The Unsinkable Margarita Sames

You can also get a product market, then you can get your first big enterprise.

With KaE, the development of the online market, the advantages of the companies are also the advantages of the company. And that's the question as it is. The topic of security and compliance is really simple. It's quite long, it's almost out.

“That's why many startups are also happy and happy.”

And if it's not too late, it's not even in the beginning. Yet, start an Alfanta.com. I want to tell you a quick story that might be the true origins of this podcast. It was a hot summer afternoon in Texas and I was about 12 years old. I was spending some time at my grandfather's house and at some point he said he wanted to show me something I might find interesting.

So he went to his office and he took out a small wooden box, a little bigger than a shoe box. He opened the lid and inside were three pistols. One was the standard as you cold 45, which he carried in World War II. The second was a German Luger, which he got from someone who wouldn't be needing it anymore. And the third was a cold 45-1917, a big hefty six-shot revolver.

I knew the story behind the first two, but I didn't know anything about the revolver. And that's when he told me that I had a great uncle who ran a bank in Kansas. And this uncle was considered a potential target by the famous bank robbing duo, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. So the United States government shipped this revolver to my great uncle and he event he had to defend himself from Bonnie and Clyde. I love hearing stories like these, you know, family lore.

And not just lore about my family, anybody's family. You hear it from time to time. I'm related to Pocohannus, or my great uncle invented the yo-yo. Or my grandmother was almost cast as Dorothy Gale. Those are kind of unusual examples, but I'm interested in the unusual ones.

The ones that seem a little far-fetched are just intriguing. In this podcast, I'm going to have people on to tell their family stories. And then we're going to find out if there's any truth to these stories.

Our investigations will not always be easy or predictable,

because the stories we hear in this show aren't taken from textbooks or documentary series. They're preserved in a different format. This is family lore, and I'm your host, Lloyd Lockridge. Hello, Lloyd. Hi there.

How are you doing? I'm good, how are you? I'm just well, so it's fine just to talk to you. Not, I just can't hear what we're talking about. I'm just right about you.

I know, I know it's been a while. I've been a long time. This is Martha Sayers. Martha is not an easy guest for me to introduce.

First of all, I've always called her Ms Sayers.

Two of her five kids William and Markham are two of my best friends.

“I've known him for as long as I can remember.”

And I've known Ms Sayers for as long as I can remember. You know, the old saying it takes a village to raise a child. Well, Ms Sayers is a very important person in the village that raised me. There are many stories Ms Sayers could tell you that would be very embarrassing for me. Frankly, she could stop this podcast right in its tracks.

But instead, she's agreed to tell us a story about her life. In the past, when I've told people a shortened version of the story you're about to hear, they think I'm kidding, but I'm not. This is real family lore. And it centers around Ms Sayers as great aunt.

A woman named Margarita Sames. This is a comapole and romantic country. One of the oldest. And yet one of the newest cities on the border is Marito Texas, the gateway to Mexico. The story begins in the early 1960s, and Ms Sayers is home town of Laredo, Texas,

which at the time was a sleepy little border town. Her home life when she was a little girl was pretty normal and down to Earth as she puts it. But every once in a while, her family would get a visit from Uncle Bill and his wife, Margarita. And Bill and Margarita were just different, especially Margarita. They would come to Laredo and stay at my grandmother's house.

And that's where I got to be around her a few times. She's a person you take a second look at. You know, you don't just walk by and not notice because she was stunning. Very attractive. And she was very made up all the time and had fancy clothing.

And Margarita just had this sweater, you know, hand motions all the time and she smoked. And she drank and, you know, I mean, and everybody was just kind of woe. She was way ahead of their game.

“I think we all have relatives like this.”

The ones who roll through town unexpectedly and dazzle us with glimpses of something different. Every family has its culture and with that they're usually members of the family who have a counterculture.

So one of the first things that I really remember she was putting her makeup on. I was just standing right by her side just she was talking to me and telling me stuff. And I was just like taking it all in at five and all of a sudden she took out this tool. You know, or whatever it was, I didn't know it was. And she curled her eyelashes and I can still see her face.

I never in my whole life seen somebody curled their eyelashes.

I'm not going to say my mother didn't know about curling eyelashes, but she didn't do it, you know. I mean, she wouldn't like that. But nothing that's bad. I'm not saying it's bad. She was just over the top on everything and it was always just a little bit, you know. Margaret and Bill are coming to town, you know, and so get ready.

But when it came to anticipating Bill and Margarita's visits, there was something a little more to it than eyelash curlers. There was something else about Margarita that made her a particularly interesting guest.

