WWPD?

Q: What Would Papa Drink?

A: Everything, you sissy! Including some fine Ballantine Ale:



The image is too small to read, but here's the text of this lost Hemingway masterpiece:

Bob Benchley first introduced me to Ballantine Ale. It has been a good companion to me ever since.

You have to work hard to deserve to drink it. But I would rather have a bottle of Ballantine Ale than any other drink after fighting a really big fish.

We keep it iced in the bait box with chunks of ice packed around it. And you ought to taste it on a hot day when you have worked a big martin fast because there were sharks after him.

You are tired all the way through. The fish is landed untouched by sharks and you have a bottle of Ballantine cold in your hand and drink it cool, light, and full bodied, so it tastes good long after you have swallowed it. That's the test of an ale with me: whether it tastes as good afterwards as when it's going down. Ballantine
does.

I don't think Max Perkins edited this opus. If he had, surely he would have pointed out to Ernest that "iced in the bait box with chunks of ice" is redundant.

Ah well, time to grab a Ballantine and a fishing pole and head to the Huron River. Tastes as good coming back up as it does going down! And that's no bull.