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More Sedate Topers Shun Cider Jugs

By Robert H. Sand

If one must drink, it should be done with flourish as well as with relish. This is somewhat difficult at Harvard because the Faculty Committee on Athletics outlawed "conspicuous drinking" at football games.

The ruling has not been very strictly enforced, if it has been at all. Perhaps this is so because fans have taken to flying paper planes at the players and coach rather than beer cans (filled) which they used with some accuracy in 1954.

Nevertheless, undergraduates have greater reliance upon the hip flask become more cautious of late, placing and the small, pocket sized bottle than upon the old fashioned cider jug filled with milk punch or the like.

As other Colleges have faced this same ruling, more ambitious thinkers and more dedicated drinkers have discovered new means to get the old brew into football games.

An imaginative Dartmouth student, for example, discovered that the eyepieces to his binoculars could be removed and that the cavity could be filled with bracing liquids.

Thermos bottles have an innocent appearance, so that few users will bother to examine it. Coke bottles can be filled with appropriately colored liquors and provide safe passage.

Matters have never gotten so serious as to force students to resort to the techniques of prohibition days, when runners ran from speakeasy to speakeasy with rubber tires filled with liquor around their waists.

Those more concerned with imbibing than with transporting hooked a tube on to the tire, ran it behind their lapels, and from there simply squeezed the tube with their elbows and swallowed.

The more modern taste runs toward the plastic flasks which are unbreakable, although not very attractive. The silver flasks, or the glass ones covered with leather or plaid cloth, are more debonnaire, and more expensive.

The afficionados and the just plain artsy craftsy have taken to wine bags in recent years. Just a little squeeze and some accurate aim, and a tasty squirt is obtained. The bag is sloppy for the novice, however, and even the experts frown at the leathery taste the wine soon acquires.

What to drink is almost as large a question as how to drink it. A favorite is milk punch (a little sugar, brandy, rum or whiskey, ice, and milk 'til tasty). The thermos bottle set still swears by hot buttered rum (with a dash of bitters and a clove or two). The most effective standbys are vodka and any kind of juice which will disguise the alcohol (temporarily) from a dainty date.

The best, of course, is to drink it straight . . . from the bottle. It's quicker, cleaner, and more effective.

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