CHEAP WINE, BEER AND A FAKE I.D.

  An incident at a high school in Indiana made the national news the other day.  Some kid took a whizz on an electrical outlet.  This made a lot of smoke.  Some teacher ran in with a fire extinguisher, the fire department came to the school sirens a-screamin’…

  I think about some of the stuff I did back in high school.  If I did any of that stuff here in the future I’m sure some of it would probably make the national news.

  Like the time I made black powder and set it off at school (just a lot of smoke).

  Or how I used to buy booze for me and my pals with a fake ID.

  But I didn’t get in trouble….this was back in the 1970’s, and back then this stuff was just a rite of passage, part of life.

  My first attempt at buying booze was a complete failure.

  It was during a sleepover at my buddy Dax’s* house the summer between 6^th and 7^th grades.  It was me, Dax and Leroy camped out on Dax’s front porch.

  “It’d be great if we had some wine!” proclaimed Leroy.

  “You drink wine?” I asked Leroy.  I was all wide-eyed.  Beer was one thing…Cousin Bill’s daddy let him drink from his beer can, then Cousin Bill would go outside, get on his tricycle, ride around in circles on the driveway and sing "She'll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain.” 

  But wine?  Wine seemed to be a drink from another place than beer.

  “Sure I drink wine,” said Leroy with all the bravado a 12 year old could muster, “My parents never notice it’s gone.”

  “Well we should get some wine!” I said.

  “How?” asked Dax.

  “I’ll just go down to the 7-11 and buy some,” I said.

  “You can’t do that, dumbass,” said Dax, “You have to be old.  It ain’t the hotel.”

  Dax was talking about the summer after 5^th grade that he and Leroy and Catfish came over to hang at my place one Saturday morning.  My dad had this job at a hotel so we lived there.  Leroy wondered about ordering beer from room service and so I did, no problem.

  “How old you gotta be?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Dax, “old.”

  “I have a plan,” I said.

  Soon I was walking into the convenience store while Dax and Leroy waited outside around the corner.

  I grabbed a loaf of bread, a pack of cheese, a bag of potato chips and two bottles of Ripple wine, a kind of fortified rotgut wine that Gallo winery stopped making back in 1984.

  I took all the stuff up front and put it on the counter.

  The clerk picked up one of the bottles and looked me square in the eye.

  “Boy…what do you think you’re doing?” asked the clerk.

  “Getting some groceries,” I said, looking her square in the eyes.

  “You can’t buy wine,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said.  I turned to walk out.

  “Boy,” the clerk called out, “What about your other things?”

  “Oh,” I went back to the counter and paid for my bread, cheese and potato chips.

  I went outside and around the corner.

  “Well?” asked Dax.

  I held out the bag.  Dax looked inside.

  “No wine,” he said.  “What are we going to do with this shit?”

  “Let’s eat!” I said.

   I was a Junior in high school when I discovered the joys of a fake ID.

  It was one of those things I learned from a cousin.  I can’t remember why he thought it was an important thing to share with me but share he did.  But he had showed me how to disconnect the odometer so my dad wouldn’t know how many miles I’d burned up cruising the main drag of town.  Of course I haven’t told you whether I actually DID what he showed me.

  Anyway, about the fake I.D., Cuz said I was to go through magazines that might hold a subscription coupon to a particular magazine.  The thing was designed in such a way that if one typed it up, slapped an official-looking, passport-like black and white photo in the corner and laminated it, BAM!  Fake ID.

  I couldn’t tell you when I first used the thing…must’ve been at some store ‘cos I first bought some Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine.  I presented the ID which noted I was from Jamaica and just visiting in the USA.

  I took the wine on my first date with Wanda June Anderson* and a good time was had.  Wanda June and I only went out twice.  After that whenever I ran into her new boyfriend in his souped up ’72 Nova he’d call out to me, “Hey McGee, buy me some wine.  MAH-GEEEEEE, pleeeeeez buy me some wine.”  Then he would flip me the middle finger.  I reckon Wanda June told him about our date.

  The big test was could I pull off getting hard liquor at the state ABC store.

  Surely you’ve been in one of those states where you can buy beer, wine at the supermarket but hard booze is sold out of a state run store.

  These aren’t just clerks behind the counters, these are clerks in uniforms with BADGES.  So there is a bit of intimidation involved.

