and she made a very good case where she was like, you know, most people, the first time they take a sip of an agronie, they do not like it. But the idea is that you have that first sip and you let it settle, and then you take your second sip and that's where you start tasting all of the interesting notes of the actual beverage. And she's not wrong. It's still a little harsh for me, but I was able to drink it thinking about it that way.

00:03:46
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:03:46
Speaker 1: I also on that trip because I had set up that tasting for me and several friends and it was in a Star Wars situation where the drinks are named, not what they're really named in the real world. Sure saw several friends unknowingly rink and the groni for the first time, and that was really fun for me.

00:04:03
Speaker 2: Did you take pictures of their faces?

00:04:06
Speaker 1: Kind of? Yeah? I mean I was cackling so hard, which is terrible, possibly, but it was very funny to watch them go like, oh.

00:04:12
Speaker 2: I'll go, what is this holy? Because a lot the description.

00:04:18
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm not questioning the idea that somebody could move from Italy to the United States and become a cowboy, just the way the dialogue is delivered in that pee, I'm like, this does not feel real to me. This feels made up. Maybe that opens up though many other questions of like, okay, but then how did this guy know about him? Because he did travel there, right, so did he meet this person and rewrote how he spoke or we don't know, Yeah, we don't know. Lots of question marks, so many question marks. That's one of those things. And I told you, I fully expect people to write in and be like, you got it all wrong, because people will argue about the origins of cocktails in general is a heated space. So I tried to capture all of the key elements on the Nigronie. If I didn't, my deepest apologies. I'm fascinated by the lawsuit about the bottled Negronie. Yeah, like just that one. I mean, I think Campari's big thing. I didn't find any actual legal documents on how that played out, but I think their big thing was like, it's not in a gronny. I of Compari's not in it, So this is not in a gronie first of all, but also that other liqueur companies were like, it's so terrible, this can't represent Italy. Like, yeah, no, that gave me a moment of delight. Yeah, I don't know how you would do a I mean, you can bottle soda.

00:05:49
Speaker 2: I don't know.

00:05:49
Speaker 1: There's something about that comba that doesn't seem right to combine and bottle that it would keeps its unique flavor. But I am no beverage chemistry expert in that regard. I've seen a lot more canned and bottled cocktails on the market more recently, Yes, for sure. And I would say I mixed results. Well that one is here's some of the confusion for me on that one, if you're actually mixing it and then bottling it again. I don't know how this factory was written, but like vermouth is one of those things that, like a lot of people, keep at room temperature. You're not supposed to. You're supposed to refrigerate it and once it's open, because it will it will get skunky and weird. And if you think you don't like Remoove, it might be because you've been drinking it sitting on a after sitting on a bar back when it should have been in the fringe. So part of me is like, if you mixed that and then you bottled it and then does that is the vermouth at that point compromised? And will that ruin the taste of the final thing? And I don't know. Do you want to hear about lots of litigation involving doctor Pepper?

00:07:06
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm. Okay.

00:07:07
Speaker 1: First of all, I will say I have questions because all of the things that I read said that like Alderton was like, no, I don't want any part of this manufacturing business. But part of me is like, did he just get pushed out? Because we never get any more about it from that, And similarly, Morrison kind of vanishes from the equation and his business partner takes over, and I don't really know what the scoop is there. That's not the litigation part. I did not realize how many times Doctor Pepper and Coca Cola have been in hardcore lawsuits together, Like there was during I'm trying to remember what year it was hold on. Let me see if I can find it in my notes, because I did keep it handy. There was an instance where Doctor Pepper was legally determined to be not a cola, which is important because Pepsi and Coke have each had clauses in their contract with bottling companies that are exclusivity clauses like we will be the only cola you bottle and manufacture here, which meant that Doctor Pepper couldn't get into those markets without building a whole thing. But in being declared legally not a cola, they were able to be made in the same plants. So that's one thing just fascinating.

00:08:34
Speaker 2: The other.

00:08:37
Speaker 1: Is that mister pib so When it was first taken to market, mister PIB was called Peppo okay, and doctor Pepper sued. It was like, come on, you're making a copy of our drink because start, remember, has maintained a pretty significant market share because it's a unique tasting soda in the brown sodas. It doesn't taste like the others. It has its own kind of quality to it.

