So out of the blue Friday night was all about Jaegermeister. It began when my partner behind the bar explained that he didn’t think his health was all that good due to late nights, early mornings, and brutal drinking habits.
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Him: I might not drink anything tonight. Just stay sober.
Me: Say it ain’t so. (pause) Seriously?
Him: I guess since it’s early this might be a hypothetical discussion
Me: I can remember one time I had a fever over a hundred and I knocked it out with a bunch of margaritas.
::Twenty minutes later::
Him: I might have some Jaeger
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And with that, the black syrupy joy that is Jaeger flowed out of our fridge and down our throats. After a few shots my bartending peer looked at me and reaffirmed his decision to hit purple stuff. The next thing I know everyone at the bar is ordering Jaeger. I don’t know if it’s because they saw the bartenders pounding it, but suddenly we’re pouring Jaeger for everyone. I even saw some dudes using Jaeger as a chaser for warm vodka shots. (I wonder how that guy felt the next morning)
Jaeger Meister translates to “Lord of the Hunt” and supposedly when St. Bernards are on duty rescuing avalanche victims, it is Jaeger in the little barrels around their necks. “But where on earth did this purplish ooze that tastes like licorice and pine needles come from,” you ask?
Who else? The mother-fuckin Nazis that’s who! Seriously.
Jaeger Meister was named as a tribute to a man named Hermann Goring. He was the head of the Luftwaffe and Hitlers’s right hand man. (one of his titles was ReichsJägermeister) Towards the end of the 1930’s Jaeger became available to the people in Germany and just a few years later Nazi soldiers used it on the battlefield as a cure for everything. “Got a cough? Headache? That bullet wound looks painful- not feel like crushing Poland today? Have a swig of this!” Before you can say “Blitzkrieg!” these guys are rolling all over Europe.
How on Earth did this stuff go from the battlefields of good and evil to frat houses and dive bars all across America? This is baffling to me. Jokes are made all the time about Jaeger’s origins but I never seriously thought the stuff had such ominous beginnings. No wonder fights break out so much in college bars- dudes are guzzling war-juice.
I woke up the next day and felt like a gorilla had crapped in my mouth but it was such a beautiful day that some sport was definitely in order. When I say sport, I mean wiffle ball (ohhhh yeah) and despite my hangover we destroyed the opposing team. Let me rephrase- We crushed their insolent skulls beneath the treads of our tanks… actually it was the treads on our flip flops but whatever. I had a Nazi-esque hangover and I don’t believe in coincidince.
