When I was the commander of the 508th Maintenance Detachment at Fort Lewis, Washington, my parents and my brother Craig and his wife came out to visit me during the last week of August 1986. But the fact was that my parents never had any intention of visiting me. They had taken one look at me and they had passed judgment. Due to the fact that I had tanned really dark brown during a recent deployment to Central America. Apparently I was too dark to be related to them. But I know that sometimes my dark tan even made my wife feel a little bit uncomfortable around me. Whenever that happened, I would just show her my extremely white ass and say, “Look, you know that I’m white underneath the hood. Sooner or later, this tan will wear off.” It seemed for a time that my parents were having a helluva good time smoking and joking and drinking and gambling with my aunt Pearl and uncle Leo. Or were they? Perhaps, the honeymoon was finally coming to an end? I thought it might be. I thought I started to see cracks in the cheap veneer of friendship between my aunt Pearl and my old man. They were sniping at each other like old dogs at feeding time, more and more as each day went by. Had my old man worn out his welcome at my aunt Pearl’s house? Let’s examine the facts. My old man was as cheap as a two-dollar steak. He was so cheap that he squeaked like a rusty old windmill in a windstorm. And this was a guy that you could never convince to take his wallet out of his pocket for anything. There was mold on the cash that he did have in his wallet because it had been in there so damn long. Now picture this. You have your wallet in one of the hip pockets of your pants. It doesn’t matter which. Left or right. I happen to know that it was the left hip pocket in my old man’s case. I knew that question was coming. How do I know that? That is too easy. My old man was left-handed. He took that wallet out of his pocket with his left hand. Thus, he put the wallet into his left hip pocket. He did the same thing with his car keys. Except, he put the car keys in his left front pocket. The only difference was that the car keys saw the light of day a little bit more often than that poor wallet did. My old man wrote the book on being cheap. Anyway, you have this wallet in your hip pocket, and the wallet never gets taken out of the hip pocket. Meanwhile, it’s hotter than bloody blue blazes outside and you are sitting down in a vinyl chair inside with no air conditioning. As a result, you are sweating your ass off as you sit in that vinyl chair. Your poor wallet is getting soaked with sweat. And so is all that money inside of your wallet. Over time, that money starts to mold because it’s left inside that wallet to rot. That, dear readers, is my old man’s wallet. So, we all know who’s booze was being consumed in mass quantities. If you guessed my aunt Pearl’s booze, you guessed right. Since I cannot honestly swear that I have witnessed my aunt Pearl or my uncle Leo eat anything whenever they went on an alcohol consumption binge, I’m not really sure what in the hell they were doing for food while my parents were visiting them. Maybe they were just eating air. Although it’s much more likely that they were eating junk food like potato chips and pretzels or shit like that. Hell, I know what Koreans eat when they go on a drinking binge. They eat peanuts and dried squid. Cuz hell, I’m part Korean, the married part. But my Pearl and uncle Leo? Shit. They were like goddamn aliens to me. They sure as hell treated me like a goddamn alien. Well, that’s not entirely true. When he was by himself, Leo was a pretty good guy. But the only time that he was ever by himself was whenever he was at Joe’s Tavern. That was a crying goddamn shame. He and I had lots of talks about our mothers-in-law at Joe’s Tavern. But that’s a different story. Since my parents were too busy destroying the last vestiges of their welcome at my aunt Pearl’s house, my brother Craig and I decided to go to Olympia to take a tour of the Olympia brewery. The Olympia brewery is actually in Tumwater, Washington. Tumwater is a suburb of Olympia. My wife and Craig’s wife were going to go shopping that day, so everything worked out. Craig and I decided to cruise down to the Olympia brewery in my Fiat Spider 2000. When I got up to Highway 512 to head over to Interstate 5 South, I was able to open the Spider up because there were no donut chasers around. Within seconds, I was cruising at 60 miles per hour. Craig looked at me and said, “Man this thing is really zippy.” I replied, “Yeah. That’s what fuel injection and turbocharging do for you.” Before we had left the house, I told my brother to bring a baseball cap and an extra shirt. He thought I was nuts and asked me why. I told him, “See, the first time we go in, we will wear what we got on without hats. When you get to the end of the tour, they only let you drink one or two sample drinks. So, we’ll come outside and change our shirts and put on our hats and go back in for a second tour. That way, we’ll be able to drink some more free drinks at the end.” Craig looked at me and asked, “Have you ever done this before? Cuz it sure sounds like you’ve done this before.” “I may have been on a tour or two before.” “So, you’re telling me that changing your shirt and putting on a hat actually works?” “Trust me. It’ll work like a charm. They can’t remember everybody’s face. Especially if you change your looks a little bit. Cuz they see too many people. You just gotta remember to act normal and blend in. Don’t do anything stupid.” Well, we went through the tour twice and nobody was the wiser. On the way back to my house, we drove the speed limit. I didn’t want to risk getting pulled over by the police. When we got back to my house, I told my brother Craig that if the folks weren’t ready to go up to the world’s fair in the next day or two, then we would go to Seattle to tour the Rainier Brewing Company. All things considered; our brewery binge tour turned out alright without even a hint of an exercise in futility.
*Disclaimer – I as the author and this blog do not condone drinking and driving. While the story above does relate a story of my personal experiences that involved drinking and driving, this is being related for entertainment purposes and not as an approval of driving while intoxicated. Please do not drink and drive. Not just for your own safety but also for the safety of those around you and your loved ones. When you drink be safe and have a form of designated driver, either one that comes out with you or a surrogate like Uber or a taxi.
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