00:09:08
Speaker 2: So they sued, and.

00:09:09
Speaker 1: Then Coca Cola was like, okay, and then they named it mister PIB, which, by the way, it doesn't exist anymore either. Now it is called is it not, it's called hold on, let me make sure I get this right. It still exists in a different flavor. It's like PIB. I want to say it's PIB extreme, but I don't think it's that. It's like PIB extra or something like that.

00:09:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does.

00:09:40
Speaker 1: It hasn't been made as mister PIB for like twenty years, which I didn't realize until I was working on this that I yeah, I didn't realize this either.

00:09:52
Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh.

00:09:53
Speaker 1: The other thing that I found really interesting and I debated over adding it into the episode and didn't is all of the pretty unique and interesting approaches to advertising that Doctor Pepper has done over the years. Like for a while their bottles had the numbers ten two and four on them, and the idea was there had been some studies done where people got tired or laggy at yeh thirty, two thirty and four thirty, and so they were like, if you drink at doctor Pepper at these times, you won't get laggy.

00:10:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember this.

00:10:30
Speaker 1: It was pretty that's a pretty great, fascinating way to do it.

00:10:34
Speaker 2: It was.

00:10:36
Speaker 1: Their slogan was drink a bite to eat at ten two and four, and I'm like, those get sugared up.

00:10:42
Speaker 2: It's a weird messaging, Okay.

00:10:44
Speaker 1: There was also a thing that they advertised, I think several years in the winter to make hot doctor Pepper.

00:10:52
Speaker 2: Oh no thanks.

00:10:55
Speaker 1: I want to read this advertisement to you.

00:11:00
Speaker 2: I don't know why it tickles me.

00:11:02
Speaker 1: So it looks so jolly. It has a snowman holding a clear mug of hot doctor Pepper, and it says, here's something truly different Doctor Pepper, which is great as an icy cold soft drink, is also delicious served steaming hot, and hot doctor Pepper is so easy to prepare. Just heat doctor Pepper or diet doctor pepper in a saucepan till its steams, then pour over thin slices of lemon hot doctor pepper. That's a hot idea. Okay. I am a weirdo that will drink soda without ice. I don't mind a warm soda if it hasn't been in the fridge. I'm very European this way. I'm not really uh actually heat it up soda.

00:11:44
Speaker 2: Yes, that's awful.

00:11:46
Speaker 1: Having just as an example, having bought a doctor pepper and had it in the car and left the car for a couple of hours in the summertime to go into the store or whatever, they come out and unthinkingly took a swig of that car hot doctor pepper. That sounds bad to me. I mean, my thing is I guess here's here's where I'm getting hung up. Part of why I love sodas like many people, I love the bubbles like that's that's part of the magic. It's why I always want a soda in my hand, essentially of some type, and that is gonna get rid of all the bubbles and then you just have hot sugar juice. Ah. Yeah, Which I guess you could make the argument, like what do you think like warm punches are. But I'm also not super into those. But yeah, I think that's that's where I'm like, no, thank you, I don't I don't care for it. And of course now there are many many flavors and many many things, and they've done all this stuff. But Hot Doctor Pepper really got my attention. Yeah, that would be a great cover band of some sort. Hot Doctor Pepper. Not for me, not for me anyway. So many beverages, so much beverage talk I like about of beverage history anyway, but those ones were fun to discuss. This week, we talked about Mary Dyer and some of the other folks who were executed for being Quakers in colonial Massachusetts. I went down the biggest, biggest rabbit hole about exactly where executions were taking place. What did you find? Pretty much everything that is specifically about Mary Dyer and is specifically about the other especially the other two people who were executed before she was, they just say the place of execution.

00:13:56
Speaker 2: And that is all it says.

00:13:59
Speaker 1: And like, there are other people who were also executed around the same time in the seventeenth century, and some of those do more specifically say that, like at that point the place of execution was on Boston Neck. Boston Neck doesn't exist anymore because on one side of Boston Neck was the Back Bay, and on the other side of Boston Neck was another body of water.

00:14:23
Speaker 2: I don't remember.

