I actually own two Leathermans
(Leathermen), one that was given to me years ago by my dear wife and one that I
found on a deserted beach on the wild side of Vancouver Island. I naturally assumed they came with
corkscrews, but yesterday I had a good look, and I’ll be darned if neither of
them has a corkscrew.
Now, I am not an oenophile myself,
otherwise I would have realized this long ago, but I know it’s dangerous to get
between a sailor and his wine. I am a beer drinker myself, having been brought
up in a family where drinking fancy-schmancy wine was for poofters, though I
have learned to moderate those views slightly over the intervening years. Both
my Leathermans, although bereft of corkscrews, have bottle-cap removers that
will remove the cap from a beer bottle with jolly ease.
The makers of beer seem better to
appreciate the danger of separating a sailor from his grog, and make it
relatively easy to open cans and bottles of beer, even without special bottle
openers. I also know (and greatly
admire) some yachties who can remove caps from beer bottles with their teeth —
mostly Australians who were weaned on beer and
encouraged by their dads to practice cap removal from the time the first
teeth appeared in their tiny gums.
But there is little more frustrating
than not being able to reap the benefit of a bottle of wine because you can’t
get the damned cork out. It’s true that there are some enlightened vintners who
sell wine with screw-off caps but even we beer drinkers know that the
cork-pulling majority look down upon screw-off wines. They scoff even more at wine sold in boxes
with plastic liners, which I think is cleverest solution to the wine drinking
problem that anybody ever came up with.
Sailors are resourceful people,
however, and I have heard of cases where, in extremis, they simply knocked the
neck off the bottle with a hammer. You
have to have a lady’s stocking handy if you do this, however, to strain the
slivers of glass out of the wine, and a lady willing to donate one. Other
frustrated sailors have rummaged in their tool boxes and found a long thin screw
to plunge into the cork, after which a pair of pliers can be used to remove the
cork with a combination of brute force and desperation.
Finally, I have to note that the
latest flier from West Marine says they’re going to have a Leatherman sale soon.
The price of the $115 model lacking a corkscrew has plummeted to $49.99. This
is an extraordinary discount, of course.
I think it must be a manifestation of lingering guilt. But no matter how
far they lower the price, they’ll never be forgiven fully until the Boy Scout
remover has a proper little corkscrew right alongside it.
Today’s
Thought
If
you find an Australian indoors, it’s a fair bet that he will have a glass in
his hand.
— Jonathan Aitken, Land of Fortune
Tailpiece
Workers earn it, spendthrifts burn it;Bankers lend it, women spend it;
Forgers fake it, taxes take it.
I could use it.
(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday,
Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)
