Oscar the Oracle

ONCE upon a bar-stool, in one of the lesser known ginneries of the faraway land of Hickkup, there sat an Alcoholic Oracle named Oscar. Day after day and night after night Oscar did his business across the mahogany, always compiling and concocting strange potions and remedies from the various stimulants and mixers kept therein. He was old, old as bootlegging having had hangovers even before the great drought and after repeal right up to the present time. Like many of his kind he had become wise in the ways of whiskey, only more so, for as he claimed, and many agreed, he was one afflicted with the Great Thirst and had beaten it. He had learned how to drink.