Beer and Older Women

A memory of my youth growing up in a small town and attending a small church. A memory of youthful misdeeds and great friends to do them with.

     I was 14 years old in 1981 and my partners in crime, often enough, were two brothers, Richie and Monte. We were always doing crazy or just stupid things, me being author most times. We had quite a few adventures and misadventures together over the years of our childhood. This story is about one of them.

     I was always a friendly kid and I had no problem talking to those much older than myself. So somewhere between 1979 and 1980 I had struck up an unlikely friendship with a recent high school graduate named Karie, who also attended our church. She was a curvy girl, I remember, and rather tall. She also had big eyes and a car. I can't tell you I was in-love but I was formulating plans for her and that car.

     At that tender age I would fall for just about any plan involving said combination, but add beer into the mix and I guess my everlasting soul was in peril. So when Karie suggested we skip the junior high dance and come go with her to the dive-in movie, and she would buy the beer......we collectively said "YES!"

     There are few things I remember from that adventure. Here's a short list: Stupid Caveman movie, Monte giggling, Beer and cigarettes, Dizziness, Getting sick, Monte giggling, Falling backwards into car door jam with my head in a donut shop parking lot, Monte giggling, Throwing up all over my awaiting mom, and My dad making unnecessary loud noises at breakfast the next morning. But I survived. I got through it with a fatherly talk and a warning about "Older Women and Beer". The following will prove I didn't listen......

     A couple of summers past and the three of us kept surviving dumb ideas, i.e. jumping off the mill pond cliff on our bikes, smoking cigarettes while playing poker in a camper 50 feet from our parents and other close calls. Those were especially trying and often pain filled times for my little brother, who insisted on following us everywhere. But that's another story. I digress. 

     I'll admit I wasn't ready for high school. I was immature for my age but I was ready to be someone different. I played Football. I was terrible. I played Basketball. I was terrible. The fact is I wasn't built to run. So, I got into trouble a lot instead.

     In the winter of 1981 Ms. Karie approached us with the great idea of taking two six-packs of beer with us to an All Night Bowling church youth event......I said l

"Let's do it!"

     As I have already said, I was a friendly kid and talked too much. I didn't  know there was a traitor in our midst. A stoolie. A song bird. A RAT. I know who it was and I don't harbor bad feelings for him (anymore). It was my fault, and I was even forewarned. Three days before our little Lollapalooza was to take place I got an unlikely invite to lunch at our local deli by our youth pastor, whom for some reason I showed little respect. He really was a great guy. During said lunch he all but told me he knew something was up and appealed to my ego by asking that I stop any shenanigans I hear about because I was a leader among my peers. God bless him.

     The sounds of a slow death sermon where all around me. That time when you hear people re-adjusting numb bottoms on butt warmed hard birch pews, women stuffing used clean-ex into purses, children kicking seat backs, the almost audible stares of mothers who have had enough from their bored offspring and the resigned tone of a preacher who knows he's pushed the boundaries of his flocks attention span.

     A nudge and a directional head jerk brought me out of a dry sermon daydream. It was on! I turned and stared a hole in my mother's cheek before I finally got her attention. With a type of sign language only a church goer could read, I got permission to go and get ready for our youth event, or so my mother thought. Out in the parking lot I met up with my gang of two and a few others. It was a long time ago but I remember getting the evening started with a couple of wine coolers in a Datsun pickup, thanks to another post grad acquaintance.

     It wasn't long before the beer was safely stashed on the bus, church had been dismissed and our well planned debauchery was discovered. I remember hanging out with Karie in her car when I got a desperate signal from Richie that something was going on in the bus. My basketball coach would have been proud to see how well I ran that night. I could have placed at a track meet. I was THAT quick. But, to no avail. I reached and climbed into the bus, via the back door, just in time to see the Church Board members filing out the front. I could tell they searched the bus. The last member out was my friend Danny's dad. The look of disappointment in his eyes froze me. But just for a minute. After his exit I ran to my stash. There it was. A brown Rainbow Market grocery bag with two six-packs of bus temperature Budweisers without the pillow and t-shirt coverings. In a futile act of desperation I lowered a window and chucked every tepid Bud into an irrigation ditch that ran beside the bus. The jig was up.

     Apart from some uncomfortable ugliness afterwards, we survived. My dad made me quit the basketball team and gave me a review of his advice on "Older Women and Beer" that I still heed today. I know I came away from that experience a wiser young man. I look back now on it all as a father myself and think "How did my father not kill me?"  Who knows? My dad's gone now and I never asked him.

     I've done some dumb things in my life but I've never done them with better friends than Richie and Monte. God bless them both.