Editor’s note, we transcribed this interview from a somewhat worn and aged cassette tape, of a conversation between Rick Yukon and Tomas “Stumpy” Lefkowitz. The recorder was placed sufficiently far from Rick that we were unable to discern his side of the conversation, thus the words you hear are all Stumpy. We added ellipses where we could hear that Rick spoke, but we were unble to hear him well enough to transcribe his words. This transcription is the only known record of the birth of the Dirty Dishwater. The Unbender was previously unknown before this interview. The recording started mid-conversation.
He and Eddie used to have a little side business with those fish. By the time you opened them up and took out the guts, they were all bones. I have no idea how that fish survived being nothing but guts, and bones and skin, but that lake was full of those fish. Great cover though, I could move ten, twenty thousands dollars worth of weed a day just while sitting there with my fishing rod. Weed was big back then, the Chicano boys bought my weed, the Black guys bought my weed, the Yeshiva boys bought my weed, and that was my market. If I saw some cracker from Denver trying to score, I told them I didn’t have any. I didn’t need the aggravation, and I was happy with my market, I found what worked. It was the same drug transaction as all the other guys, but while they stood around the trees and picnic tables looking suspicious, I sat on the bank with my fishing rod, trying my best not to catch anything, but still making it look like I was trying. So I would get a customer, the cops knew what we were doing, but Sloan’s Lake was a rough neighborhood after the Smaldones left, they kept that neighborhood peaceful. Once they got into … Checkers was a reasonably patient man, he understood that people had to make a living, but he didn’t tolerate what happens these days, old people getting pushed over, these young guys stealing purses, getting in fights in the part when there children around. … yeah, he kept that neighborhood fairly peaceful … I don’t know what happened, I only know that when we stopped seeing Checkers, that’s when we saw fights in the park, and purse snatching and all that mishugas … No, they were inedible, they were just nothing but bones. At first I used to bring a few home to throw the drug cops off of what I was doing … that was Eddie who said that, not me … I don’t know what he told you, but I can tell you why I think it worked, it was because the cops didn’t have enough patience to watch someone sitting down fishing with a cigarette, and then wait to see a drug transaction. I never had a problem, but I also didn’t make any problems. I never sold coke or pills because those customers weren’t reliably calm like my herb customers … I know for a fact that they knew I was selling because this nice Denver cop came over to me to ask about this crazy drug dealer who beat up someone’s kid from Cherry Creek High School. This cop tells me “we know you sell drugs, but you don’t give us any problems.” … I think it was more like some kid from Creek got mouthy with the guy he was buying his coke, and the dealer let him have it. I only know what The Lincoln told me … The Lincoln? … He and I were the two most famous drug dealers at Sloan’s Lake back then, but everyone knew The Lincoln, he was a tall fellow, and he wore an Abraham Lincoln stovepipe hat, that was his trademark, it was how everyone found him. And I was the guy fishing over by the tennis courts. It’s all about recognizable branding right? …
I can tell you what I remember about them, but the exact mixtures, I don’t remember them to the ounce, you’ll need to adjust a little bit to get the balances right. Which one do you want to do first? … I thought you wanted to know about both of the drinks from The Frigate United Crushing, no? … There were two of them, Moishe. (editor’s note, “Moishe” seems to a nickname that Stumpy used for Rick, here, and as far as we can tell, nobody named “Moishe” was at this interview.) We had the Dirty Dishwater and the Unbender. The Dirty Dishwater was for the divers before they left, and the Unbender was for the divers when they go back. I never gave a departing diver an Unbender before they left because it had caffeine in it from the Pepsi, and they had orders of no alcohol, tobacco, caffeine or even any medicine twenty four houses before the dive. The Dirty Dishwater seemed to help them. I gave a Dirty Dishwater to a diver after he returned one, first and only time, great big fellow from Wyoming, he asked for it by name, I gave it to him against my better judgement, he said it tasted metallic. I assume that had something to do with the Heliox … Then you want me to do the Dirty Dishwater first, and then we’ll do the Unbender. How do you want me to start it? …
Dirty Dishwater, for Rick Yukon, by Stumpy Lefkowitz. … okay, Take One. I think we’ll only need one. We designed this without alcohol, due to the restrictions on the United Crushing. Given that, … I’m in no hurry, take as long as you need … is that Cassandra? Tell her I love her. Wait, ask her if she’s going to be in Androrra la Vella next month. We promised each other we would meet there and raise some hell … okay, but ask her if she’s still going … tell her “be there or be square.” … tell her “be there or be square. Tell her that … what did she say? … tell her I love her. Okay, so Dirty Dishwater, we knew from the original design specification that it couldn’t have alcohol, we had assumed that we would just port the drink to a regular bar drink when we got back, I figured it would be either gin or silver tequila, but we tried both of those and the sugar balance was thrown off, we never could find a way to make it work with any booze, that’s why it took so long to get it in the bars, because most bars weren’t set up to