Tito

Spent the weekend doing as little as I could get away with, to balance the intensity of last week, and especially Friday, more about which some other time. This evening I spent some time on the phone talking pleasantly to family and my old friend Tom, who relayed the story of Tito’s Handmade Vodka to me. It made my day.

Not that I drink that much distilled sprits. Years ago a particularly grateful flack sent me a bottle of Jack Daniels at my office, and I kept it in my desk drawer as an homage to journalists of old, and fictional characters like Lou Grant, but I never actually drank any. I was at work, after all, and this was toward the end of the 20th century, not the beginning. In fact, I still have the bottle, and it’s about three-fifths full.

But I’ll look for Tito’s vodka next time I find myself in the liquor aisle, and I might even buy some. That’s because I went to school with Tito, whom we called Bert Beverage back then (Tito is a nickname, Beverage his real last name). I wasn’t a friend of his, but I remember him in junior high and high school and the first year of college, since he went to Vanderbilt that year too, though after that transferred to the University of Texas.

A lot of people who went to Alamo Heights (my high school) and Vanderbilt for that matter went on to become lawyers, doctors, business executives and members of other fine and distinguished professions. But the idea that someone I knew from Alamo Heights class of ’79 owns and operates a notable vodka distillery in Texas, actually the only one, makes me glad. Tito’s not doing something distinguished, he’s doing something distinctive.