'High-toned Bartenders or Enlightened Boozers'

I found a color snapshot of my parents probably taken some time between their wedding (1950) and my arrival (1952). My father still has hair. He wears a brown pin-stripe jacket with wide lapels and a loud patterned tie with a maroon background. They are seated at a table, probably in a bar or restaurant. My father is rolling his eyes toward the ceiling and my mother looks at him sideways, dubiously. In front of them, in tall glasses, are drinks of indeterminate color. I knew immediately what they were drinking: highballs.

That word colored my childhood. I witnessed a lot of drinking, at home and at picnics, in bowling alleys and bars. If the adults around me were not drinking beer (or beer and a bump – that is, with a shot of whiskey), they had a highball, understood as whiskey (most likely Four Roses) and a mixer, usually 7 Up or ginger ale. I don’t remember anyone drinking wine. A woman on my mother’s bowling team, Nona (a name I have never again encountered), drank something truly exotic: grasshoppers, made with green crème de menthe. We stared in wonder at her glass. H.L. Mencken writes in The American Language, Supplement 1 (1945):

“The high-ball came in about 1895, and the DAE’s [Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles, 1938-44] first example is dated 1898. It was, of course, simply the English whiskey-and-soda, which had been familiar to American visitors to England for many years.”

Mencken acknowledges the word’s etymology is obscure. It may have derived from railroad slang, in which it meant “a signal from a conductor to an engineer.” The OED goes a little further in its definition: “a signal to proceed given to a train driver, originally by raising a ball attached to a pole.” As a verb, highball still means to speed. Mencken recounts another possible origin: ball was “common bartender’s slang” for a glass. He continues:

“The high-ball came in on the heels of Scotch whiskey, which was but little drunk in America before 1895. It quickly became enormously popular, and it has retained its popularity ever since. During Prohibition days the custom arose of substituting ginger-ale for soda-water, especially in rye high-balls, but it has never been approved by either high-toned bartenders or enlightened boozers.”

As an amusing addendum, Mencken makes a list of American generic names for “alcoholic stimulants”: nose-paint, milk of the wild cow, belly-wash, hog-wash, tangle foot, sheep-dip, snake medicine, red-eye, gum-tickler, phlegm-cutter, gall-breaker, coffin-varnish and bug-juice.

[ADDENDUM: A reader here in Houston writes:

“You may not be acquainted with a drink called Ranch Water. It’s sort of the unofficial summer cocktail of Texas, a simple concoction of tequila, fresh lime juice, and Topo Chico (the locally popular Mexican fizzy water). When my daughters (both in their early 30s) first gave me one I was just delighted with it. It’s delicious and refreshing, a margarita with all the goop removed. I was astonished, though, when I remarked that it was just in essence a highball and they didn’t know what a highball was! Truly, things have come to an awful pass.

“My grandmother loved a highball with rye and ginger ale. Her sister Grace, who had been what she always called a 'beauty operator' and hence more worldly, drank Gibsons while smoking her Lucky Strikes. My mom was more adventurous, experimenting with various sours. This was my regular Saturday night, in my grandparent’s kitchen, for most of my childhood. By the time I was 10 I was the bartender.”]