The Summer of Beer: Part I (Based on True Events) (606 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: 0 on 7 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by HerdofWookies (View user info) at 2004-02-26 12:49:03 EST
The summer of 1989 represented a limbo of sorts for my friends and me and the group of people we hung out and around with. Many of us had just graduated from Anna Lipoli High school, and only some of us would be going off to college in the fall. Most of us would be remaining in Lipoliville for the foreseeable future, perhaps attending community college for a year or two (or in my case, four) before heading off to one of the state universities and/or working at an odd assortment of jobs, most of which were of the dead-end variety and afforded only the barest means of sustenance. Some, such as myself, would continue living at home with our parents, who were wrapped up enough in their own lives to allow us to come and go as we pleased with little interference in our doings. Others among us would feel the burning urge to pull away from the proverbial teat of their parents and choose to move out, renting apartments and houses for the sole purpose of fostering some sense of adulthood, which for the most part meant engaging in as much debauched behavior as possible, unencumbered by the watchful eye of any authority figures. We were perhaps an unlikely group of people to find fraternizing. At the time, in the crucible of high school existence, punks weren't fashionistas who bought their look at the local mall and skaters hadn't yet become the new jocks, and they were drawn to the companionship of the neo-hippies and a select few "normal" kids, who tended to be rich and from broken homes, by a common bond: a mutual affinity for drugs and alcohol. A lot of drugs were smoked, snorted, popped, and dropped that summer; and much to my amazement that it was possible, even more beer. Much more beer. More beer than drugs, and more beer than I have probably ever consumed or ever will consume again in my life. The summer of 1989 was probably a lot of things to a lot of people, but for me it will always be, without a doubt, the Summer of Beer.
Two of my closest friends, Matt and Luke, ended up renting a house at the beginning of that summer at the end of Lincoln Place, a street of modest houses in our town of generally large, expensive Victorian homes and McMansions. The house Matt and Luke rented, #911, had two empty lots on either side of it, and the large backyard backed up against a 5- or 6-acre wooded area. Beyond this wooded area was a service road for a nearby hotel, and just beyond that was a small tract of public housing. Because I had opted to continue living in the basement of my parents' house in order to save money for whenever I would make the jump to a four-year school, Luke ended up recruiting a third person to move in with them. Enter Adam.
Adam was an ok guy, I suppose. Or so I thought at the time. We knew him from some of the local skate spots and half-pipes around the area, and would occasionally see him at one of the clubs in the city we would drive to whenever a good band was playing. I had heard once that he dropped out of school in the 8th grade, under the misimpression that he was going to become a rock star. Because, you know, that's the first step in becoming a rock star, right? I had also heard that Adam had been kicked out of the army, but didn't know the details surrounding that, or if it was even true. I think Adam's allure for Luke and Matt was that he was 21, and so could buy alcohol legally. In addition, despite any identifiable source of income, Adam also seemed to always have an abundance of cash, weed, and acid. This should have been a warning sign, raising the spectre of things to come, but it wasn't. Instead it just made Adam an attractive candidate for roommate.
Upon Adam's moving into #911 Lincoln Place, the obvious became, well, obvious. The triple beam scales, the padlock on his bedroom door, and the flow of foot traffic through the house, a lot of which seemed to come from the tenements beyond the wooded lot and service road, were only some of the dead giveaways. Pot and LSD were Adam's inventory of choice, but he always seemed to have some other odds and ends on hand too. A little sniff, some pills, and some hash or opium always seemed to come out of Adam's little bag o' tricks whenever the timing was just right. And really, all of this suited Matt and Luke, and me as the requisite hanger-on, just fine. We got to partake in Adam's wares without the usual attendant costs and, in my case, I could distance myself from everything by going home whenever I wanted to. My two friends found the semi-constant flow of visitors to the house a little disconcerting at times...but what the hell; the place was pretty much just a party house for the summer anyway, and it's hard to argue with the promise of free drugs.
If Adam's drugs were the icing, then the cake of that summer was the beer. Cheap beer, and lots of it. Although partial to a good Belgian beer, preferably something brewed by monks, nothing seemed to quench our thirsts that summer like cheap beer. Natty Boh, Schmidt's...even some Pabst on occasion, we drank it by the tank. I'm pretty sure the liquor stores experienced something like the stock market crash that preceded the Great Depression when that summer drew to a close and we were no longer patronizing their establishments. On any given day the refrigerator at #911 was stocked, and then depleted, of a couple of cases, and every Friday after work Matt and Adam went to pick up a keg. All during the week, and on Friday and Saturday nights, the house at the end of Lincoln Place became known around town as the place to be when nothing else was going on. Regardless of anything else, there would always be a group of people holding down the fort, drinking and drugging, whether pitching horseshoes in the backyard with the keg, or lounging inside with the stereo on high and the TV showing movies with the volume off.
And so with a huff and a puff did the summer of 1989 get off on a roll. Little did I know then, and never would I have believed you if you had told me, that by the end of that summer I would witness my two closest friends break a man's legs with a shovel so that they could be folded back upon themselves, making it easier to fit him in a shallow grave and bury him.
User Reviews
Submitted by WookieSuave (user info) at 2004-12-16 14:26:47 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Auto +2
Wookiees Unite!
Submitted by quack (user info) at 2004-02-26 14:21:43 EST (#)
Ranking: -1
with a funny username like that, i would expect something better. pooh.
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2004-02-26 13:53:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
ouch. oh well, at least i've still got my dignity... oh, wait...
Submitted by KoolMang (user info) at 2004-02-26 13:47:11 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
Wookies are boring.
Submitted by kai070169 (user info) at 2004-02-26 13:21:29 EST (#)
Ranking: -1
This post is a wonderful way to start the "springtime of boredom". Yawn.
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2004-02-26 13:08:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 from me, in case it's the only one...
yeah, longer than i intended part one to be, and the paragraph breaks didn't copy well from Word.
you can still kind of tell where they should be, if you're the ambitious type, which i myself am not, so no blame if no one else is either... (sigh).
Submitted by acrog (user info) at 2004-02-26 13:05:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm sure it's a great story but....
PARAGRAPHS, MAN!!???!!?!?!