Behind the Scenes Minis: Colchester and Gin

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Uh. We talked about Charles Colchester this week. Yep, ye, what what a hoot? That whole thing is really interesting. I like I said at the top of that, he's somebody that has come up periodically when I'm looking at other stuff, and I keep going, I gotta look into that. But then when I did, like one, it's a it offered insight that I had not explored before. It's certainly been discussed before by many other people into the way that the Lincoln marriage functioned in regards to Mary Todd Lincoln's interest in spiritualism and the beyond um, because you will see people that will assert that that President Lincoln was into it as well. But most of the historians that I ran across while research and kind of indicate what we talked about in the episode that he was kind of more like, I just want to make sure like nothing truly terrible is happening to my wife at these things, that nobody is taking advantage of her in a in a way that could be detrimental um, which is just fascinating, and we should say that Colchester, particularly during that trial, he was often called the medium of the Lincoln's or the first Ladies spiritualist, but he was one of many, and not even necessarily like her favorite by any means. So I don't don't want to misrepresent him as like the one in the midst of all of that. Yeah. Well, and the questions about whether Abraham Lincoln himself was spiritualists, like, that's not just the new topic, No, not at all. Yeah. One of the as I was trying to see if I could find a picture of Colchester anywhere. One of the things I found was this book from called was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist? Huh? Yeah, it is interesting, Uh, that work of Henry figuring out the whole thing and relaying like, oh here it is. It's this crazy device on a that they put on a bicep and Lincoln be like, I get it. That's cool. Um. I sort of love that idea that he was just like interesting. Interesting. I feel like I want to make fake business cards that say I practice jugglery. Yeah. I don't juggle, nor do I have the skill for close up magic or sleight of hand. Even though I love that stuff, I don't I don't have the power. I learned how to juggle a little many years ago when I was in high school and doing musical theater. We did the musical Barnum because there was an there was already a home musical about P. T. Barnum even before that movie happened more recently. Uh. And like a lot of those of us who were sort of in the background, we were always doing some circus stuff, and a bunch of us learned how to juggle, and so I could. Um, I could juggle three balls for a short amount of time. But scarves, because they're twist they're like floaty. You have a lot more leeway. And so I I could juggle scarves pretty well also, though only three of them. See, I could only get as far as the two ball circle. I could never do the three. I just like it didn't matter how much like dance or movement training I had had. When it came to that, I may as well have just smacked them out of the air like a cat. I didn't know. I could not grasp it, not in my skill set at all. I have no no future in the circus alas well. And musical theater wasn't in my skill set either because I was not a good singer or a good dancer. But boy did I love musical theater so much. See, I was, like I said, I had dance training. I'm not a good singer, but I was that snooty kid who was like musical theater. I want to do Ibsen Like I was that kid, that irritating child, um that you know, poopooed musical theater. It's still not my thing, but it's fine, and I know people that love it and get joy from it. Great. Um, I still have that thing where I like to watch people sings, so that's part of it. But I would love for someone to do a play, be it musical or no. About Charles Colchester. I feel like his life story, what we know of it, is very very interesting. I did stumble across a blog of a person who years ago did some pretty intensive searching to try to triangulate who he might have actually been, which is interesting. It's not, you know, easy to substantiate beyond kind of that work, which he did a lot of legwork. But the other thing that we didn't mention in the episode because it's again not provable. I did stumble across one news article at his death that claimed that he was only twenty seven, and most do claim that he was still pretty young when all of this was going on. But because we don't know his date of birth or anything about him, we're like, all, y is make the quizzle puppy face Because I don't know for sure. It is a mystery, a mystery. I really suspect, uh that he and John Wilkes Booth probably shared some information after a few drinks, and that is probably how he got wind of what was being plotted writing the president, whether that was the original plan of kidnapping or when Booth had transitioned to the idea of shooting the president. One of those I think probably got blabbed after some cocktails. Yeah, probably not cocktails. They were probably just swells from a bottle. But but in any case, Uh, Yeah, Charles Colchester, fascinating creature, still shrouded in mystery, even though there were trials and news reports and connections to the president. And yet that's like the stone that sits only partly turned. Yeah. This week on the show, we talked about gin, which, uh is the thing that I've thought about doing on show for a while off and on, and then getting an email directly asking for it made me go, Okay, sure, this will not just feel like my personal interest that I am doing as an episode for no one's benefit but my own. I'm I have no hesitation to do. I'm interested in this, so I'm doing. When it comes to uh, two spirits, gin is the thing that I think that I have the most often, and so this was a fun one to research for me. I have never had your neighbor, which, as we alluded to in the episode, if you um, if you read and speak English as your first language and are not from Holland or that vicinity, it looks like it's Geneva or Jennifer, which threw me for a loop when I heard somebody say it for the very first time, and I was like, oh, I thought about trying to to get some of that so I could taste it for myself, and in my limited time and effort to look into that possibility, did not find anywhere local that carried it, so I did not then worry about that. I did discover, however, the airline KLM makes these little blue these like Delft Blue houses that are um made to look like real buildings, usually real historic buildings. Uh. They give them to people who are flying world business class and they're filled with your neighbor. And I