  Did I have a death wish?  Would I present my fake ID, its bogusness realized, guns drawn from under cash registers and I would be shot down in the liquor store, shot down for being under 21 and trying to buy booze?  Or would the clerks gang up on me, shoving their badges in my face, cuff me, put me in a black helicopter and whisk me away to prison?

  No.

  I picked up a bottle of Mr. Boston Rock and Rye, went to the counter, pulled out my cash and presented my fake ID.

  “Jamaica,” said the guy with the blue officer’s shirt and badge, “I was there once.  Kingston.”

  “Ah, you visited our capitol city,” I said.

  The clerk and I locked eyeballs for a few seconds.

  “I had a good time,” he said, handing my ID back, wrapping up my booze in a brown paper bag, handing me back my change.  “Have a nice day.”

  I walked out in the sun smiling…feeling a kind of freedom, a kind of euphoria…I had pulled one over on “The Man.”

  I mean, I never really bought a lot of beer, wine or booze.

  But I know my fake ID is why Chuck Biscuits kept me around in his little rock ‘n’ roll clique. 

  Chuck was a year behind me in school but we were in Art class together.  He and I started hanging around.  Chuck and some of his pals from over the hill from my house had a rock ‘n’ roll band, Hombre, that practiced a lot and I was often invited to come on over…Chuck on guitar, Dale on keyboards, Bobby Painter on bass and Jordy on drums.

  “And hey,” said Chuck on some practice nights, handing me a 5 dollar bill, “Pick up a couple of sixes of Bud on the way over.”

  I didn’t drink beer then, I liked sweet wines and liquors.

  So Chuck and the guys would swill the beers and I would kick back.  One night I wondered why the guys didn’t do “We’re An American Band” by Grand Funk, a Top 40 hit back in the day.

  “You come up and sing it,” said Chuck.

  And so I did, pitchy and off-key.

  I mean I didn’t know I was pitchy and off key and Chuck didn’t tell me I was pitchy and off key the only way I knew anything was wrong was Dale would wince, screw up his face when I hit the high notes in the tune.

  My role as singer for “Hombre” may have been tenuous but my role as beer buyer for the band was secure.

  Then it was the summer between my junior and senior year and it was time to party.  Me, my buddy Catfish, Chuck and the band and some other guys piled in my car and Chuck’s and headed into the mountains with two cases of Budweiser and three bottles of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill wine.

  They’re called “fire trails,” dirt roads that run through the National Forest so firefighters could get around in the woods.  Our “rolling party” was probably 5 miles up in the mountains.

  We drank, we listened to the rock ‘n’ roll AM station, we shot the shit and I got drunk.

  One bottle was gone, I was working on a second one when the gang decided it was time to go back to town.

  My pals wouldn’t let me drive my own car.

  And that’s the last thing I remember.

  I woke up the next morning…late…to hear a mockingbird singing outside my bedroom window and the sun shining in.

  I was still in my clothes.

  I was really thirsty.

  I got up and walked downstairs to the kitchen.

  I opened the door at the bottom of the stairs to find my grandmother holding her coffee cup in one hand, a filterless Raleigh cigarette in the other.  Her sister, my Aunt Maude, was sitting at the kitchen table.

  “Well here’s Mister Man, ready to take on a new day at 10 a.m.,” announced Aunt Maude.

  My grandmother turned around and started laughing.

  I was living with my grandmother and grandfather while my mom and dad got set up with a new job and new digs in Michigan.  Aunt Maude was visiting from New York City.

  I went over to the sink, got a glass from the cabinet, got a big, cool glass of tap water and drank it all down.

  “Do you have anything you want to say to me, boy?” Aunt Maude said loudly.

  Grandma laughed again.

  “Did I do something wrong?” I asked, looking back and forth from Grandma to Aunt Maude and back to Grandma.

  “Well,” said Grandma, “Me and your Aunt Maude were watching “Hee-Haw” last night when there was a knock…so I got up, opened the door and you practically fell into the living room.”

  “Oh,” I said, I could feel myself blush.”

  “Then you stumbled in and I said, ‘What’s wrong with you, boy?’” said Grandma.  “Then Maude says, ‘The boy is drunk’ and you turned to Maude and said, ‘SHUT UP YOU OLD BITTY.’”