“I think Miss Sayers as a five-year-old girl could sense that.”

Because Margarita was not just her aunt's name, it was the name of the drink she allegedly invented. I've heard my whole life that she invented is the Margarita. She invented the Margarita. That's quite a claim, isn't it, to invent the Margarita.

When I first heard this, I found myself thinking that somebody really invented the Margarita.

It just seems like something that would naturally come into being. But of course it didn't. To kill a quantro and lime is not going to mix itself, and salt does not magically appear on the rim of your glass. Someone had to have been the first to make it.

Miss Sayers was quick to tell me that she didn't know Margarita super well. She was a very young girl in Margarita would visit, and she left the rate of her Austin when she was a teenager. But she told me I might be able to get more information from her cousin, Hank. Hank still lives in the radio, and might have a little more to say.

So I called him up. I don't want to take too much of your time, and I figured we could just, I've got the broad strokes of this story. But Martha did say that you might, might be a little bit more. So Hank saves his living in the radio his whole life, working for the same's car dealerships.

It's a family business that runs pretty deep.

The same started the first car dealership in Texas in 1910,

“which is honestly before I thought people were driving cars.”

So he grew up in close proximity to same family stories, like the one about Margarita. I used to have lunch with my grandmother a week Thursday, and she told all kinds of tales of family history and, you know, and of course I was young and I didn't listen all the time, but, you know, I picked up some of it. In the story that Hank told goes a little something like this,

his uncle Bill ran the car dealerships in the radio. He had a wife and a few kids. Occasionally, Bill would go on the road in nearby places like Miranda City, an old oil boom town that's now a shell of its former self. And on one trip to Miranda City, Bill met a beautiful young woman,

named Margarita. Bill had been over there and met her and started in a fair with her. Unbeknownst to anybody in the family. And then, Bill decided to take Margarita as his date to a Ford Motor's exhibition show in Houston. And while he was at Houston, he had a terrible car wreck,

and both he and Margarita ended up in the hospital. Well, that exposed everything, you know. So, Bill ended up getting a divorce. After the divorce, Bill's parents sort of said, "Hey, Bill, you seem to be fond of life on the road.

Why don't you leave the radio and take care of the dealerships and other parts of the state?" So, Bill moved to Alice, Texas, and Margarita went with him. But it may not surprise you that Bill and Margarita weren't happy there. They both had a pinched for an adventurer and Alice, Texas was not really meeting their needs. Plus, the scandal following the divorce was probably a little unpleasant.

And they decided they needed a bigger change of scenery. So, Bill sold all his dealerships, and with the money he got from that, he had Margarita moved to Acapulco. Acapulco Mexico. If you've been to Acapulco recently, you've seen the high rises on the beach, the Cliff Diver re-enactments and market selling nostalgic arts and crafts from a bygone era.

Well, Bill and Margarita moved there at the onset of that bygone era. It was the late 1940s, and Acapulco was cool. And if you came with American dollars, it was really cool. You could live like a king.

“And then by the house up along the Caleta, which is where the Cliff Diver's are, you know?”

And at that point, that was where it was happening, and Acapulco was starting to take off. So, Bill and Margarita showed up in Acapulco and fell into this vibrant, expat community. And Margarita got to do the thing that she apparently loved most. Host parties.

I think the scene down there was party all the time. You know, these are people that had already retired or, you know, put the whole American scene

I don't want to call it decadent, but you don't know what I mean.

It was not working.

“And you could do it because it was so inexpensive.”

But hosting parties inevitably comes with challenges. And one of the challenges with hosting parties in Acapulco was that the most available liquor was Tequila. And if you think 21st century Tequila is harsh. The old Tequila was horrible.

And nobody drank it. It was not good. You know? Nobody drank Tequila. But there must have been a solution to this problem.

And Margarita's same was going to find that solution. She was going to find a way to make the Tequila a little more palatable for her esteemed guests. So she took the Tequila and added some lime and quenchro for sweetness.

“But the drink was at risk of becoming too sweet and at odds with the earthiness of the Tequila.”

So she added a creative touch, a little bit of salt on the rim. But it still wasn't quite finished because every signature cocktail has to have a signature cocktail glass. A martini goes into martini glass. A muscal mule goes into copper, a muscal mule mug.

So what would Margarita's cocktail go in? Well, her husband Bill decided to make her some, they were almost like champagne glasses, not a flute, but of champagne glass. And he had her name and described them the glass, Margarita. You know, so she had these glasses with been a Margarita on him.

