Memorial Day wasn't always on a Monday. Inaugurated shortly after the Civil War, the holiday was originally known as "Decoration Day," and came to be observed in most states on May 30 of each year. Come the 1950s, NATO started militating for Memorial Day -- and a slew of other holidays, including the Fourth of July -- to be moved to Monday. This particular NATO, Frank Sullivan noted in a 1955 New York Times Magazine article, was not the defense alliance, but rather the National Association of Travel Organizations, a lobbying group that wanted to boost the number of three-day weekends. Sullivan wondered at the urge to travel on every holiday: "I always enjoy Washington's Birthday immensely because I sit by the fire all day long, thinking how fortunate I am not to be out skiing." Were Memorial Day to be on a Monday, he declared, he would "celebrate by spending the three days on the lawn, toying with a Tom Collins and watching somebody else mow the grass."

Back then, the Tom Collins was the official drink of summer -- "the king of cooling drinks," as ad copy for Fleischmann's gin put it. The index of Collins consumption seems to have been pegged to the thermometer. In July 1936, New York experienced a heat wave so scorching that the drawbridges over the Harlem River wouldn't close -- fire trucks had to be called to spray down the overexpanded steel of the drawspans. The price of lemons soared with the temperature, rising $2 a box in just one day. The demand driving the price spike was attributed to the thirsty people of the city turning to lemonade and Tom Collinses.

Tom Collins 1½ oz gin

Juice of ½ lemon

¼-½ oz simple syrup, or 1-2 tsp. sugar

2-3 oz soda water. Build on the rocks in a short highball glass (what was once called, appropriately enough, a "Collins glass"). Garnish, if you like, with cherry, and orange or lemon slice.

The drink is still a fine way to soothe a sun-beaten brow. It's simple enough to make -- gin, lots of lemon juice, sugar and soda water, on the rocks. Change the gin for whiskey and you get a John Collins, substitute rum and you get a Rum Collins, sometimes called a Marimba Collins. And there are other variations, such as making a Collins with lime juice rather than lemon. That's the way Faye Dunaway takes her Tom Collins when she sits down at a swanky restaurant with a bandaged Jack Nicholson in "Chinatown." To get the same drink, she might just as well have asked for a Gin Rickey with extra sugar, but screenwriter Robert Towne was spot on with his period details -- Collinses, not Rickeys, were the fashionable drink of the day.

The Tom Collins may have achieved its zenith in the decades after Prohibition, but it got its start in the 19th century, named after a notorious hoax that spread in the summer of 1874.

The original prank went something like this: A friend would run into you on the street and, with great concern, tell you he just overheard someone named Tom Collins at a bar down the street saying hateful and libelous things about you. You race to that bar to confront the bounder, where you would be told that Tom Collins had just left for a bar several blocks away. When you get there, Collins would already have decamped for another joint across town. As you chase all over the city, your friends convulse with laughter.

Soon, not in on the joke, newspapers in cities across the country were reporting on people trying to find the scurrilous fellow. "Tom Collins Still Among Us," the Decatur, Ill., Daily Republican reported in June 1874. "This individual kept up his nefarious business of slandering our citizens all day yesterday. But we believe that he succeeded in keeping out of the way of his pursuers. In several instances he came well nigh being caught, having left certain places but a very few moments before the arrival of those who were hunting him. His movements are watched to-day with the utmost vigilance."

When the papers realized it was all a gag, they got in on the act. The Daily Republican kept playing along for months, gamely reporting that Collins had been spotted in San Luis Obispo, Calif., on his way to Arizona. "Next spring," the paper predicted, Collins "will jauntily enter the South American republics."

It doesn't take much to imagine how Tom Collins came to be a drink. How many times does someone have to barge into a saloon demanding Tom Collins before the bartender takes the opportunity to offer him a cocktail so-named? Indeed, you have to wonder if the whole Tom Collins stunt wasn't a marketing gimmick to promote pub-crawling.

Speaking of frauds, I don't recommend ordering a Collins at a restaurant or bar these days. You will likely get a drink made not with lemon juice, but with that backbone of the lazy bar -- all-purpose, lemon-lime sour mix. Some bars make their own sour mix fresh, but for the most part the stuff comes in bottles or jugs or out of the dispenser "gun," a factory-produced concoction of citrus concentrates and corn syrup. I resent drinks made with prefab mixes and would no more drink them than I would eat mashed potatoes contrived from potato flakes.

The Tom Collins was a victim of its own popularity. The various Collins drinks were called for so often that bartenders and amateurs at home looked for shortcuts. Canada Dry, Holland House and others cranked out "Collins Mix" after the war. And you can still buy little packets of the powdered stuff (that is, if you like the taste of Alka-Seltzer) -- examples of what bartender and author Dale DeGroff calls the Kool-Aid school of mixology. Such shortcuts ruined the Tom Collins, and the drink has never recovered.

Let's restore the Tom Collins to its rightful place. That means getting lemons and the means by which to squeeze them. One of the most valuable tools in my bar is a hinged citrus squeezer that operates like a garlic press. Juice half a lemon into a short highball glass with lots of ice. Add a teaspoon of sugar or simple syrup, more or less, a jigger of gin, and a few ounces of fizzy water. Then all you need is someplace in the shade -- and someone else to mow the grass.