  Grandma laughed some more.

  “Oh,” I said.  “I suppose you told my dad.”

  “I ain’t gonna tell your daddy anything,” said Grandma.  “I know stories about him that he doesn’t want told.”

  I turned to Aunt Maude.  I looked her in the eyes.

  “I apologize, Aunt Maude,” I said.  “I’m sorry.”

  Aunt Maude had a sip of her coffee.

  “It’s okay, boy,” she said.  Then she smiled and winked.

  Then I had a start.

  “Where’s my car?” I asked.

  “It’s outside, boy,” said Grandma.

  I went into the living room and looked out the bay window.  There was my car.

  I went outside to check it out.

  Everything looked okay, then I walked around to the passenger side.

  There was a stain, a mark, a big one that looked like some liquid had been poured out over the side of the car while it was heading down the road.

  I looked closer.

  There was a faint smell, there were food bits.

  It was vomit.

  I stood up and laughed to myself.

  I went inside the house and called my buddy Dax.

  “Mr. Strawberry Hill,” said Dax laughing when he answered the phone.

  “Man,” I said.  “What happened last night?”

  “Well,” said Dax, “We all decided that you were NOT driving your car anywhere so I drove off the mountain.”

  This would not be the last time Dax would commandeer my treasured ’64 Ford “Falcoon.”  In college he asked to borrow it to take his cheerleader girlfriend on a date.  Days later he told me that the two of them had “done it” in my car.  I was not amused.  Hell, I hadn’t even “done it” in my car.

  “So,” Dax went on, “We get back on the main road, and that’s when Painter about shoved you out the passenger side door.”

  “What was that about?”

  Painter was rather striking to see because he had this long bright red hair that went down to his shoulders and covered most of his face.

  “You kept grabbing his hair,” said Dax, “and kept yelling at him ‘YOU KNOW WHAT MY OLD MAN WOULD SAY ABOUT YOUR HAIR?  ‘BOY, YOU NEED A HAIRCUT.’”

  Dax laughed over the phone.

  “Man, you kept doing that until you really pissed Painter off.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Then you had to take a whizz so I pulled over by this field and Chuck pulled up behind us,” said Dax, “Then you ran out into this field.  We were standing around shootin’ the shit when Chuck says, ‘Hey, where’s McGee?’  We didn’t see you anywhere.”

  “Oh man,” I said.

  “So we go out in the field looking for you in this tall grass and Chuck finds you passed out on the ground.”

  “We get you back in the car,” said Dax, “We’re headed down the highway and you go ‘Uh oh’ then you lean out the window and puke.”

  “Well,” I said, “That explains the vomit on the side of the car.”

  “So then we get to your house and me and Painter practically carry you to your door, propped you up, knocked on the door, ran and got in Chuck’s car and got the hell out of there.”

  Dax laughed some more.

  “I’ll catch ya later, man,” I said to Dax.

  “Later Mr. Strawberry Hill.”

 

E P I L O G U E

  That wouldn’t be the last misadventure I’d have with my fake ID and booze.

  Actually about the only time I came close to getting into trouble was the next spring when I bought Dax a bottle of Everclear, the straight grain alcohol, which he mixed into a bottle of cheap wine that he took on a double date.  The girls got big time sick and he and Navy Jeff (called that ‘cos a year later he joined the Navy) took the girls over to Mr. B’s.  Mr. B was the cool high school English teacher.  They figured he’d know how to sober up the girls.  Dax knew the girls’ daddy (they were sisters) would whip Dax and Navy Jeff’s asses if they brought them home as drunk and sick as they were.

  And if anything happened I’m sure even in 1970-something they would’ve gone looking for whoever got the Everclear for Dax.

  The only time my fake ID was rejected was at the Windego Club, a seedy bar on the city’s north side.  The dude at the bar threw my ID back at me when I asked for a six-pack of Bud for Chuck and the gang.

  “I’ve seen better, kid,” he said.  “Show me your driver’s license.”

  It seems like not much time passed at all before I was really 21 and didn’t need my fake ID anymore.  I celebrated that birthday by going into the liquor store and buying a fifth of Jack Daniels and flashing my driver’s license.

  Yep, a bottle of Jack.

  Not Strawberry Hill.

  I never could drink that shit ever again.

-30-

*All names changed… ‘cept mine…