Post #730096 by howlinowl on Wed, Oct 22, 2014 7:04 AM

I have this old cocktail recipe book. "The Art Of Mixing Drinks" based on the Esquire Drink Book. Paperback. Copyright 1956. 25th printing in August 1976.

In the very back, it has a chapter called "365 Excuses to Throw a Party". Has an excuse for each day of the year. To give you an idea of what it has, for today (October 22) it says "Anniversary of the Barbers' Association of America"

Boring...

So, I started thinking...maybe we could start a thread similar to this. "Excuses to Throw a Tiki Party" (noticed I left out the "365"). List dates of anniversarys and birthdays of people, events and restaurants that were part of the tiki culture. Instrumental or not so. If two items occured on the same date, we could list them both. I'm not sure we could come up with at least one for each day of the year (now you know why I left out the "365") but maybe it's worth a try.

I'll go first. Shooting the biggest fish in the bucket....

February 22 - Birthday of Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt, AKA Don the Beachcomber, AKA Donn Beach. The Grand Poobah...Grandfather of the Tiki movement. Originator of Don the Beachcomber restaurants.

I'll leave the other big fish for someone else...

How about one more??

August 12 - Birthday of Wallace E. Turnbow. Manager of "The Islands" in Phoenix, AZ. Co-authored the book "Introducing original Polynesian tropical bar recipes" with Dick Moano. Creator of the cocktail "Wally's Kanaka Punch", recipe listed in book above.

"The Islands" link: http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=34343&forum=2&hilite=wally%20turnbow

Recipe booklet link: http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=44519&forum=10&hilite=wally%20turnbow

I looked up Wally Turnbow on google. Findagrave listed a gravesite in Spokane WA. Wally's son lives in Spokane.

Anybody else want to play??

howlinowl