00:14:24
Speaker 1: All of that is filled in now, so like there's no more narrow strip of land right there. But a lot of people who described they're coming into Boston talked about crossing Boston Neck and coming to a wall and a gallows, and it was like outside of Boston, on the other side of this wall on Boston Neck is where the gallows was. There was a guy named Michael J. Cannavan who delivered a paper in nineteen eleven in which he walked through where other executions had taken place. He walked through some of the vague things that people say said about Mary Dye or other people, like there was somebody who was like and then she was taken about a mile and about a mile wouldn't have put her on Boston Common, It would have put her on Boston Neck. There was apparently a couple of decades later, Quakers in Massachusetts were trying to like enclose the burial the burial area where the people had been buried and to mark their graves, which Massachusetts didn't want to do. But they didn't really specifically say where that was, like where the enclosure was trying to happen.

00:15:43
Speaker 2: Was it on Boston Common? Was it on Boston Neck?

00:15:45
Speaker 1: And then the same person somewhat later talked about passing by the place where the Quakers had tried to put a little fence up, but was on the way to Dorchester, and and he definitely would have gone down Boston Neck on the way to Dorchester, but might also have gone by Boston Common.

00:16:04
Speaker 2: Not clear. None of this.

00:16:08
Speaker 1: Was helpful, And so after looking at this for just a huge amount of time, I was like, you know, who might know Jake from Hub History Because Hub History is a podcast that has been around for like two hundred and seventy something episodes. It is just about Boston history. Jake and I have forgotten the name of the woman who was also hosting at the time. She's moved on to other projects, but he had a co so that like, they already did a Mary Dire episode, and in that episode they described as happening on.

00:16:43
Speaker 2: Boston Neck.

00:16:44
Speaker 1: But as we were going back and forth about it, I was like, I still don't know though, Like I really thought when I asked him this question on Twitter on a Saturday, I thought the answer was either going to be, oh, yes, here is a great source, or it was gonna be I actually don't.

00:16:57
Speaker 2: Know of one.

00:16:59
Speaker 1: But instead he very graciously spent way more time than I expected, sending me a whole bunch of links to a whole bunch of primary sources that to me just made it more confusing. One of the things that I think happened though, is that eventually hangings were definitely carried out on Boston Common, and the same execution site on Boston Common was used for a while. So then when in the like later eighteenth and nineteenth century, people started writing history books about the history of Boston, they were used to the hangings being carried out on the Common, and so that was like when this other piece of common land on Boston Neck came up and was also just called something like the common Land, like their mind kind of filled in the blank of Boston the place that we know of as a public park today. So I it just was, it was so so much, so much time that I spent on that without really feeling like I had come to an actual answer, but the idea that it was definitely on Boston Common is like almost everywhere. So another thing is, as I was thinking about this whole Boston Common question, I was like, you know, it would be kind of ironic because with that statue in front of the State House, she's basically looking out at Boston Common. She would just be sort of in perpetuity looking at her execution and burial place. Oh so number one, there's all the questions I just talked about. Number two though, just because of the layout of the park and the layout of the State House, she is not actually looking at the Boston It's not actually looking at Boston Common.

00:18:46
Speaker 2: There's a building in the way. What she's actually looking at as a Dunkin Donuts. Heaven. There's just a whole different and very Massachusetts thing.

00:18:56
Speaker 1: America runs on. Duncan Tracy, She's fine, I guess, so yeah, if you don't know, there's a lot of dunkin Donuts in Massachusetts. Personally, I like the Mary Dier statue better than the Anne Hutchinson one. And one of the reasons that the Mary Dire statue has always caught my eye is that it has a simplicity to it, which totally makes sense because it is about a Quaker woman by a Quaker sculpture, and like, simplicity is a value among Quakers, and so she's wearing very simple clothing. She's sitting on a bench that looks like maybe the bench in the meetinghouse that where she would have attended services. She's not actually looking at the dunkin donuts. She's looking more downward, and it just it's a statue that I feels like it has a peaceful contemplativeness to it while also feeling determined, which I think just reflects a lot of things about her. The one of Anne Hutchinson. There's Anne. She has her arm around a little girl, which is I'm pretty sure supposed to be her daughter, Susannah, and so she's like one arm is around the little girl, the other arm she's holding a bible to her breast, and she's sort of looking heavenward. And it's just a lot more ostentatious to me in the way that it kind of portrays everything. And so it's also harder to get a look at from the sidewalk because in addition to it being farther away from the sidewalk, there's some I don't know if it's construction or landscape work going on, but there's a bunch of temporary fencing right now between the sidewalk and the statue, so it's just not as easy to get a good look at unless you want to get on the other side of the fence, which I think you can do.

00:20:45
Speaker 2: Maybe not all the time, but I think you can do so anyway.

00:20:48
Speaker 1: Statue talk, Yeah, I kind of cracked up that we have done two shows about heresy right on each other's heels. Yeah, but like in ways that played out so drastically differently.

00:21:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:21:04
Speaker 1: For sure, one is like a bunch of dudes kind of slap fighting, and this one is much graver.

00:21:12
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:21:13
Speaker 1: I did not get into it in the episode, but I did read a whole paper about how this event influenced sort of Quaker's views of themselves and of their religion and also sort of the mythological mythologizing, as a better word, the story that the United States tells about itself. Yeah, because the colony, like colonial Boston, you could argue, had a lot more sustained part of like the growth of the United States as a nation than the colony at Plymouth colony at Plymouth has its whole different issues, right, But the colony at Plymouth didn't publicly hang for people for being coakers, Right, So this paper kind of argued that maybe one of the reasons that there is more of a focus on this not very accurate story of like the First Thanksgiving and the Colony at Plymouth and all that is because then you don't have to talk about these incidents of like religious persecution and hangings.

00:22:33
Speaker 2: Right.

00:22:35
Speaker 1: I mean, here's what I I love is not the right word, but here your's what intrigues me about this whole story. This is such a good examination of the psychology of fear, right, because on the one hand, humans fear the unexpected and the fear change, and so right, there's that, and it's like, you know, you can't help but think. I can't help but think. And I'm sure many people feel the same as you. Hear it, Like, here's a woman who lost her child and probably you know, was grieving that, and somehow, in the midst of that pain, also became an outcast because people were so scared that somehow the bad thing that happened to her meant that God was angry and they were afraid that a bad thing might happen to them if they did not cast her out. And it's like, it's interesting in the way that like groupthink in situations like that can cause fear to supersede any kind of compassion. Sure, and I'm always very intrigued by these these kinds of things where it's like that is a woman who just loves lost a child. Yeah, she's got her own stuff going on. You don't need to be like this, But they did because they were terrified, which is weird. There are a number of people who have drawn conclusions about like Mary Dyer's baby and like how that baby would have been diagnosed today, and the same for Ann Hutchinson's mishearage. And I didn't put any of that in there because I'm like, we are talking about somebody who exhumed a baby that had been buried months before and then interpreted what they saw through this lens of like monstrousness. I'm like, I don't That's not a lot of scientific rigor being applied there. It's very thin evidence to try to make a diagnosis out of. So I did not feel comfortable, even though there are a lot of people that have made that I was like, I don't feel comfortable really putting that in there. I had to go back into Boston for a totally different reason, for a different episode. And while I was there, I as I was walking in the direction I needed to walk, I walked past the Merryder statue and I looped back and I was like, is she really.

00:25:12
Speaker 2: Looking at the dunkin Donuts?

00:25:13
Speaker 1: She is? And then I was like, let me go look at the Anne Hutchinson statue, even though that's not the way that I'm walking, And like walked whole way and was like, that is a lot farther back from the road than I. Like, it's odd how that stretch of like Park and Land and State House is kind of laid out in a way that's definitely not square, right. You end up with like one side of the Stayhouse way farther back from.

00:25:37
Speaker 2: The road than the other.

00:25:40
Speaker 1: So anyway, if you go walking around Boston, we got a lot of statues and they all have stories they do they do. On that same walk, there were a couple other statues that I made note of.

00:25:53
Speaker 2: I was like, who is this person?

00:25:54
Speaker 1: I got to look them up because I'm intrigued by this statue.

00:26:00
Speaker 2: So Happy Friday.

00:26:02
Speaker 1: And if you've got great stuff going on this weekend, I hope it's great. If your weekend is not looking this great, you know, I hope you're able to take a minute for yourself. I've been trying very hard to carve out some moments for my own self every day, even if something's going on, it's trying to prevent that. We'll be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow. We will be back Monday with a brand new episode. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.