Yes, I have a pretty substantial collection of whiskies, and yet in order to acquire such gems by way of a meager pastor’s salary that has risen only once in a decade, it becomes necessary to prioritize, and with this, it follows that choices must be made to cut certain corners.

Take for example the dilemma of a lever in my car snapping off and thereby making it impossible to fold down the second row seat in order to access the rear compartment. Rather than spending the $65 plus $15 shipping to replace the stupid little plastic handle, all of which is about equal to a mid-range whisky, with a little bit of elbow grease and a willingness to suffer ridicule, the whisky can be had and the rear compartment can once again be opened to one’s will. You need only to take this pine plank…

and transform it into this.

Yeah, I know, it looks pretty ridiculous. And the process wasn’t all that easy. It took a few prototypes, a little bit of wood glue, and a few extra screws to keep the thing from splitting apart from the torque necessary to turn the actual crank even only a little. But in the end, it works, and while others will surely be looking on with a bottle of Jim Beam in hand and laughing at my less-than-pretty repair, I’ll be sipping something along the lines of this Springbank 10-year-old and folding my rear seat to chuck whatever the heck I feel like chucking into my family truckster’s back end.

Consider this corner cut.

And now to share the denouement of my victory.

The nose of the Springbank 10-year-old – by no means imposing, but rather it’s as that first little bit of cool air that drops from the refrigerator when you open it, barely breezing a brush of peat and chocolate covered strawberries.

The palate reverses the experience, being a mouthful of warm bittersweets and smoked grapefruit. This carries into and through to what seems a little bit like mashed potatoes ornamented with a butter chip and a pinch of pepper.

As I said, I saved a good bit of cash creating my own seat lever, and so now I’m praying that neither the gas pedal nor the steering wheel ever require my carpentry skills because the safety of my family might just end up being another corner that gets carved.