The drink was complete. Now it was time to throw a party and have some people over to try it. So Bill and Margarita sent up the bat signal and guests from the neighborhood started trickling in. Well, one of the people that also had a house up there was Nicky Hilton from Los Angeles. That's Nicky Hilton is in the oldest son of Conrad Hilton, an heir to the Hilton Hotel Empire.

And if that doesn't impress you, he is also the great uncle of Paris Hilton. Nicky Hilton was the one who took the recipe back to one of his hotels in Los Angeles and started serving it there and it, you know, it's bread from there. And thus, the Margarita was born. It's a good story. But is it true?

Let's try to find out. And that's the music for that one. Videos of the rest of the vendors made Shopify, considered to have an ancient hip band. Start it and test not only for one or two promonat, but for Shopify.de/recorder. Every week is a new episode and a new story.

It's okay, I like it's almost a university on a siege. Listen to and follow campus files, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

“So, how does one figure out who invented a cocktail?”

Well, if you poke around online, you see all kinds of different theories.

And for what it's worth, the Margarita's same theory always makes an appearance.

But, as is often the case, the theories you find online are pretty light on the facts. So, let's see what we can find in the way of facts. The first thing I wanted to do is figure out when people started talking about Margarita's. So, I searched the newspaper archives. Margarita's same through her parties featuring the Margarita, starting in the late 1940s.

So, any mentions of the Margarita before them would be a little inconvenient. But the earliest newspaper mentioned of the Margarita that I can find, appears in a 1955 issue of the Los Angeles Times. There was a column called LA incidental, in which the author writes almost stream of conscious observations of things seen in an around LA.

He talks about a new shoe store in the valley, and then says he was recently introduced to a cocktail called The Margarita. He describes it as, "to Kila's answer to the martini." He says in the article that he was served the cocktail at the tale of the cock lounge in studio city. The bartender who served him the Margarita claimed to have invented the drink.

The bartender's name was Johnny Der Lesser.

This is not only the first mention of the Margarita.

This is the first mention of someone claiming they'd invented the Margarita. I wasn't sure what to make of it, so I sort of stuck it in my back pocket and carried on with the research. But the solitary research was beginning to raise more questions than answers. I needed to speak to a person, someone who knows a little bit about the history of cocktails. But who? What's your name? Tell me your name.

And you have a unique job.

Yeah. What do you do? I'm a drinks historian. Elizabeth Pears drinks a story. She seemed like the person for the job.

And the cool thing about Elizabeth is she's not one of these drinks a story and who had everything handed to her on a silver platter.

“Elizabeth came by her profession honestly.”

Everybody wants to know how you get to be a drinks historian. I helped to create and open the southern food and beverage museum. I was the founding curator there, despite having no academic background in museums or history, a strong liberal arts education prepares you to do anything. So I learned how to make something out enough and that mattered because the museum opened

in early 2008 and of course that year ended in a great financial apocalypse. Funding dried up, everybody got laid off. I went on unemployment, drank heavily, and dated a musician, which is the Holy Trinity in New Orleans if you just need to shift your professional path. 2009 is the year I learned both unemployment and musicians run out after six months.

And while the museum stayed open through volunteers, I needed a job. So I became a speaker on the history of New Orleans through food and drink.

“And that's what she's been doing ever since.”

But she doesn't just do New Orleans drinks, she does all drinks. In fact, she recently gave a series of talks on the history of Tequila, and that's why I wanted to talk to her. I feel like if we're going to figure out when the Margarito was born and who brought it into existence, we're going to need to trace the activity of Tequila.

And with Elizabeth, we hit the jackpot. This woman knows her Tequila. So in the early mid-19th century, Tequila is marketed to Mexicans or other Spanish speakers, living in states near the border, and there is no explanation of what it is. They're just like Tequila for sale, everything.

Here's the gist. In the early to mid-1800s, Tequila wasn't a thing in the US, unless you live near the border. But people visit Mexico and come back. And towards the end of the 1800s, the Americans who had migrated to Texas are starting to acquire taste for the stuff.

And that became abundantly clear when in 1899, the city of El Paso contemplated seceding from Texas in a rejoining Mexico.

Here's what a wake-o newspaper had to say about that.

Think of the spectacle of a democratic convention in the Lone Star State, without the gentleman from El Paso, who would care to go to a big democratic gathering, which he was not sure to meet one heart with a special sample of the best brand of Tequila and a little pinch of salt to give it a relish. In other words, Wakeo said, El Paso, you can't leave Texas.

“Who's going to bring Tequila to the next legislative session?”

