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Moxie Magic by Eliot Fremont-Smith -- The Village Voice Feeling frazzled? Heat and humidity getting you down? You sense, perhaps, an incipient "loss of manhood, imbecility and helplessness"? Or "paralysis, softening of the brain, locomotor ataxia, and insanity when caused by nervous exhaustion?" Or simply those everyday "exhausting effects of life [and] weakening effects of weather upon the system"? The don't drink Moxie, which even enthusiast Frank N. Potter admits can have a bitter, medicinal taste. "like Lavoris with a dash of onion." But do read Potter's book. THE MOXIE MYSTIQUE (Donning Publishers, 5659 Virginia Beach Boulevard, Norfolk, Virginia 23502, $5.95 paper), Pure tonic, all the way. The purity is, of course, true love. taste aside, Potter is simply, unabashedly smitten with everything to do with Moxie -- the word; the idea, the history, the spirit, the promotional stunts, the songs, the scandals, the collectibles (much better than Coke -- "the creme de la cream of soda pop collectibles"), the whole mise-en-scene, if you will, of American pep. I don't know Potter's politics and couldn't care less, but as with all obsessive ardor there's a secret, tangy yearning that could be subversive: "Hot dogs, baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet are fine as far as they go," he writes in a preface, "but moxie goes deeper, wider, higher. Let's hope its mystique will never die." I'm a seltzer man myself (martinis on the side), but I tell you, I'm entranced. Potter begins the Moxie story in 1555 in the court of "wicked" Catherine de Medici, whose personal physician, Nostradamus, was forever concocting nostrums for Catherine's unnamed but presumably enticing ills. Then it's a quick jump to Lowell, Massachusetts, where, in 1876, another doctor, one Augustin Thomas, invented Moxie Nerve Food and Moxie Catarah Cure. One thing Potter knows is pacing, and we weren't allowed to tarry here, either -- except to note that Lydia Pinkham lived in nearby Lynn. Then we're hustled on to 1884, the year of carbonation, and the marketing of Beverage Moxie Nerve Food. Then, after a fleeting pause to consider the origins of the name (possibly maybe even probably, a bit of Down East Indian lingo -- there's a "mysterious" Moxie Falls in Maine, also a Moxie Cove and a "hidden" Moxie Pond), it's zoom to the 1900s and the arrival on the soda pop scene of advertising genius Frank Archer. From this point on, it's nifty, and heavily illustrated, hard-core thralldom -- songs, ads, "unscrupulous imitations," amazing patented Moxiemobiles, pinnacle achievement (Moxie outsold Coca-Cola by 1920, 25 million cases were consumed in 35 states in the peak year of 1925), painful demise in the Depression, pathetic resurrection after World War II (there was a Diet Moxie in the '60s, then a disastrous sweetened Moxie, the banality of which proved nearly fatal), and three big surprises. One is that the Moxie enterprise still exists. Another is that the company hasn't "maintained any archives," so true love took a lot of legwork. And that the third is that Potter shares the glory: no fewer than 33 people are thanked by name and in detail at the end -- this in a book only 147 pages long. I know some famous authors who could take a lesson. But back to Archer. The challenge of Moxie was twofold. First, as a thirst-quenching beverage, it tasted really yucky. Potter even notes a horseradish nose-tickle effect, and one dictionary defines the lower-case moxie as the "plenty of courage [needed] to drink the stuff." Second, unlike inventors of such rival snap-buck delights as Paine's Celery Compound, Peruna, and Swamp Root, Dr. Thomas forgot the alcohol. The classic Moxie formula, which was both "secret" and variable, was made up essentially of gentian root extract, cinchona alkaloids (cinchona is a bitter bark from South America and contains quinine), sassafras (which makes you sweat -- it was banned from U.S. digestibles in 1960, and deemed a carcinogen by HEW in 1978), plus water and caramel. So what could Archer do? What he did was mount a two-pronged attack. With Yankee consumer masochism as his ace-in-the-hole (they still guzzle Moxie in Maine), he allied Moxie with the new fad of automobilism plus safe driving -- the "one for the road" that would get you home. And he dealt with the taste problems by making it sophisticated -- thus the slogans "Distinctly Different," "It's the Drink for Those Who Are At All Particular," and the ubiquitous "Just Make It Moxie for Mine." The genius stroke, of course, though Potter doesn't mention it, was the slightly peculiar syntax -- not exactly foreign (that would have been an error), but edgy and catchy enough to hint at both rugged individualism and intellectual assurance. Genius strokes, however, tend to need help, and Doc Thomas cannot be completely forgotten. It was he, after all, who came up with the original effervescent name, before effervescence was even bottled. "Moxie" was just right for American gung-honess. But it was Archer who exploited it. Who could, in World War I and II, take issue with the proclamation that "What This Country Needs Is Plenty of Moxie?" Potter devotes a whole chapter, Yankee Doodle Moxie." and parts of several other chapters, to then patriotic bootstrap bubbliness of the word. So Archer did what was only natural. He arranged bumptious, hard-sell endorsements by the likes of Ed Wynn, George M. Colian, Buck Jones, Ted Williams, and Ann Pennington ("The Girl with the Dimpled Knees," who danced the "Moxie Trot" from dark to dawn through the early '20s). And the pep, vigor, and purging-effect-for-a-better-life -- the whole, gutsy, can-do optimism of the word elicits song from Potter's heart. But his heart of hearts belongs to Archer's supreme achievement, the Moxiemobile. Actually, there were eight or 10 of them between 1915 and the early 30's -- one Saxon (or maybe a Metz), a Dort, a brace of Buicks (four- and six-cylinder), a small herd of LaSalles, and a splendid Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. First the cars would be stripped, then a full-sized horse, of wood and paper-mache, later of aluminum, would be mounted on the chassis behind the cowl. The steering wheel came up through the horse's neck; other controls were positioned on its flanks. The drivers were cowboys, clowns, English fox-hunt types, male acrobats all, and each an individualist; Archer didn't always get along with them and the book is full of impulsive firings and rehirings. In the saddle they were key attractions in parades and jamborees around the country. You think media-consciousness started with the Kennedy-Nixon debates? Not at all. Everywhere a Moxiemobile went, a newspaper was sure to follow. Don't knock the second-fold front. Stupidly, That's just what the Moxie company did. Came the Depression, and it got really nervous and recalled its Moxiemobiles -- in fact, virtually paralyzed advertising and promoting altogether -- and the rest is locomotor ataxia history. One Moxiemobile still exists, a late '20s LaSalle, a perennial charmer on the New England antique car-meet circuit. The Rolls was callosuly junked in the late '40s, the fates of the others are unknown -- unknown to Potter, that is, which is good enough for me. However, in 1979 he did track down one of the drivers in far-off Arizona whose hijinks reminiscences -- skidding stops, illegal racing, acrobatics on parade, and love-hate tantrums with Archer -- form a kind of icing on the cake of this sportingly passionate narrative. There's also a 60-foot Moxie bottle in New Hampshire, now converted into a three-bedroom tower attached to a house. And the 1980 transatlantic race-winning trimaran Moxie, to which yet another chapter is devoted. (The exploits of this Moxie are more fully described in another recently published summertime book of the same name, recommended for armchair sailors.) One thing about Moxiephiles -- they were always loyal. It was through outraged letters from the faithful that the company learned about such infringing ripoff insults as Proxie, Hoxie, and Noxie Nerve Tonic -- and you can bet they got their comeuppence quick. Only when the company itself betrayed the drink, the vision, and branched out into Kickapoo-Joy-Juice and other hapless rivals to Royal Crown Cola did the faithful begin to wonder (except in Maine). But it's best not to dwell on the regrettable, and Frank N. Potter doesn't. Instead he closes with this generious and comradely plea: "An ancient philosophical poser goes something like this: If a tree falls in the forest, but nobody hears it, does it make a sound? A book is much the same. If one is written, but nobody reads it, well -- ? By reading The Moxie Mystique, you have become an important and ultimate part of the venture. Few books have been so exclusively by and for folks like yourself." And then he adds his home address -- 29 Franklin Road, Newport News, Virginia 23601 -- in case you want to write. Now that is moxie. Only the terminally nerve-wracked and listless could fail to respond. Reprint from: The Village Voice - Making Book - July 13, 1982From Moxie World: Ralph N. Potter's present address is:
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