Lee High Pals on Facebook

Nice visiting with some old Lee High pals on Facebook. And it's agood excuse to bring this old blog out of hibernation to share some stuff too lengthy for facebook. Most of you I haven't seen for years, but since 1994 I've been writing columns and articles for my local paper and several magazines. I ran across this column recently while searching some archives. It brought back some memories. Anybody remember this place but me, Linwood Erb and Medley Curry?

Born To Be Mild
I wanted to be wild more than anything else in the world, but until my
junior year in high school, the delinquent activities topped out at skipping study hall. Once.
Mine was mostly a transportation problem. It’s hard to do any serious
mischief from a bicycle.
I couldn’t drive, but I had a couple of friends who could. Medley Curry
and Linwood Erb were Lee High band buddies who joined the Navy Reserve during high school and became wise beyond their tender years.
We called them Admiral Erb and Captain Curry. During their time in the
Navy they saw some exotic sights, learned some spectacular new curse words
and most daring of all, acquired taste for beer. One Friday night they invited me to join them for a walk on the wild side.
It was a beer run. I was ecstatic at the opportunity to commit my first major league sin. My mother had been warning me for years about the two
unredeemable teenage pitfalls— sex and booze— so I was dying to give them a whirl.
Sex was still a dream, but alcohol was lurking on the horizon. I was wild, wired, alive and ready to rock. Aside from the butchered crew cut, coke bottle glasses and the Mozart t-shirt, I was the spitting image of James Dean.
The guys picked me up and we sailed full speed ahead down the
highway to hell.
A few miles out of town, Medley turned down a dirt road, followed it a
mile or two and parked in a graveled lot. The headlights illuminated a bleak concrete block shack with a hand-painted sign reading "Fuller’s Place."
We switched off the engine and waited. Ten minutes earlier I had been
pulsing with testosterone, a burning, churning rebel with an unquenchable thirst for forbidden pleasures. Now, I was sitting on my hands to hide the shaking and hoping I wouldn’t soil myself.
After a few minutes, an elderly black gentlemen looked out the door, eyeballed us and wandered over to the car.
What you boys looking for?”
“We want some beer,” said the Admiral.
“The good stuff, “ added the Captain.
Back then, decent beer was about a buck a six-pack. We gave the old man a
ten dollar bill and waited anxiously. He came out a few minutes later with a sack that looked suspiciously small.
“What’s this?” the Admiral quizzed him.
“Ten beers. That’s all you get.”
“For ten bucks?”
“Service charge.”
“Sounds high.”
“Take it or leave it.”
We took it and blew out of there in a shower of dust and gravel. When we
reached the safety of the highway we passed the sack around. I took one of the frosty cans out, held it aloft and admired it— my first, honest-to-goodness underage beer.
I cracked it open and watched as the creamy foam spilled seductively over
the side. Then I turned the can to my lips and took a long, deep pull of...Canadian Ace malt liquor.
I’ve never heard of the brand before or since, but if that beer had been
my first date, I’d have sworn off girls forever. It was ghastly, a concoction that tasted as if it had been dipped directly from Satan’s urinal.
Of course none of us acknowledged this. We rode around grinning and
swilling, saying “Smooth,” and “Cool, man.”
By stifling a stubborn gag reflex, I managed to down three cans of the
stuff. I don’t know if my discomfort was caused by drinking too much or the fact that Canadian Ace was the vilest substance to ever cross my lips, but it was all I could do to keep from throwing up right there in the car.
I had never felt so sick in my life. At least until I got home. When we pulled up at my house and I saw my mother staring out the front window, I knew a bad night was about to get worse.