So Texans had clearly grown to like it, but then... As prohibition in the US approaches, the language will become more hostile. It's called bottled dynamite, it's mighty degrading stuff, and a good thing to steer clear of. Prohibition, a complete ban of all liquor production, distribution, and consumption in the United States. Just as Tequila was gaining some mainstream traction, it was taken off the shelves along with everything else.

But as we all know, people were going to find a way to drink, and for people who live near the Mexican border. That was not a hard problem to solve. I have a really great fact. From July 1918 to July 1919, 14,130 tourists cross the border into Mexico. July 1919 to July 1920, 418,735 tourists.

So from 1919 to 1920, which is the period of time that Prohibition went into effect. There was a 3,000% uptick in Americans traveling to Mexico. And at first, the Americans were just going over to drink the same stuff they were used to drinking at home. Almost all the beer and liquor sold to warres, saloons was manufactured by American firms that relocated south of the border. So people are going for the drinks that they are familiar with,

like getting a Manhattan or an old fashion, you know, they're getting their whiskey, they're getting Jen or Brandy. And they're at American bars with American bartenders who are making American cocktails. And a very popular cocktail in the late 19th century was called The Daisy.

The Daisy. I never heard of this drink, and I live in New Orleans. But apparently it was quite popular

back in the 20s. It's a simple drink and it leaves room for interpretation. And the Daisy is a category. So you can make a Jen Daisy or a cognac Daisy or Brandy Dare Whiskey Daisy or whatever.

liquid sweetener, which could be alcoholic or not. But while many Americans were sticking with

“what they knew, like the Daisy, some were broadening their alcohol horizons. I think there's a lot”

more Americans that are trying to kill a during prohibition. And it is because they have gotten themselves to Mexico. And it's there. And it's like, "Hmm, let's try this out." So you have Americans drinking the same cocktails they were drinking in America, but they're also acquiring a taste for tequila. And those habits begin to mix. So what then happens is the tequila Daisy starts to pop up.

So based on what Elizabeth is telling us about the Daisy cocktail,

a tequila Daisy would be tequila with lemon juice and a sweeteneral occur of some kind.

Sounds a little bit like a margarita, doesn't it? And does anyone know what the Spanish word is for Daisy? It's margarita. Okay, so let's quickly recap. The Daisy was a popular drink at the time of prohibition. Americans crossed the board of Mexico so they could drink, and they still wanted to drink

daisies. One theory is that the tequila Daisy was born, and it was called the margarita,

“which is the Spanish word for Daisy. This honestly kind of seems like the answer doesn't it?”

That the margarita was the name given to a tequila Daisy. How could it not be? But before we steal margarita, the same is thunder. Let's thank this through. If the margarita is just a tequila Daisy, then when does it go from being called the tequila Daisy to a margarita? If they're the same drink, when does one name supplant the other? Because as it turns out, people have no problem with the name tequila Daisy.

An early mention that I found for tequila Daisy. That was the name of a racehorse in Dayton, Ohio, 1930. El Paso had a baseball name contest. Here are a few names submitted. The tequila Daisy's, 1935, in El Paso, a couple of celebrates their engagement with a Mexican themed party, and there is a tequila Daisy in its cocktail course. So again, if a margarita is just a name for tequila Daisy, then why do people keep calling it a tequila

Daisy? One potential answer is that it just took a few decades for the name to evolve from tequila Daisy to margarita. But there's a problem with that answer. We know that the margarita was a known drink by the mid '50s and certainly into the '60s. And yet, in the '50s and '60s, people are still talking about the tequila Daisy. Why are people talking about both drinks if they're one and the same? Okay, so this was the thing that was like kind of key for me.

An El Paso column lists recipes for both the tequila Daisy and margarita. But margarita contains tequila, quantro, lime, sugar blended with a salt rum. The tequila Daisy is tequila, lime, sugar, grenadine, and no salt rum. So clearly, the tequila Daisy and the margarita are not the same drink. They are two distinct drinks. But then what's the connection between the margarita and the Daisy? And I'm also wondering now, if there might have been some miscommunication

or something, if somebody's like, I wanted to tequila Daisy, you know, while they're in a cancun or something, and then then the guys like, oh, margarita, like they know because they know these two words go together. But then the tequila Daisy would be margarita, and it's not a tequila. So prior to my interview with Elizabeth, I didn't tell her the theory I was researching, and she didn't ask. But after we went through the history of tequila, the tequila Daisy

and the margarita, I told her about margarita same. Margarita same with throw these parties. And as I told her the story, I could see Elizabeth's gears turning, and then she interjected.

