Because humor is funnier when you know it's true.
Underage drinking
I should start by saying that this account should be taken as a cautionary tale, and not as braggadocio, though I definitely used these stories for bragging rights back in the day.
As 18-year olds growing up in New Jersey, we were not allowed to drink – legally that is – as the NJ drinking age was/is 21 years. But there was this neighboring state, known as New York, that allowed drinking at the tender age of 18 years. What a state! What a country!
Back in those days, there were many drinking establishments cleverly located in New York along its border with northern New Jersey. Very convenient. Unfortunately, the access to most of those watering holes was via winding, somewhat treacherous, country roads. But when you’re young and desperate (and okay, stupid), scary roads were not a deterrent, and taken more as a challenge.
For us, the two prime target areas were Suffern and Greenwood Lake. Suffern was more of a semi-suburban town, with a couple of bars – the Tavern and the Joker – that were primarily for drinking only. There was no food to speak of, no entertainment, save some juke boxes, and just your basic watering holes for getting loaded.
But the other area, Greenwood Lake, was a veritable candy land for Jersey’s underage drinkers. “The Lake” offered the full spectrum from your father’s blue collar pub, to quasi-strip clubs with semi-nude go-go dancers, to Vegas-like clubs with live entertainment, cool drinks, and hot women. How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm once they’ve seen gay Paree! One bar even had a slide from the top floor to the basement for your juvenile delight. You just had to make sure you used it earlier in the evening before the vomiting began.
Some of the more notable establishments had names like Mother’s, Long Pond Inn, The Sterling, and Le Pussycat. A less popular bar up on the hill away from the hoppin’ lakefront, was the Point Lookout. It tried to make up for its poor location by not only providing an attractive go-go dancer, but offered an alcoholic’s dream – all you can drink for $4.00! Unbelievable even in the late 1960’s, this was the deal of deals. Sure they served rotgut bar brands that were sure to tear up you innards, but at those prices, the alcohol poisoning was almost worth it.
We took turns on weekends, volunteering to be designated drivers. Unfortunately back then, the DD label had more to do with offering your car and gas to do the driving, and less to do with staying sober.
On one particular night, one of our DD’s borrowed his father’s large Ford to comfortably fit us all. He got particularly hammered, and as fate would have it, a NY policeman pulled us over on our way back to NJ. When asked for his license and registration, our drunk driver unsuccessfully looked for the registration in the car’s trunk, panicked and called his father at 2am. Meanwhile, I found it in a slightly more plausible location, the glove compartment. After producing legitimate documents, and acting as sober as possible, the officer let us go with an admonishment to “drive carefully.”
Later our DD claimed his driving had been perfectly fine and didn’t know why the officer had pulled him over. I reminded him that he had been driving a car with a Jersey license plate at 2am in the NY’s drinking oasis. And oh by the way, the puke streams on both sides of the car might have been another tipoff.
Most kids were lucky to get home alive on those serpentine roads, and sadly some didn’t. In those days, it seemed drunk young men were more considered to be going through a male rite of passage, than breaking the law. Thankfully, police have since gotten much tougher on DUI’s. At 18, 21, or any age, it’s pretty stupid to drive drunk. End of lecture.
-Rick M.