“Buckle down hot sake!” bellowed the man and his grandfather. Those were all the lyrics the grandfather remembered, all that the man had ever known. It was the bastardization of some distant school’s fight song invented by the grandfather & a fellow alum shortly after the war while getting liquored to the gills on a newly imported Japanese fermented drink of choice for the first time ever. The first time getting liquored to the gills. On sake. Presumably it had been imported before. Just not, you know, in quantity. Like after the war. Fortuitous timing and everything.

Are you keeping up? Why? Good. Carry on trooper.

The grandfather had the deep gravelly yet jovial quality only achievable via an age long subtly precise mixture of sales, alcohol, cigarettes, and a brief spot of surprisingly mild throat cancer. He did not seek to impart wisdom to his favorite grandson. He sought not to impart any particular bit of knowledge, information, or philosophy whatsoever. He was inordinately proud of his grandson, in that blissfully vane spirit only accomplishable by the elderly, and presumed not to condescend to prate on about the self-evidently self-evident.

Instead, he sought to impart good cheer. Ebullient with life, they both gladly forgot about the details and celebrated being alive. Less than a month later the grandfather was suddenly and unexpectedly deceased; meanwhile, the man went on about his life uninterrupted apart from an improvised weekend trip back to Denver. But afterwards, he never could drink sake again without silently belting out, show-tune style, “Buckle down hot sake!”