Okay, so first of all, the Encyclimal Molly Brown, like that lady who didn't die in the Titanic,

Kathy Bates, okay. She is in Paris during prohibition and started drinking the bees' knees. And when one is researching the history of the bees' knees, there are some alleged

“and one of them is that Molly Brown invented this drink. While I believe that Molly Brown was very”

talented in many ways. She's not making drinks. She's not inventing drinks. Socialite women don't do that. They have servants. And so I believe that Molly Brown popularized the bees' knees because she had it in Paris, and then she came back to the US after prohibition. I was like, I had this drink and this really good. And everybody was like, oh yeah, it's Molly Brown's drink.

which I absolutely believe that she decided that she was kind of feature her name on this glass. And then people were like, what's that drink? Oh, it's Margarita, you know. So she might have named it.

“I think that that's, I believe she labeled it.”

So here's what I think. I think people have it backwards. The main contending theory, as you now know,

is that someone made a version of a Daisy with Tequila, so they gave it a Spanish name for Daisy, Margarita. I think a person named Margarita wanted to make a signature cocktail. So because of her name, she went with a Mexican version of the Daisy. Was Margarita same as the first to mix these ingredients? Who knows? Maybe. Probably not. But I think she might be the reason that mixture of ingredients is called a Margarita, which is what made it the marketable cocktail we all drink today.

So if anyone can lay claim to this cocktail, why not Margarita sales? But I'm hung up on something. That article on the L.A. Times from 1955 about the bartender in Los Angeles, Johnny Deer Lesser. We have a random columnist with no dog in the fight, long before anyone was arguing over who invented the Margarita, saying that this bartender Johnny Deer Lesser served him a Margarita at the tail of the cock lounge in studio city, and that he claimed to be the inventor.

How do you make sense of that? So I thought back to what Hank Sames had told me about the guests at Margarita's parties in Al Capucco. Well, one of the people that also had a house up there was Mickey Hilton from Los Angeles. Did Mickey Hilton hang out at this lounge in L.A.? Did he return

“from one of Margarita's sames's parties and then tell this bartender how to make the drink?”

Maybe. But I couldn't find any proof of that. However, I found something else. I was looking through old newspaper clippings about Margarita's sames and found one from 1994, which featured an interview with Margarita. In the interview she talks about the exact party where she unveiled her signature cocktail, and she mentioned some of the guests who were in attendance. There's Nikki Hilton, we all knew about him, and there's Joseph Drown, who own the Hotel Belair,

also in Los Angeles, no big surprise. But a third guest is mentioned in this article.

A guy named Shelton McHenry. Unlike the other two, Shelton did not own hotels. He owned a bar. It was a celebrity hangout in studio city called The Tale of the Cock. It's head bartender, Johnny Deerlesser.

“It seems the Margarita has a certain allure to it, similar to the magnetic pole of Margarita's sames”

that messayers described in the beginning of this episode. The stunning woman, who commanded a room, curled her eyelashes, and have scented Docopulco after a scandalous affair. Now have we proven that Margarita's sames invented the Margarita. No, there's still room for reasonable doubt. But in my interview with Elizabeth Pierce,

she read an excerpt from a magazine. Because as it turns out, while the first newspaper mentioned

of the Margarita was in 1955, it was not the first time the drink appeared in print. Two years prior to that L.A. Times article, the Margarita cocktail was mentioned in Esquire Magazine. In the December 1953 issue of Esquire Magazine, it states, "The Margarita, she's from Mexico, Senyoris, and she is lovely to look at, exciting and provocative." Now, who does that remind you of? Thank you for listening to family

lore, and please check in every Wednesday morning for new episodes. If you have stories you'd like to share about your family, please email me at [email protected]. That's family lore, [email protected]. Family lore is an Odyssey original podcast. It is written and narrated by me, Lloyd Lockridge. Our executive producers are Leah Rees Dennis and I. Our lead producer and sound editor is Zach

Clark. Our story editors are Maddie Sprung Kaiser and Katie Mingle. Additional sound editing mixing and mastering by Chris Basel and production support by Sean Cherry. Special thanks to more a current Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hillary Schuff, and Laura Berman. Thanks again for listening to Family lore, and if you have time, we'd love for you to rate and review the show.

For years, Gone South has been a podcast about crime in the American South, but for our new

we're digging into the myths, scandals, and power structures that still shape the South. In in a lot of ways, the country itself. Follow and listen to Gone South Season 5, an Odyssey podcast, available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows.