It was a wasteland of destruction. Demolished structures, devastated vehicles, half-hearted and unfinished ideas now deconstructed and cast across the landscape in a detonation of multicolored fragments.

I was shoeless. I was barefoot. And the bottle I required was just beyond the jagged ruins. The voyage before me would be treacherous; a journey of pronounced pain and great sorrow.

With the first few paces, careful and precise as they were, the pain was extreme and penetrating. Promptly there stirred within me a heated disposition against the manufacturer of Legos. In the steps that followed, the revulsion became audible.

“I hate these stupid things.”

A little further on as the blood began to flow, the one recurring thought was just how much I adore the clicking and clacking sounds of Legos as they are sucked up into a vacuum. Ah, and yet such a device was not before me, but behind me.

“No,” I whispered. “I can’t turn back now. I’m almost there.”

The journey continued. But as the terminus was finally within reach, only a few short strides from where I stood, it was then that my mortal frame reached its level of excruciation and could go no further.

Emptied of all strength, I was barely able to lift my gaze and hands and voice to the drywalled sky above.

“Why, Lord?!” I called out. But then I lost my balance.

Toppling forward, I was able to use the disastrous pitch to my advantage by falling into a somersault beyond the last few Lego-laden steps onto the hard but serenely uncontaminated dining room floor.

In no less pain, but happy that the jaunt was complete, I rested for a moment and smiled.

“I made it,” carried on my sigh. “I sure hope it was worth it.”

I said this because I had just walked through the valley of the shadow of death to sample the Michter’s Single Barrel Straight Rye.

“Well,” I said nursing my back while gathering to my feet, “let’s find out.”

I poured a small portion of the whiskey and sat back down on the floor near the edge of the Legos where I’d previously fallen. It was as if I’d reclined beside a serrated sea to watch its waves festooned with mottled caps roll inward and outward again. That with which I was before at enmity was now my serenity.

To be true, it was the whiskey which produced this calm.

The nose reveals a full bodied rye. There are distinct toffee notes, but only an inkling of something earthy.

The palate is curiously rum-like, which of course is perfect for a seaside getaway – even if the sea is made of Legos.

The finish wants to be medium, but alas, it isn’t. After you swallow, its volume races away, but it leaves behind a snippet of freshly sifted rye that has been faintly singed.

“This is a fine whiskey,” I thought. I continued my silent conversation realizing that the only thing that could make the experience even better would be to see the Legos before me disappear.

“Madeline, Harrison, and Evelyn, get down here and clean up your Legos!”

There was no movement in the bedrooms above me.

“Joshua!” I called.

“Yeah?” my oldest son shouted back from his bedroom.

“Bring me the vacuum.” In the next moment, the rooms above me bustled, and there followed the thundering footsteps of three young children hurrying down the stairs.