A recent article in the New Yorker magazine made an observation that struck me like an olive of truth: Every generation since Hemingway's has revived the martini.

I like to think that my own discovery of the martini predated the current 'tini trend.

It was probably more than a few years ago, but not quite as many as several, that I suddenly had a hankering to try a martini. My reasoning, as I recall it, was that I had heard about martinis my whole life and yet I had never had one. I wondered what the fuss was all about, so I decided to order one.

And it was good. The way the crisp and bracing gin is tempered by the aromatic and exotic vermouth is a bit of liquid magic on the tongue.

Martinis are now my hot-weather drink, with bourbon and maybe Irish whiskey my tipples of choice in the winter. That makes me part of one trend, according to the New Yorker story, but puts me out of step with another.

According to the story written by the magazine's food critic, Hannah Goldfield, young people are now engaging in what they inevitably call "intentional drinking," when they drink at all.

Intentional drinking means drinking less. It means half-sized drinks and alternating nonalcoholic drinks between alcoholic drinks, a practice known as "zebra-striping."

In my mind, I've always thought it was a romantic ideal to be a hard, two-fisted type of drinker. I wanted to be the guy in the Western who sidles up to the bar, plunks down a single coin and is given a bottle from which I pour an unlimited number of drinks.

In my heart, I've wanted to frequent Nick's bar in the Pottersville section of "It's a Wonderful Life," where the owner says, "We serve hard drinks in here for men who want to get drunk fast, and we don't need any characters around to give the joint atmosphere."

A slight digression: The actor who Brooklyn-accents those words was the great Sheldon Leonard, who later went on to produce hit TV shows including "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "The Andy Griffith Show," "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.," "The Danny Thomas Show" and "I Spy."

Another digression: In the Bedford Falls section of the movie, that bar is called Martini's.

Hard-drinking used to go hand-in-glove with being a newspaperman, along with cynicism and low pay. But the hard-drinking side of the job is gone. I don't know of a single reporter or even editor at this newspaper who has a bottle of rye in his desk drawer. Even as recently as the generation immediately before me, that was not unknown.

It feels like we are missing something worth keeping from our past. On the other hand, we're living longer and getting into fewer accidents.

The writer of the New Yorker article, Goldfield, says that she has always been intrigued by what she calls the "romantic appeal" of the midcentury cocktail culture. She pictures her grandparents, "young and a little glamorous," in Manhattan, mixing drinks every day at 5 p.m.

I suspect the "Mad Men" version of cocktail hour, a little dangerous and tinged with pathos, was closer to the truth. And now, as far as I know, the whole concept of cocktail hour has disappeared.

According to a Gallup Poll last year, only 54% of U.S. adults say they consume alcohol, the lowest number (by 1%) in the 90 years of the poll's existence. And those who do drink, drink less.

I'm drinking less, myself, as a way of cutting down on the emptiest of empty calories. I guess I'm officially part of a trend.

I never had rye in my drawer, I never drank at a place like Nick's.

But I kind of miss it anyway.

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