was just like, this is a fascinating little airline thing to me. What a little house, A little house that has liquor in it that looks like a real house. Uh, this is exactly the sort of thing that if I wanted to start a new collection of something, I would start collecting. You just have to book a lot of international business class travel. Yeah, they put out a new one each year, and apparently there's an app that you can My goodness, goodness, people are apparently very into these things. I had never heard of them until researching this episode. I also made mention in the episode of some of the very old text that I read for this that were full of the long ses that look like f's. And I always enjoy reading them because it just delights me when the s s look like f. Most of the time for me, the words that are written this way um printed this way are easy for me to figure out. But there was one word in particular, um that really threw me for a loop. And what it looks like on the page with the long s is it looks like f E N F E L E F S. And I just stared at it for a while and was like, what is this word supposed to be? And I finally copied it out of the you know, the scan that I was working with. I paced it into a word document and replaced all of the f's individually and then went, oh, senseless. Obviously. You also mentioned in the episode that you did not bring up your favorite gin beverage, so now I'm curious what it is. I do really like a bee's knees. Oh that's right. We have had those together on occasion. Yeah, they are very sweet, So if you're not into sweet things, then it would probably not be for you. There's some money in there, there's honey in there. The first time that I ever had one was at a place called float Away Cafe when I was still living in Atlanta, UM and I had the first ciff of it and then I was like, okay, two of these is the number that has allowed for me to have and then no more of this Because it also was mixed that I could tell it was like pretty potent in addition to being very sweet, So Yeah, that's a favorite of mine. Fascinating. Yeah, my my spouse likes a French seventy five. I love a French Days thinks he doesn't like gin at all. I hated gin for a long time, or said that I hated gin and then, Um, I don't know if I've mentioned this on the show before, but during Pandemic, one of the things I decided to do was take online bartending classes, which forced me to kind of look at at gin and new ways and to have to practice some gin beverages, and I realized that there are some gins that I actually like. I do not like a dry gin, and I don't think I ever will. That's just that's just what it is. And I think that's why I thought that I disliked it so much. Sure, I don't also love juniper either, Like I don't love that kind of piney you know, some people have like it's a very piney taste on their taste buds, and I don't love that. But there I found some gins that I like, and I discovered that I really like a French seventy. Yeah. I also like a Tom Collins if it's made of the gin that I like. Yeah, most of the gin's that I tend to have on hand at home tends to be on the more like the more floral or herbal and of the spectrum and not just like primarily alcohol plus and juniper end of the spectrum. There is a local ish to me, uh it's not that far away um called Short Path Distillery, and they make seasonal gin's um. So they have a spring, summer, and winter and fall, and their summer one has a lot of like Barry notes in it um, which makes for all kinds of interesting things. So yeah, I also I have kind of a complicated relationship with these kinds of episodes because I do know several people personally who have um really struggled with alcoholic abuse and a few people who ultimately lost their lives to it. And so whenever I am thinking about this kind of thing, I'm always like, please drink responsibly and you can help seek help, which there is help. Yes. One thing that's been interesting, So on the other show that I do, Criminalia, we do a cocktail usually that's them to each episode, and we did our Impostor season we did mock tails for that and then I really we just had such a nice response and It really made me think about that in a way that now I try to always do both an alcohol beverage and a mocktail version of it, which has been quite fun. That's awesome. Yeah, and it's been it's been interesting to try to I feel like you can never really replicate an alcoholic beverage with a nonalcoholic substitute unless you're doing one of those beverages which have become quite popular in the last couple of years that are essentially made to be just like alcohol, but they're not, do you know what I'm talking about, Like, like they're like faux vodkas and phoegens that are made. But it is fun to try to experiment and find what can kind of give you a similar flavor in some cases depending on the profile that you're going for. And that's been quite fun. Yeah, it's tricky because I I love a good cocktail and I love too, but I like, I mean, there's certainly loads of alcoholism in my family, so so it is something that I think about as well. And like I said, I hope everyone drinks responsibly. Yeah, yeah, there used to be. Um. I think they still have an online store, but I think their brick and mortar location closed, but it was a store in Portland, Maine that specialized just in bidders um and also had a mocktail bar, and that was where they sort of showcased all of the bidders that they had available. And So another thing that I've had in my head as at something to maybe do a show on at some point is bitters, which simultaneously feels maybe way too broad and maybe also kind of fun because I love a good bidder. I mean, they're they absolutely scientifically fascinate me, right because you can make a drink and you literally put in two to four drops of a thing and it changes the whole thing, which is so fascinating. And I feel like I still don't I mess around with bidders, and I'm still learning really more how to be deft with them. But there are also so many that it's like, I feel like you can learn how to use one bitter really well and then you have to move to the next one in a cumulative knowledge gaining process. This may just be me, but yeah, I'll also just sparkling waters bitters and then really yeah, fascinating. So anyway, that's some of our personal drink thoughts. Slash future episode topics. So thanks to everybody for joining us on this Friday. We'll be back into your feed tomorrow with a Saturday Classic brand new episode on Monday. Send us a note if you would like. We're History podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. 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