The Hammock Papers: Blenheim.

13 July 2012

Blenheim.

The natural mineral springs in Blenheim, South Carolina that are the genesis of today’s ginger ale were chanced upon in 1781 by James Spears, a Whig, who was attempting to elude Tory troops. As legend has it, Mr. Spears lost his shoe in a water hole. When he came back later to recover his lost shoe, he sampled the water and discovered its potent mineral contents. News of the natural spring circulated around the countryside and before long, folks were arriving from far and wide to try out the cold, invigorating water supply of the spring. Numerous affluent plantation owners constructed summertime houses in the area surrounding Blenheim Springs to take advantage of the constant supply of the soothing, refreshing spring water.

In the later part of the 1800′s, Dr. C. R. May counseled his patients with stomach troubles to drink in the water from the mineral springs. When his patients complained about the noticeable iron-like taste of the mineral water, Dr. May supplemented it with Jamaican Ginger to help make its flavor more appealing. In 1903, Dr. May and A. J. Matheson started the Blenheim Bottling Company next to the Blenheim Artesian Mineral Springs and began making Original Extra Pale. The structure which housed the original bottling plant was constructed in 1920 and operated as a working Bottler’s Museum for a number of years before tragically burning to the ground in December of 2008. In 1993 the Blenheim Bottling Company was bought by the Schafer Family, who also own the South of the Border Tourist Complex. They instantly refurbished the aging industrial plant to conform to modern criteria, and set about bottling our unique ginger ale.

Don't be dumb, GETCHASUM! Don't mess around ... get the red cap.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL