I thought the final LOST was pretty darn good. I watched the whole thing (almost exactly two hours with the commercials skipped, requiring three beers), and only got five hours of sleep as a result.
What did you think? Were you satisfied? I have no complaints… at least not now, in my weakened state. I thought it was good. Any opinions?
Over the weekend I downloaded an album I loved in a previous lifetime: Out of the Blue by ELO. I used to play the hell out of that thing when I was in high school, and probably hadn’t heard it in 25 years.
eMusic has it for just twelve credits, which translates to five bucks for twenty songs, so I decided to give it a shot. And as soon as I started listening, memories of a ridiculous trip to Myrtle Beach, in 1980 or thereabouts, came flooding back.
My parents made a tactical error and allowed me and my brother to invite a friend each to come along on a family vacation, and it turned into mayhem. During that trip Out of the Blue was constantly playing, and will forever be associated with that ill-advised beach trip.
Bill in WV was my guest, and my brother brought a friend named Doug. And we got into all sorts of trouble, culminating with the owner of the hotel telling my parents that none of us are welcome back.
And I must make this clear: My folks are NOT like Sunshine, and are/were unaccustomed to being barred for life from businesses. And they were completely mortified. They still talk about it, and even after thirty years… they see no humor in any of it. Heh.
I’m not going to write a complete travelogue of the week, but will briefly tell you about the three events that stick out the clearest in my mind. There were others, but these are the highlights.
Bill and I took off one night in my parents’ station wagon (hell yeah!), and drove from convenience store to convenience store trying to find one that would sell beer to two underage dumbasses. Back home we knew where to go (we could’ve published a guidebook), but it was a complete roll of the dice at the beach.
We were turned down several times, and one person threatened to call the cops. It was a dangerous enterprise, but we soldiered on. Finally, I went into a strange store/bar, and there were several rednecks standing around in there.
The little voice in my head was telling me to turn around and leave, but I continued to the counter. The guy was very skeptical, but the good ol’ boys came to my defense, and egged the cashier on. He sold me a 12-pack of Miller High Life, or somesuch, and the rednecks were snickering and laughing as I walked out the door.
It was excruciating. But Bill and I spent the rest of the night driving around Myrtle Beach in that station wagon with wood paneling on the sides, drinking beer and listening to ELO. Oh, I’m sure we were quite enticing to the ladies.
At one point we were in the parking lot of Myrtle Beach High School, I remember, drinking and laughing about that freaky bar and a store. Or was it a freaky store and a bar? I’m still unclear.
But it was a good time. And we were somehow able to avoid being busted by my parents (or the police for that matter), even after six beers each.
One day Bill and I were at one of those gigantic waterslide places, and started dropping stuff off a bridge, onto kids as they went zipping past underneath.
We were pulling off big chunks of hard foam from something (I can’t remember), and we hit one hillbilly child with it, who screamed, “You’re killed!”
We watched as the little bastard went to one of the lifeguards, and was pointing at us. And the lifeguard started sprinting in our direction. Uh-oh.
Both of us took off running, and the guy was on us. “I saw you throwing shit in the flume!” he hollered, and we jumped a small fence, and went down a grassy embankment.
We knew the guy was right behind us, and were running wide-open. Then we came to a ledge, and had to throw on the brakes hard, to avoid going over. We stood there and looked down about forty feet, to jagged rocks.
We both came very close to careening off that thing, and it still scares me a little thinking about it.
The lifeguard didn’t say a word to Bill, who calmly walked away, but gave me an entire raft of shit in front of dozens and dozens of rubber-necking tourists.
When I caught up with Bill, after my public humiliation, he was buckled-over in laughter near the arcade. Thanks for sticking by my side, buddy! He’d just walked away, with no expression on his face.
And one day, at the hotel, it was raining and the swimming pool was abandoned. So the four of us (my brother and his friend were involved) threw every piece of outdoor furniture into the water.
Each sank to the bottom, and we thought that was high comedy. We even jumped in, and set the chairs and lounge chairs upright, so it looked like they were supposed to be down there. All arranged and everything.
Someone deflated the floats on a rope that separated the deep end from the shallow end, and we pretty much ransacked the place.
Yeah, and the owner caught us, and was not amused. He started shouting about the cops, and even accused us of stuff we didn’t do.
“I usually only have to replace that filter in the pool once a season,” he hollered. “But I’ve had to do it twice since you people have been here! Last time I had to get down on my hands and knees and PRYYYYY the thing open.”
We’ve been imitating that PRYYYY part for three decades now. Funny as hell.
But things got very ugly when my parents were brought into it. The guy was not happy, not in the least, and my Dad had to take his abuse on our behalf.
Yeah, and it was a long, tense ride back to Dunbar…
That’s a quick overview of events, I’ve left out lots of details, but you get the idea. It was just dumbassery unleashed, for a full week. And we were never allowed to take any of our friends on vacation again.
Did your parents ever make this mistake? Tell us about it, won’t you?
And I’ll be back tomorrow.
Have a great day!
1st?????????!!!!!!! And I read the whole post!
2nd????????????????? And I didn’t read it yet.
You know those strange metrics people come up with for stuff: “It was enough earwax to go from Earth to the Moon and back four times over!!”? I wonder what the appropriate measure would be for beer consumed by underage males while driving aimlessly around.
Yes, my parents made a mistake, and he’s reading the West Virginia Surf Report right this minute.
Oh, you wrote “this mistake,” I thought it said “a mistake.” Never mind.
My parents were hippies, and our vacations weren’t worth tagging along on, unless you like fru fru music and weird drunken dancing in cut off jean shorts and bandanna tank tops. My friends kept their distance. We did hit a few random amusement parks like Dog Patch USA and Opryland, during my childhood. Nothing says fun like watching hillbilly cloggers in polyester with fringe, having a hoe down in 98 degree heat. Those my friends are priceless memories! Oh, the random sweat stains.
Jeff, your memories sound like my Jersey Shore vacation memories!
top ten!!! not doing a thing at work obviously.
I was kept on a short, tight leash growing up, so no. Now my brother, on the other hand, they pretty much let run wild. So gawd only knows what shenanigans he got himself into. I do know he and friends went down the shore one weekend and he lost his wallet, which was stored in his tube sock, on a ride that went upside down. Brilliant.
I did once rescue a deck chair from the bottom of a hotel pool in Ocean City, Maryland, just because some boy thought I was too weak to do it. I guess I know who threw it in there now.
Good God, how you and I survived past 1980 is beyond me!!
MEH! I’ve had more interesting sociology experiments. Of course, the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy was a little better. The dead stayed dead!
Nantucket, summer of 1976. My buddy and I consumed mass quantities of cheap beer at every opportunity, culminating the last evening with me in the cemetery screwing a fat chick, him smoking dope with some locals on the roof of our motel – both of us later realizing we don’t have keys to get back in the room and the parents were gone for a LOOOONG walk on the beach. We actually broke in to our room through a screened window to get some sleep – him because he was baked, me because I was tired from screwing the fat chick on various gravesites.
Got caught one night with open containers, but the state trooper was nice and gave us the option of throwing them in the trash or going “downtown” with him. We threw them in the trash (40’s of Miller high Life, I believe), but with the screw caps ON. After the trooper left, you know exactly what we did – dug our 40’s out of the trash and finished ’em off like proper teenage idiots.
Family vacation embarrasments and general grab assery where met with very stern and painful bouts of corporal punishment in my younger days. I remember a certain incident where my two brothers devoured a quart of ice cream when we where visiting my uncle in Texas. The refrigerator raid was blamed on my younger sister and I who felt the brunt of my fathers anger and his trusty leather belt. Granted today, this would be considered child abuse. My two brothers would later get theirs when they attempted to savour the treats at the Brach’s without paying for them at a grocery store one day. Story tells that my father whipped them from the time they left the store until they reached home, about a two mile journey on foot as the crow flies.
We had an old farm house just off the Saco river in Maine.It wouls sleep about 30 people. It was a summer place. Well me and my friends would go up “after season” and the towns folk still talk about the parties I had. We had two live bands going in opposite end of the place one night. Someone borrowed my moms car to go get more beer. I woke up the next morning and there was a street sign from Sherbrook Canada sticking out the sun roof. NONE of us knew how he got through customs with it?? He didn’t either. Shit like that used to happen on a regular basis. It was the 60’s after all. I have two “phone call babies” from those parties. heh Talk about a great time…
I liked the LOST finale.
Seemed to hit all the right notes.
No sordid vacation stories. I just used to try and get my little brother in trouble.
Yeah, the LOST finale was real good.
I hope ’24’ ends with Jack going apeshit.
Hmm . . . Gretchen responds to challenges. Noted for possible future use.
Ahh family vacations…
When I was about 12ish, my parents, my Aunt & Uncle, and my two cousins went to Yogi Bear campground somewhere in Indianer to camp in our pop up campers for a weekend. As kids, my cousins and I LOVED this place. My one cousin, Danny, is the same age as me and we were always getting into some kind of mischeif.
This particular weekend we were down at the pool and there were two girls being real nasty to each other, in a ‘playful’ kind of way, if that’s what you’d even call it. They were calling each other names and trying to pull each others bathing suit bottoms down. (Don’t get excited guys, they were kids). All of a sudden, they turned their attention on me since I was about their age, and seemingly alone, so they started calling me a bitch and stuff and giggling. Danny had suddenly become a pro at holding his breath under water and made sure to stay there for as long as possible to avoid helping me. I kept looking to him for help but every time I would look I would just see the top of his head and a halo of bubbles. I was a very sensitive little kid, so I’m just standing there, fighting back tears and these little fuckin’ brats were just harrassing me and circling me…when who should pull up at the perfect time but my dad, to the rescue. He yelled “What you girls doing!!?” And of course, they scampered off innocently. Danny conveniently popped out of the water and we got into the van. I told my dad what happened and he started yelling and was tempted to turn around and possibly drown the little bitches, or hopefully light them on fire…then he yelled at my cousin for not helping me.
Shortly after that fiasco, Danny and I stole my mom and dad’s golf cart and drove around for a solid hour before a cop pulled up and started doing what cops do, and just being a jag off…asking us for our licenses, even though we were clearly 11 & 12 years old, we were laughing, like yeah, we TOTALLY have licenses…we even tried to lose him by driving down a bike path, but much to our terrible dismay the bike path was a loop and looped right back around to where we were originally sitting, where he was waiting for us. So we got reemed for a minute, but he let us go, and we got our drunk Uncle to drive us around for awhile.
Family vacations were always awesome.
Carla, your parents are going to be me and my boyfriend in about 20 years.
I was digging on LOST last night and plan to re-watch soon.
Nearly all of our family vacations were of the free-family-fun variety – we would travel to and Aunts’ house and maybe go to one of their nearby parks or beaches. No big mischief or trouble.
My little brother had a big chunk of feet meat ripped out by a bicycle chain right before we supposed to get in the station wagon and haul it up to Cedarpoint. It was disgusting. We went to a African Safari the next day instead.
Wow, I was just thinking about this particular family vacation incident last week. I guess I always do when I see a Plymouth Horizon.
Anyway…In 1980, my mom, step dad, sister and I packed up the 4-door Plymouth Horizon and drove from Des Moines to Big Lake Minnesota ( a mere 4 hour drive). My step dad had rented a nice cabin for a week wanting to spend some quality time with us kids. At the time I was 14 and my sister was 11 years old. Needless to say after 5 days of fishing and family stuff, us kids got really, really bored. SO…somehow I received permission from said step dad to take the Horizon ALONE for a drive around the lake. heh heh… believe or not, I got that thing up to 110 mph on several occasions, and almost killed my sis and I probably 110 times.
So 3 hours of my Ass-baggery ending up jacking up the engine to the point of being non-repairable. I remember my step dad only being able to do at most 40 mph on the way home, so a 4 hour drive, ended up being an 8 hour drive…but the stops to refill the oil added an extra 3 hours also.
I actually played the innocent, and he never suspected a thing. Damn I was good…
OMG, please tell me some of that story is in your book.
What the hell was your parents tinking taking you and Bill anywhere togeter. I guess they didn’t know some of the stuff you got into in dunbar, and MB is just wide open asking for trouble!!
LOVE it!!
The only place my parents ever went on vacation was to my aunt’s house in Ohio, except for one year we went to Michigan, Canada, DC and Virginia Beach. The only trouble I got into was smoking a foot long souvenir cigar in the car when it was up on the rack in a gas station in DC.
I watched about 10 minutes of the Lost finale; slept through the other 140 minutes. It finally dawned on me that they were all dead the whole time. Bah. That’s what we thought after season one.
We used to drive from Ohio to Cali every three years. One of those years I was 12, I guess and I kept trying to screw three of my cousins. (girls). They were 15,17, and 19 and beauties. Long legs, dark hair, beautiful eyes and Italian (without the moustache) and gorgeous. And …they seemed to make over cousin ME and how glad they were to see me again. And the bathing suits and the things I was looking at?! I’m not sure if I even had a basic idea of the whole process of playing ‘hide the weenie’ but I wanted to do something. I had one older male cousin and soon there was no more swimming with the girls and it was me and Danny going to Giant’s games at Candlestick.
I highly recommend catching a ball game with t-storm if you get the chance. Thanks for going!!
In 2002 I bought the ELO Zoom album. It was new at the time and my young mind had never heard of this strange “ELO”. I have since begun to celebrate their entire library.
Even though i later came to find out that there is hardly any ELO left over in Zoom, itis still my favorite, maybe since it was the first; ya know.
I never was able to take friends on vacation. But I did bring vacation to my friends. Just before I was getting ready to ship out to basic, my “family” left me alone for the weekend.
I am not going to go very into it, but I aquired litres of booze for the open bar, and even notified the local drug dealer to be there for some easy sales.
Lots of mistakes were made that day, by many people.
Dammit, how did I end up on the commentators board again?
Amigos,
I still have a vynal copy of ELO’s first album which was issued as “No Answer”, but has been reissued as Electric Light Orchestra. Recorded in 1971. I think it’s their best work.
Gretchen,
Mike Nesmith could also play a couple of instruments. The First National Band sounded good. They didn’t have to WhiteOut many of their lyrics.
Jeff,
The ELO leadin to the vacation stories was old school. Really nice writing. It reminds me how I became habituated to this site long ago.
warmest wishes…
jtb
i am so sunburnt and was hungover monday morn.
after the indians game (thanks jeff in denver in cleveland) i got hammered at the winking lizard, met my second tammie of the day, then took a cab to a bar called @mosphere which was more of a hip hop bar to wait for my girlfriend to get off work.
there will be a few smoking fish sightings coming.
all in all a good weekend.
did go on vacation with a friend one time. i doubt there are any good stories.
I love ELO too, although they are from where I live so I’m probably biased!
“21st Century Man” is one of my favourite songs of all time, a masterpiece in melancholy.
Yeah, I know how to spell vinyl at 0500. I guess I don’t know how to spell it at 1955. Pain in the ass, it is. I called them records for so long. Why should we name something for what it’s made of, rather than what it does?
Thankfully, my old friend Polly Vinyl reminds me from time to time that names are just names. We love the things we love for what they are. (Robert Frost said that).
jtb
t-storm, Let me get this straight…You work and live in OK City, OK, maintain a crash pad in Newport, KY and have a girlfriend in Cleveland? You don’t get bored often I bet.
We went on so few family vacations I’m sure I never brought a friend.
Jeff-Check your inbox of your WVSR e-mail account, the roll call tally is finally there.
dogberryjr-My friends and I drank a lot of beer on the back county roads here in Ohio awaiting our 19th birthdays. We also racked up a lot of miles, as well as beers consumed, how many barrels of oil do you think underage males burn in a given year driving aimlessly around?
Brittney, there is no way you will be as assnumbingly boring as my parents, they started out all Doobie Brothers & Janis Joplin, then went all Urban Cowboy around 1980. It only got worse after that.
some months it gets very expensive.
A little late…but..
ELO…Wow!! I have heard them since Hector was a pup. Gosh, that brings back so many memories. And, like Jeff, it was at the beach in the 80’s. I remember my best friend from highschool and I were in Avalon, NJ and met two guys from Ohio. They had this albumn. “Mr. Blue Sky” was one of my favorites tunes! Thanks for the memory, Jeff!