Return from the holiday break.

Hope everyone's holiday was safe and sober if you are trying.

Having left off with my earliest exposure to alcohol and giving a great deal of philosophical thought to the possibility of this being a route to my addictions as an adult. Needless to say, I drew the conclusion that a couple beers with the neighbors during the summer was unlikely the cause. In full disclosure, I honestly don’t think I ever even finished a full beer.

Growing up I had very little fears and a great deal of freedom. Even at a very young age, I was very often left to my own devices. People now joke about Gen-X and how we grew up and these are now scenarios that influencers produce videos about. I would leave the house early and return at dark. During that span we might have stopped home for a sandwich then back at it roaming all over Falconer. We had our bikes and pocketknives. If we were close to a friend’s house, we might stop in there for a snack. I remember a day out on our bikes that we had been riding in the gravel pit behind Falconer Park we decided to stop in at my friend Bill’s house. Bill’s house was basically connected to the park, so it was close. Bill had an older brother that I cannot confirm exists, but someone owned the contents of his room. Neither Bill’s mom nor brother were home, so Bill wanted to show off his cool older brother’s stuff. His room was in the attic and poorly lit with beads on the windows and a bunch of the velvet glow in the dark pieces of art. Aside from those, he had tons of nude women posters that covered the walls.

Bill, I guess, figured we would be impressed because this was of course off limits. Walking around the room he had to unearth the hidden contraband that his brother had. In a cubby of the roofline, not quite a closet he pulled out two large cardboard boxes that were loaded with porn magazines. the other item he pulled out was a tackle box. Well in the tackle box were about ten Pabst Blue Ribbon beers. Keep in mind this is Pabst, in a tackle box, stored in the cubby of an attic. Let me tell you, this attic was HOT. Worried his mom or brother may come home soon, we grabbed a half-dozen of the magazines and an equal amount of the Pabst and rocketed back to the pit in the park. Back in the pit we had an area in the woods along the creek that we had cleared out and made into a makeshift fort. We had a single aluminum folding lawn chair with the green and yellow basket weave seating. We also had a bunch of shale rocks that we stacked up as a small bench. Now with our new stash, we were scared to do anything with either. Finally, after daring each other to drink one, Bill went first and I followed, Erik did not try one. Pretending to like the most god-awful tasting crap you could imagine was quite a challenge. Hey, adults love this fucking shit! It’s gotta be good! Well, we both finished our volcanic warm Pabst then stashed the rest in the creek with a little dam of rocks around them. After about ten minutes both of us started feeling like shit. I wonder why! Not even being noon yet and feeling like shit with a gut full of hot Pabst, it was time to head home and take a nap. I wouldn’t have any issues because the only person at the house was Marie, our housekeeper.

The next day was filled with bike riding and a pit stop to check out the magazines. we had brought some bags with us to put them in, in case it rained. Neither of us had even a mild interest in having a beer after the day before events. We did check to make sure it was still there, and nobody had discovered our stash. It was still perfectly intact just as we had left it. I’m pretty sure this was a Friday, and I knew I had to be home a bit earlier because we were going to the Ironstone for dinner. On the way back through the park we stopped to drop Bill off at his house. Erik and I stayed outside for a bit just practicing wheelies to see who could ride one the longest. Instantly we heard a screaming match coming from Bill’s house. His brother had discovered he was missing some of his Friday night stash. Bill adamantly denied these accusations. Bill’s mom had just pulled in the driveway and entered the house and the screaming stopped. Well, his brother couldn’t make an argument to his mom that someone stole the stuff he wasn’t supposed to have in the first place. We dodged a bullet on that one, but I was always a little concerned his brother was going to beat us up. He always seemed a bit off his rocker.

We eventually did pull those beers out of the creek to finish off. It was right after a terrifying event where we were certain we were going to be murdered. Deep in the back of Falconer Park was a little shanty that we always wondered what it was for. This is the day we found out the dark mystery. The shanty sat across from a swimming hole that we would go to when it was hot out. We had never seen anyone come or go but would see different things outside of it. It had a small fire pit right in front of it that looked well used. This day was really hot later in the day, if I had to guess now, I’d say probably around 4 or 5pm. We all decided it was too hot to ride around and decided to go swimming at the swimming hole by the shanty. We were enjoying the cool water on the scorching day. The swimming hole had a very large cement pipe that the water supply flowed through from further up the creek. The pipe drained on to extremely large flat rocks that had been worn smooth from the continuous flow of water, forming the perfect water slide into the large pool of water. Several hours of distracted swimming passed and we weren’t overly concern about the time, but the sun was getting lower in the sky. Hearing a crack in the woods further off from behind the shanty, we all took notice and became silent with all of our own made-up fables of what the shanty was for. We all made our way up the rocks and into the large pipe to get a good spying position. From around the back corner of the shanty we began to see something moving but couldn’t make out what it was. As the figure became exposed from the backside of the rickety structure, it was as if everything was in slow motion and there it was, our fears and fables brought to reality in an instant. The figure was an older man with a longer beard and hair that reached past his shoulders. He was dressed way to warm for the temp of the day and his clothing was dirty and worn heavily. He was wearing a pair or torn up overalls with a flannel shirt over those. He had a large pair of rubber boots that came up to his knees. Bill began to freak out exposing our position and alerting the man to our presence. He began to walk towards the hillside the shanty was positioned on along the water shouting at us. He yelled for us to get out of there and leave him alone. What the hell are you kids doing here? What do you want?!!! In complete fear we jumped on our bikes a screamed off as fast as we could. We went directly back to our stash spot and hid our bikes in the brush line of the trail. Today we all grabbed a beer out of the cool creek water. We figured this was the perfect solution because you always heard grownups exclaim, I’ve had a rough day, I could really use a drink. So of course this was our solution. This beer went down a lot smoother than the lava beer the day we stole it from the attic. Did it taste good? Not really but hey it will help with our rough day, right?

Well, I guess you could say that it was my first exposure to stress induced drinking. Would this become a trigger for alcohol abuse later in my life? I highly doubt that a single incident while I was roughly 10 years old could influence behaviors much later in life. On this journey, you will discover along side of me, the possibilities of the source if there is any single source of my journey into alcohol abuse.

Please stick around for more stories of a Gen X childhood that led to a person that became to hate himself and finally found a way back, overcoming what many thought to be impossible odds.