I’M JUST CURIOUS: Other uses for booze…continued

by Debbie Walker

This chapter will be about RUM. The favored drink of many. As usual I was searching the internet and I typed in Other Uses for Rum, immediately, this website pops up that read, 101 Uses for Strong Rum. Hurray! Pay dirt! 101 uses on one site, how lucky! The clue should have been its other capital words read The Raw Bar Yoho, but even then, I thought ‘okay, a bar tender probably has some great thoughts on the subject.’ Now when I go on, I am hoping you will get the kick out of it that I did. If you get a chance look it up on your computer, it’s a funny write.

The rum this man (I still didn’t find his name) speaks of is called Sunset and under that it says Very Strong Rum. It is made on the island of St. Vincent in the Wayward Islands of the West Indies. Now that you have been introduced, let’s continue to some of the uses this man offers.

101 uses, not really, he admits he just made that up, but there are more than I can fit in this column:

Kill a Caterpillar: The brown caterpillar, nasty critter. They pour the Very Strong Rum over the caterpillar and light it on fire. (Fire seems to come up often in his cures).

Remove a wart: Rub as much of the wart away, using something abrasive. Then rub a Very Strong Rum soaked rag over it and then put fire to the wart. How many times you do this to remove the wart depends on the tolerance to burn pain.

Fuel for a 2-stroke outboard engine. An enthusiastic charter boat captain went on about the infallibility of the older, carbureted Yamaha outboards, and said, “an if you was to run out of fuel, you pour in strong rum an’ she still gonna run.”

Remove water from a fuel tank. Like dry gas, strong rum, it is said can be poured in a fuel tank ruined by water and once there it will somehow combine with the water and then dry out leaving clean gas behind. There are some scientists in a lab working on reproducing the effect, but not successfully.

Swimmer’s ear. With the same idea of removing water from the fuel tank, you pour strong rum into the affected ear and any water trapped inside will evaporate out. The rum will also kill any parasites and sterilize any infections.

Cauterize a wound. A man lost most of two fingers in a fight with a Marlin. His buddies feared gangrene and blood loss, so they tied off those two fingers and dipped them in strong rum then lit them afire to cauterize the wound.

Joint pain. An entry from the Journal of Questionable West Indian Folk Remedies said this strong rum would “sap yuh joints.”

All right, so this is all of the education for this night or you can look up The Raw Bar Yoho’s 101 Uses for Strong Rum on your computer and continue to learn some of the more ‘colorful’ uses for Strong Rum.

I’m just curious what other uses you are aware for this or other Booze.

Questions or comments, contact me at DebbieWalker@townline.org Have a great week!