America’s Favorite Drink, 1932

Summer is upon us, and one of the favorite ways to relax is with a cool refreshing glass of lemonade. Many of us also enjoy the taste of pink lemonade, lemonade’s fey cousin.

Pink lemonade comes from the pink lemon tree, Rutaceae Rodochroa, native to the Hawaiian Islands, particularly the island of Ni’ihau. The Hawaiian Pineapple Company (which later became the Dole Food Company) first cultivated the trees in 1910 after the company’s founder James Dole had his first taste of pink lemonade, a traditional native drink. The drink was an instant success in America, due mainly to the fact that the lemons fermented during the long trip to Dole’s bottling plants in southern Texas; this was greatly appreciated by an American public weary of Prohibition.

Pink lemonade quickly became the Dole Food Company’s most successful product, but in 1941 the company suffered a devastating catastrophe during the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, when some of the Japanese planes flew off course and accidentally bombed the pink lemon groves; however, some military historians believe the bombings were intentional, intended to damage the morale of the American people.

America remained steadfast, but the Dole Food Company needed to diversify quickly due to the loss of 60% of their income. Dole was able to make the transition, mainly by focusing on their neglected pineapple crops, and was even able to eventually recultivate the pink lemon tree on plantations in southern Spain and several other Mediterranean countries. It took many years to reestablish the crop, and by that time America had lost its “pink lemon fever”; the drink was never able to reclaim its popularity as the country’s fruit drink of choice.

The pink lemon tree has a notable appearance – they can grow much larger than their yellow cousins, reach heights in excess of 15 meters (50 feet), and unlike their cousins have sharp serrated leaves. Like other members of the Rutaceae family they have a distinctive aroma; the smell of the pink lemon tree is sweet and spicy, reminiscent of boot polish. It can take the pink lemon tree 20 years to begin flowering and producing fruit; pink lemons are slightly larger than yellow lemons and have a tougher rind.

Fast Fact

Elbert “Philly” Price was one of the earliest stars of vaudeville in the 1870s. He eventually became enough of a draw to merit a continuing gig at the Alwin Theater in Times Square. He is perhaps most influential (though not famous) for popularizing the “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup!” joke.

Quick Botany Fact

Most mammals are immune to the skin irritants produced by poison ivy. The only mammals which are not immune are humans, most aquatic mammals and armadillos. The poison is mainly effective against reptiles. Archaeobotanists believe that the genetic ancestors of the poison ivy plant developed the irritant as a defense against herbivorous dinosaurs like the stegosaurus and others.

Bucky's Brushes

R. Buckminster Fuller was a man of uncommon vision, an inventor, a dreamer. He applied his genius for design to many things, each one intended to improve the lives of everyone. Early in his career he applied his talents towards a more practical task, sweeping the floor.

Fuller served in the Navy during World War I as a gunner firing and cleaning cannons. After he was discharged he founded a small company in New Hampshire selling mops and brooms he had designed. As the products caught on he hired a staff of salesmen to travel door-to-door selling the brushes, and the company quickly turned a profit and became a cultural icon. He used that company, the Buckminster Fuller Brush Company, to support himself and his family as he pursued his grander dreams.

Psychopathic Melodies

Few men are as notorious as Charles Manson, the self-styled messiah who ordered the senseless deaths of several people in the late 1960s. That infamy has served him well – due to his tangential relationship with the music industry he is one of the most mentioned people in popular songs, third after Jesus and Elvis Presley. Among the literally hundreds of songs referencing him, three in particular stand out:

1. The Bee Gees After Dark, a song about misguided love that ultimately leads to murder,
2. Eminem’s Bad Meets Evil, a strident (but conventional) indictment of the US prison system, and
3. Three Dog Night’s Mama Told Me (Not To Come), which recounts the two months that Danny Hutton, TDN’s lead singer, spent living with the Manson Family in Dennis Wilson’s home.

Interestingly, all three songs were #1 hits for their respective artists.

Fast Fact

Mice can climb trees.

Dust Bunnies

In the slums of Owendo, a suburb of the Gabonese capital of Libreville, a strange case of urban adaptation has been occurring over the last three centuries – “city” rabbits.

These rabbits had initially been introduced to the area by Dutch traders in 1637, when an ill-fated expedition was forced to abandon all of its cargo after its hull was punctured during an attack by Turkish pirates. The rabbits were going to be used as a sort of natural pesticide – the tea crops the Dutch were growing in Sumatra were beset by a vine that was ruining the crops, and it had been discovered that the rabbits would devour the vine while leaving the tea crop intact.

Owendo was only recently settled at that point, and the rabbits managed to carve out a niche for themselves amongst the genets, Gambian pouch rats and other predators moving in to the area. Being rabbits, of course their first (and only) thought was to procreate, which they did with abandon; luckily for them, they managed to build up a sizable and diverse enough population that when predators finally did move in to the area in greater numbers the rabbit population was able to survive. Today there are approximately 40,000 rabbits living near Owendo, nearly the size of the human population.

They inhabit markets, warehouses, the local dump – anywhere and everywhere they can possibly find food (the other thought on rabbits’ minds). They are considered pests, vermin, and are treated as such, a nuisance second only to the booming pigeon population.

Although scientifically they can still be classified as dutch rabbits, evolution is occurring, and a small movement is underway to classify these rabbits as oryctolagus harensis, dust rabbit.