make drinks without alcohol, there was no money in it for them. And also, we added magnesium on Crushing, because the spec called for magnesium, it was the only supplement we found that produced a steadier hand in the welders. And at the time, bars weren’t allowed to any kind of nutritional supplement to their drinks unless it was already an ingredient in the unopened can … V-8 was allowed, we used that one for the bloodies, but the supplements were already in the can. So they couldn’t serve it at the bars, and we tried for a while to get it into a chain of juice shops, but it wasn’t sweet enough, it was fundamentally a bar drink, about the same flavor profile as a regular gin and tonic … You need one big can of the Mexican coconut water, the kind with a little sugar added to it so it tastes more like real coco frio. If you use the healthy coconut water it won’t work, the flavor is all wrong. If that’s all you have, you can add a little simple syrup to bump up the sugar, but it’s easy to add too much, so it’s better to just use. the Mexican coconut was with the sugar . But it’s actually not from Mexico, I think it’s from South Korea or somewhere near there. It comes in a tall aluminum can and looks like something you would buy at a Mexican grocery store on Federal, the design on the can isn’t too modern. You fill up the martini shaker with about a third crushed ice, then pour in the whole can of the coco frio, then add one unflavored packet of Natural Calm magneisum. We found that we had to use the packets, so we had a lot of extras, because they only put one unflavored one in each box. The unflavored one is the best because it doesn’t screw with the flavor. They also put a few other flavors in the box. The orange and lemon flavors were better than nothing, we used those when we didn’t have any of the unflavored packets. But the raspberry lemon and the cherry flavors were useless for the drink, they overpowered the flavor. You add the envelope and then shake it hard. Then you pour into a rocks glass, if you don’t have a rocks glass, then you can use an old fashioned glass, but it isn’t the right glass. Fill it a little more than halfway, then add club soda to the top. That’s it … some of the guys didn’t care, they just took the magnesium packets in water, the Dishwater for the guys would couldn’t stomach the plain magnesium. And we usually gave the sweet flavors of the magnesium packets to the divers who didn’t want the dishwaters. But I think the coconut water must have added something, because the divers who asked for the dishwaters, I found out later they had a lower weld error rating, so they performed better. But that was the point of the magnesium, lowered the jitters, steadier hand. But the unbender, that was all the divers. I went through about sixty different trials, nothing really worked until we hit on that …
The directive on the Crushing was Vitamin C after a dive. I don’t know why, but that’s what they wanted. And since it was after the dive, caffeine was allowed. But alcohol still wasn’t allowed. But unlike the Dirty Dishwater, the Unbender paired find with most every alcohol we tried, it worked with whisky best, but we had the same problem with that on in the bars as with the Dishwater. The Unbender had the Emergen-C vitamin packets in them, and those weren’t allowed in bars, we never even tried it in a juice bar. So when they pulled the Emergen-C packets in the bar, it was just a weak whisky and coke, and that went nowhere … we used Pepsi though, we couldn’t get the profile to work to United Crushing with Royal Crown, or Coke, we tried Dr. Pepper, we tried Sprite and that grapefruit one, Squirt, that one worked pretty well. But Pepsi tested highest, so rules of the ship, that’s the one we used. The Unbender also used the rocks glass, but an old fashioned glass would have worked equally well for that one, it may have even been better. You fill up the martini shaker about one-third with crushed ice, add the Emergen-C packet, then add about 12 ounces of club soda or seltzer, they both work. Hold the lid tight and shake it, the carbonation will push the lid off. Pour into the rocks glass about two-thirds of the way, top with Pepsi, but a rough pour, because you want it to mix. … it had nothing to do with the bends! No … Moishe, if you shut your yap I’ll tell you where we got the name. It had nothing to do with the bends or with underwater welding, the Unbender was named because of a little side-effect with the magnesium from the Dirty Dishwaters. That magnesium had a laxative effect, and after these divers got back in the pressure chamber, to the man, and once to the woman, they came back aboard and they all needed the head. The mechanical engineer was a Newcastle kid, he catches me in the companionway, I still remember what he asked me, I’ll try to do his accent … “oy, Shtoomp, what air ya feeding them divers, mate? When they get back aboard, I got u-bend straighteners all up and down the head lines.”
That’s what he called those massive magnesium shits from the divers, he called them “U-bend straighteners” as if the logs of crap were so formidable that they pushed the u-bends under the heads into straight pipes. So that name of course stuck, and the divers ended up calling the Dishwaters the “straighteners”. Eventually the antidote after the dive was the Unbender.
But those were the two drinks from Crushing, we never designed them to have any alcohol in them. They were similar to gin and tonics in that the company specified them to deliver necessary nutritional supplements or medicine in a way that the workers didn’t mind getting their dosages. But unlike the quinine gin drinks, they didn’t have alcohol because it wasn’t in the company specification. We found out later that our formulation either didn’t need the alcohol or worked better without it.