After discovering our fantastic new hobby, my friends and I set out to do as much research as possible. And over the next few years we conducted many experiments and field tests, to discover which stores in the Kanawha Valley would sell beer to obviously underage zit-poppers such as ourselves.
Indeed, if we’d been more industrious, we could’ve published a handbook to help the kids that came after us. We knew which stores were a sure thing, the ones that were a gamble, and the locations that weren’t even worth bothering with. Extremely valuable information for the budding drunkard…
We did most of our business with a place known as Pasquale’s. The signs all said “Cold Spot,” but everyone called it Pasquale’s. It was run by Arabs (or were they Persians?), who were, you know, mostly concerned with fostering and maintaining streams of income. If a person had cash in-hand, and was at least pubescent, they could shop from the Big Wall of Coolers at the rear of the store.
Oh, the place was legendary, and much-loved. In fact, I think they advertised in our school newspaper, with plenty of wink-wink innuendo, etc. How’s that for balls?
Occasionally the authorities would start raising hell, and Pasquale’s would have to make a half-hearted effort to follow the rules. I remember Bill and I went in there one evening, and there was a handwritten sign above the cash register that said the following:
We do not mean to hastle you, but law require all ID be check. -The Manger
Concerned, we asked the cashier what was going on, and he just chuckled and told us not to worry about it. So, we took his advice and left with 24 bottles of Mickey’s Big Mouths, with the old razor-sharp pull-off tops.
Wagner’s Market was another sure-thing. They employed a lot of college-aged kids who didn’t give a damn, one way or the other. We never tested it, but it probably wasn’t even a requirement to pay for stuff.
At one point there was an old red-haired Irish woman who worked there. She lived on my paper route, and I delivered free-of-charge newspapers to her every day of the week — in exchange for considerations at the store. It was all unspoken, but perfectly understood.
This brassy broad’s voice was ravaged by decades of cigarettes and bourbon abuse, and she’d tell us (every single time), “I know you boys aren’t old enough to buy this stuff. So, if the cops pull you over tell ’em some [n-word] bought it for you.” Yes, she was all class.
In a neighboring town was another sure-thing, called Romeo’s Rapid Mart. A guy in a wheelchair worked there, and could apparently only move from the tits-up.
He never gave us any “hastles,” but it was obvious we made him nervous. We expected him to eventually refuse to sell us beer, and we had a plan for that day. It was only a joke, but we talked about it all the time… We would roll him out into the middle of the floor, carefully turn him over on his side, and complete the transaction ourselves. All very humane, mind you.
Yeah, we were all about beer, and almost never drank anything else. We dabbled in rotgut wine, but it was disgusting and sometimes triggered abdominal pain like being impaled by a sword. That was a short-lived experiment… for me anyway.
And the first time I remember drinking a substantial amount of liquor was on a school trip to King’s Island amusement park, in Cincinnati.
We were seniors in high school, and spent the night at a Holiday Inn “Holidome,” or some shit. Everyone had been warned in advance that our luggage could, and probably would, be inspected. Don’t even think about smuggling in any alcohol, they told us in menacing tones.
So everyone had shampoo bottles filled with booze… And it worked; nobody got caught, and the spirits flowed throughout the night.
I don’t think any of us even slept, we just walked from room to room taking big swigs off jugs of Pert. It was insane. There was no consistency to what we were drinking, it was just a crazy mixture of vodka, bourbon, rum, gin, and various schnapps and liqueurs.
“Pass me that Prell, goddammit!”
The next day we went to a Cincinnati Reds game, and I felt like I’d been run over by a dump truck. Afterward we took the bus home (a four hour trek), and I think I slept most of the way with my face pressed into the afro of a black guy sitting beside me.
So, there you go. That’s the highly important additional information I’d wanted to add to yesterday’s update.
I’ll leave you now with something from the Stealing Clive Bull’s Topics desk. A few nights ago Clive was asking his callers if they wanted to be buried or cremated. And if it’s the latter, what did they want done with their ashes?
I definitely want to be burned-up. The thought of being lowered into a hole gives me the freakin’ creeps. No, I’d much rather they load my Earthly container into a furnace, and call it a day. I’d then like the ashes (and there’d be a lot of them) to be loaded into an Etch-A-Sketch (or six), and enjoyed for years to come.
What about you? Use the comments to tell us all about it.
And I’ll see you guys tomorrow.
Good Afternoon Surf Reporters!!
Burned up would be ok, but if I am buried, I just want a plain old pine box for a coffin. No way I can justify spending thousands and thousands on a nice hardwood shiny brass adorned container just to be planted in.
Why?
Numero Dos!!
I want to be cremated and have my ashes turned into two diamonds. Those diamonds would then be made into two rings; one for each daughter. That way I could keep an eye on them forever.
I’m getting good at this. 4.
Word.
With todays goofy, curly lighbulbed environmental laws when you get cremated most of you ends up in a filter that gets thrown into a landfill and if you’re buried they put the whole she-bang in a big ass concrete vault so you just rot away without the benefit of helping any daiseys grow
Cremated and scattered partially in Cook Forest up here in western PA and partially in the Atlantic Ocean at any point between Cape May and Spring Lake New Jersey (though being scattered at “Sea Grit” would be deliciously ironic). No burying (that’s “burry-in”, for native Philadelphians)!!
We have a chain of stores here in New Orleans called Wagner’s Meat Market. Their slogan? You Can’t Beat Wagner’s Meat.
For true.
I figure I’m going to know… or someone else is going to know should I be a bumbling moron… when I’m going to die. Our family has a nasty history of Alzheimer. So, my brother and I have a pact that if one of us get’s to a certain point we’re going to take a dive trip and give the goner a near empty tank. I’m sure PADI would have something negative to say, but I’d rather just get taken out my misery chasing a flounder or a spotted eagle ray at 75 feet below.
Poi Dog Pondering had it right in Bury Me Deep. Hold the chemicals, though.
/First beer? Hmm . . . nope, no way I can recall that. Must be the alcohol.
Burned up will be fine with me. Ashes to be spread in the woods behind the old homestead. A guy at work wants his ashes to be put in douche form so he can get run through one more time.
Since I’ll be dead my family can do whatever it wants with my carcass: Donate me to the local medical school, turn me into Soylent Green, render me down to make candles, hell even send me to a taxidermist and prop me up on the front porch every Halloween to scare kids. Once I’m dead I rather doubt I’ll have an opinion one way or another…
Cremated for sure. I think that I would like to be made into bathroom powder and then given to my ex-wife. That way I can chap her ass as much as she’s chapped mine
If I can’t be buried in a large crypt then I want to be burned up. My ashes can be taken to Ryan’s and slowly sneaked into the food.
Burn me up! Then I want my ashes carried around in a nice urn to all the bars, partys and other functions as if I was still there. At night I wan to be tucked in and and in the morning I want breakfast. That’s not too much to ask is it?
1st place to get beer young. The Trophy Room, a bar in Carbondale, PA. Fetuses could get served inthe Trophy Room…that’s because their mothers sat at the bar and drank. Hence the population of Carbondale, PA.
Burnt to a turn and my ashes dumped out of an airplane above an outside ice cream social.
Today’s stories remind me of many things. One of which, is the teacher who use to hang out next to the local store and yell at the kids who came out with smokes.
She would be smoking, of course, as she hung out there to yell at kids for smoking.
I’m sure I’ve told this story here before, but when I was 13, I told my mother that when I died I wanted to be cremated and put in Michael Schenker’s Flying V. Yeah, she was so proud.
Actually, I do want to be cremated and strewn about off the coast of Viareggio, Italy.
Happy Wednesday, Surfers!
Cremation for me – I don’t like the thought of rotting away slowly while the worms crawl in and out! Yuck.
I keep telling my family not to even buy a coffin – just put me in a large cardboard box and put it out at the funeral. Give everyone a Sharpie marker and they can write their final sendoffs right on the box. Then – poof – the whole works goes into the oven! Cheap and effective!
I want to be cremated. Then I want my children to haul my ashes to Burning Man and leave me in the Temple for the final roasting.
Although after reading Ashton’s post, I may want some of my ashed Scattered on Wagner’s Meat market.
Count me among the cremated, but only after all the still-useful bits have been yanked out and installed in someone else’s body that needs ’em. The thought of my heart or lungs (but prolly not my liver) having a second life after my brain fades to black is awesome.
I don’t really care what’s done with my ashes.
Also, it might be cool to somehow keep out a couple of long bones and make ’em into flutes of whatever. Yeah – the femur flute!
Right on, Tiff! I’m an organ donor too.
….or rather will be if I kick it in one usable piece.
cremated and ashes dumped in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of St John.
I am hoping for a huge fiery pyre, Viking style!
Lay me on a bed of straw, dressed in some see through gauzy dress and put me smack dab in the middle of a viking ship.
Then after getting drunk and dancing naked around a maypole all day, my family and friends would set me ablaze and push me into the water where I would light up the night sky in all my fiery magnificence!
Yep….
