It's time to get Kooky

Welcome to Kook Tales, where we traverse the wonderful wide world of strange drinks. Watery? Sometimes. Wicked? Let's hope so. Watered down? Never.

Thank you to my loving sister, Rachel, for the inspiration. When she first started in the liquor bidness, Rach was a waitress serving standard-issue, bottom-line-friendly, 1-ounce pours to tongue-wagging patrons of Mile High Saloon. When she retired from the cocktail-serving business a decade later, she was the queen of whopping, knock-you-on-your-ass, drinks whose liquor content was three times the legal limit! She called them "kooktails"; we gave her our keys and called a cab.

The owner's lost profits were our gain. Score one for the paying customers! Rachel misspent much of her 20s at Mile High, while my brother and I misspent whole bunches of our hard-earned twenties there on tips and table dances. hey, at least we kept most of the money in the family. We drank heavily, for free, while Seester, her sassy coworker Shannon, and her dirty-dancing colleagues pocketed our prodigious tips.

So here's to you, Seester! It's beer-thirty. Down the hatch! Bro and I are glad you always kept your shirt on.