Over the River and Through the Woods...Wait..We're LOST!

I could write about how our Grandmothers came over for Thanksgiving and how I enjoyed the turkey, gravy and cranberry sauce from a can. Or how I thought any kind of squash was the invention of the Devil to torment kids, but that's boring and our family was not a sugary perfect Walton's mountain kind of happy.

So here's a great Thanksgiving DWI story when driving completely wasted was legal.

Saint Raphael and Tolman High school had a football rivalry and the key game was always played on Thanksgiving mornings at McCoy stadium. A few days prior to that, Saints, would have pep rallies for the students to rev up the team players and the school for the fun it. I once witnessed the principal of Saints, Br. Peter Bonaventure, a balding, pointy-nosed, proud and religious man, don a cowboy outfit and dance his way through the gym to start the festivities. None of knew it was him till he whipped off the hat and beard to reveal himself. We kids thought all that guy did was pray and run a school and then pray some more.

Once, some of us rolled our eyes at him after the entire West building blew a fire drill evacuation time. He stood amongst us, berating us for taking far too long to leave. Ever get chewed out by a man in a black cassock who also has taught in Catholic schools in Africa, Malaysia and other continents? Even though a bit short of stature, this guy had that glow of Martyr about him.

 

 

The uniform of a DeLassalian Brother.

I still have no idea what that split thing around their neck signifies.
They bop these guys all over the world to teach in schools and
are a hair less crazy than Jesuits.

The Tolman kids, each year, would make a nighttime terror attack on the statue in the front of our school. It was of an angel standing atop a stone which had the names of all the alumni killed in WW2. The kids would spray paint it red, the Tolman color, with either the name of the school or sometimes “FUCK YOU” would be the word. Br Peter Bonaventure was never pleased about that but we Saints kids would've spray painted something at Tolman, if it had any kind of monument to deface but they had none.

The rivalry was kind of intense at times.

My brother and I attended the games twice, both times we became wasted. We weren't the only ones either.

McCoy stadium isn't that far from my house. Driving to it just requires a right, one left and one more right and we can be there in about five minutes if the traffic is light. Good, remember that.

The game began at 10 am and my brother had gone to the liquor store the night before to get a fifth of Popov vodka. I've told you about Popov vodka before. It's the kind of vodka you buy because you're a teen and have little money and you want the most alcohol for the buck. The problem is that Popov tastes like CVS rubbing alcohol. He had also bought a one litre bottle of Pepsi to cut it with and we ran out of that fast.

Like some Thanksgiving mornings, it was brutally cold and we huddled in our stadium seats, drinking Pepsi/vodka drinks out of the soda cans we brought with us. We could easily remake drinks w/o too many people witnessing it. Of course, we made a 50/50 mix so we'd get goofed up quick. We ran out of mixer and then began to drink it straight. Thank God the vodka was chilled by the cold air. It took less than one quarter of the game before we became stupidly drunk.

Then as a comedy bit, we'd come up with the most disgusting rants to hurl at the Tolman players. “Tolman's very good at handling BALLS!” yelled my brother. “Make them SUFFER!” I yelled out after one of their players had to be taken out on a gurney after being body slammed during a play. We didn't really swear and spit epitaphs at them, just came up with the most sarcastic and tasteless insults we could. Those around us, older folks who attended this game as a tradition, would look upon us with derision. I'm surprised the cops never showed up to police us or others who were obviously out of it and making the game a miserable event for all the others who thought you shouldn't yell out insults about Tolman player's sexual health. As I remember it now, there were only traffic cops there.

The game was over by noon or just after. We stumbled back to our car to drive home and now in hindsight, it would've been better if we just walked home as it was no real long distance. But my brother was 20 and I, 15 and both of our abilities to make the right decision was shot to hell.

Here's a map of our drive home and I'm pulling this from a distant memory but I know we ended up in the woods of Rehoboth as I remember the farm.



The distance between those two circles, McCoy and my house, is about 1/3 a mile.

 

 

 

And where we ended up.

 

 



I don't know why my brother became lost on his way home. I'm sure the vodka had a lot to do with it. I kept busting his balls about getting us lost in the woodlands of Massachusetts when our home was all of spitting distance from McCoy. He finally swung his car around in a hard, sharp U turn which tossed me into the passenger seat floor, whacking my head on the glove compartment box on the way down. I wasn't injured, well, I was leaking some blood but I didn't know till we nearly got home.

Pulling onto our street finally, my brother made damn sure that I wasn't to act drunk at the Thanksgiving table. “Look, we're to eat, shut up, speak only when we have too and then, get the fuck out of there as we're both too gooned to keep it secret any longer...and get that blood off your forehead!”

I had slit my scalp a bit where my hair was and the blood had been trickling down. Lucky for me I clot fast.

We both tried sobering up some. We came in, hurriedly eat the dinner and made some small talk to give it an appearance that we were normal. I sat there wondering if either my Mom or Grandmother could smell the vodka vapors coming off me. What's weird is that neither of the two made any mention of us being stinking drunk.

Here's a combination, drunk and well fed. There are two things you can do, either vomit it all up or pass out. Luckily for the two of us, we passed out. I found my spot on the floor in the living room. No joke. That required some explaining when my Mom poked her head in the room. “Oh for God's sake...sleep on the couch!” I gathered all my strength to crawl up on that. In about two hours, I was cured and felt fine.

That amazes me to this day. Well it shouldn't. When you're 15 and silly drunk, your body is still young enough to cure itself and you bounce back fairly quickly.

My brother a few hours later claimed he never remembered getting lost in Rehoboth. I remembered it. Oh well. That's life in 1980. When drunk driving laws were tiny misdemeanors and you have all the luck in the world by not sliding into a 100 year old oak tree.

After the four day weekend, I returned to school at Saints. I can remember sitting in Ted Dukuk's Human Physiology class and by stupid luck, we were learning about the liver the days before Thanksgiving and still doing it. Ted then remarks, as a ball busting comment, that the liver cannot remove alcohol fast enough to prevent it's effects on the brain. “Alcohol has a depressant effect on the brain and can cause the person to make silly, stupid decisions and to act like a moron.” He then then shoots a knowing look at me with a smirk as I was in the front row. The classroom started laughing. I guess Ted was at the game nearby us to witness it all.