In the event the local fire laws won’t permit such a grand departure, I would consent to being cremated after a regular old wake and funeral, BUT I would insist on neon boobies flashing above the coffin while scantily clad hot guys served as pall bearers.
Oh yeah…and there’d have to be an open bar.
I’ve already weighed in on the subject, in my very own column (http://thewvsr.com/metten20.htm) – Dang Jeff, would it kill you to throw me a link once in a while?
Burn me up baby! I told my other half to dump the ashes in the garden. Might be good fertilizer.
Creamation. Haven’t decided yet where I’d like to be strewn.
Shelly, just remember, any old cardboard box won’t do, the creamatorium consortium insists you to buy a special $200 cardboard box just for getting burned up…. oh wait, sorry, that would be “creamation container”… [insert rolleyes here]
Throw me through the wood chipper and call it good.
I am an organ donor also, but after years of abusing my body highly doubt any of this will be useful by the time I die. Whatever is left can be either donated to science as a way to frighten the college kids off of partying or cremated and revered by my family.
I’ll let the surviors sort that out.
ashton: you know who can’t beat wagner’s meat? Natalie Wood:)
The third one down could ruin your legacy…
http://bitsandpieces.us/2008/03/21/michael-j-fox-x/
I know, old, mean, etc…
Re the WSVR Cam, based on the trajectory did the bird just poop the weird science guy?
I’m with Tiff and Gretchen on cremation, but donation of all the usable parts comes first. That is, if there ARE any usable parts when I die…..LOL. The ashes should be cast upon the waters of the ocean, preferably in the warm, aqua, clear Caribbean area!!
I want to be cremated. I want most of my ashes put in some fancy pants urn and every fall have someone one stir some single barrel bourbon into me. I want the remaining ashes spread in North Myrtle Beach, where I spend my weekends, anywhere in Pittsburgh (preferably the football stadium), and what little is left to be embedded into a heavy ball & chain to be tied to my husband’s left foot for all eternity.
Cremated!!! Take what you can and burn the rest.
As a kid i remember a place in Olney MD called the Red Door Country Store, which at the time was at a lonely country intersection. We discovered at age 14 the despite the fact that we appeared out of the cornfields on our BIKES that they were not concerned atall with our ages, merely the color of our cash. FOURTEEN we were, men those were some good summers, riding back to the house through cornfields and woods while trying not to drop any precious liquids piad for with lawnmowing money. Thank you Red Door.
That Cam shot is from a conference called TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design). They videotape the presenters each year and put them up on their website. Some of you might be interested in the vast array of subjects they cover.
Burn me up and fire me into space bitches! That way I can be re-animated by some alien race who finds my remains in 10 million years time.
I’d like my ashes to be placed in dozens of pepper shakers and left in various restaurants around Boulder.
Cremated for me, but only after donating those organs which still have use for others.
After that, dump the ashes in the ocean. I don’t want to be hanging around on a mantle in an urn for eternity.
” after getting drunk and dancing naked around a maypole all day, lay me on a bed of straw, dressed in some see through gauzy dress and put me smack dab in the middle of a viking ship”
Tammie……….
That is the role play we did at our last party! Don’t you remember? Too much alcohol?? 🙂
I’m giving my body to science. I’m gonna have my flesh boiled off and spend eternity as an anatomical skeleton in the dusty corner of some public school lab with students making me appear to jerk myself off and such.
Cremation for me. Any organs that may be of use to anyone, they can have, burn the rest, then explode the rest in a fireworks display like Hunter S. Thompson did.
ka-blam pzzzzzz
She is passed on. She is ceased to be. She is no more, is bereft of life, expired and gone to meet her maker.
Burn me and dump half my ashes into Lake Michigan (near where I was raised) and half into the Brazos (where I currently live and expect to die).
I toyed with the idea of Lake Erie because the carbon might improve the water quality…. but no. I don’t want my final resting place to be green and scummy (as it was last I saw it near Toledo, anyway). I deserve better.
Plan B is to be rendered into fat and turned into crayons, with the stipulation that no one uses them for good purposes. Write nasty sayings on bathroom walls, for instance. That would be an effective use of my carcass.
Shake ‘n Bake.
I want to be burned and have my ashes snorted by Keith Richards.
Pickles…
…as long as you want all your surviours to fight…
I want to just walk into the woods and sit by a tree or rock when my time comes. I’ll write a note:
I killed the bar what killed me.
This here is a good AK-47, please try not to break my fingers off when ya take it.
I’ve always wanted to be taxidermied and propped up in the corner at a “brandy died” party, holding a tray with a cheese log and delicious triscuit crackers. Ya’ll can burn me up when the party’s over.