A.I.K.

All John Early ever wanted to do was get the job done and get it done right, yet the ones he worked with gave him the most trouble, his own people, colleagues and associates. He never understood why they tried to kill his initiatives, bring him down, smear him. They tried to cut him a new ass and run him out of town. None of it made sense.John told the story to his close friend Roscoe Caterwaul sitting in the rattan chairs at the glass-top garden table among the orchids on the rooftop terrace of the Orange Blossom Hotel. They sampled a range of special cocktail recipes from John's portable bar supplies. It became a Saturday tradition for John to share with Roscoe his interaction with a wide range of defective people he came in contact with over a long career. There were some he praised as Heroes I've Known, or H.I.K. He gave another name to the ones who stirred up trouble, A.I.K.John wanted to write his story, but did not know where to begin. He wrote arcane textbooks on management, but reaching out to a wide reading audience was new. He asked Roscoe if he would write the book to be entitled, A.I.K., but Roscoe would not commit. It was the Ramos Gin Fizz that finally did the trick. The two friends tried the Islamorada Tiki Bar Rum Runner, then the Pendennis Club Old Fashioned, followed by the Sloe Gin Fizz, but when John mixed up a batch of New Orleans' Meyers' Restaurant Henry Ramos' Gin Fizzes, Roscoe, the established author, agreed to put the book together. Here it is, A.I.K., by John Early as told to Roscoe Caterwaul.