Title: The 20-Year Lost Weekend: Rip Van Winkle Was a Drunk
Headings: The 20-Year Lost Weekend: Rip Van Winkle Was a Drunk
The 20-Year Lost Weekend: Rip Van Winkle Was a Drunk
Content: ″In the early part of the 19th century, there was a lot more public drunkenness,″ Hon says. ″That’s what gave rise to the temperance movement.″
Alcohol consumption hit a peak in 1830, when average Americans drank three times as much as they do today, said Musto, who has studied drinking patterns of the time. ″When Washington Irving was writing, it was a time of enormous alcohol consumption, for almost any purpose and at any time,″ Musto said. Alcohol was considered a food or medicine, he said. Alcoholism was widespread because the tavern was a community center in those days, a lure to men with unhappy home lives such as Rip’s, Press said in an interview at his home in Poughquaq, 50 miles north of New York City. Press is writing two musicals based on his version of Rip’s story, passion plays sympathetic to the plight of Dame Van Winkle and other wives abandoned by drunken husbands. Press has written off-Broadway plays and hopes to get his musicals produced in New York. Through files gathered from the Museum of the City of New York, local libraries and other sources, Press determined Rip was born in 1727 near the Ulster County town of Gardiner. Press says he’s not sure if the name Rip Van Winkle was real or if Washington Irving made it up. For convenience, Press uses Rip.