Taps

November 22, 2006 at 1:59 am (Uncategorized)

I hate getting columns spiked. Oh sure, sometimes it’s warranted, like the time I wrote about what a worthless rag the Twin Cities Times is. Or the time I accused Lewiston city leaders of covering up the depth of the crack problem. This time though, it was a simple, reflective piece on the transitional phase of a young person’s life marked by beer in a barrel. The newspaper’s argument was that the column encourages underage drinking. My argument was that young people don’t give a crap what I write. They’re sure as hell not going to base their life decisions on it. If they were that impressionable, I’d write to area young people and have them send me their parents credit cards.

I lost this battle, though, and it’s probably just sour grapes that compels me to post the column here. If I’d known it was going to get shot down, I would have put dirty words in it. But anyway. You’ve already suffered through an abridged version of this. Just looking for a ruling here: too drinker friendly for a family newspaper?

Ah, the keg party. The topic of a recent editorial was kegs and gravel pits and man, it sent me spinning back into memories as hazy and unreliable as beer foam. The Pits in Waterville is where most of my adolescent unraveling began and I regret nothing. Almost nothing.
It was consistently two bucks a head regardless of whether you had a 15-gallon keg or a pony keg. The ubiquitous red cups fit so right in the hand whether you were a delicate flower or a manly man. There was usually some professional partier who had his own taps and that would save a few bucks. Of course, the guy with the taps drank free and if those taps disappeared, the entire party crowd would chip in to buy him another.
The keg party crowds were not without a code of decency.
There were almost never fights at these bashes on the beer-soaked sand of the gravel pit. What’s to fight about when you’re a young person surrounded by friends and in possession of a cup that never runs dry?
Conversely, we could count on the appearance of police. They would come with all the stealth of hippos carrying flashlights that bounced and bobbed their way to the circle of drinkers. Even those who were into their ninth or 10th cup of Natural Light had enough time to plot an escape.
The biggest guy at the party wrestled the keg with him as he ran and God bless that fellow. His name was Tony, or Gil, or Amos and he protected that barrel like a worker bee protecting the queen.
The cops would stick with the hunt for a while, but you got the feeling they were in it for amusement more than for matters of law and order. And there’s nothing like hunkering down with a cup full of beer while flashlights bob through the woods in search of the hooligans with their trail of beer foam. If you managed to hunker with a pretty lass you’d had your eye on, your night was made.
You were also blessed if you ended up in the same place as the keg when the farce of a foot chase was over. Usually, it was a squalid apartment or the garage at a nearby home and a smaller, more intimate party would continue. Drinking foamy beer into morning was guaranteed. Passionate conversation about lofty topics would increase with each new cup of beer drawn from the keg.
“So. You guys believe in God, or what?”
“I’ll tell you what I believe happens when we die …”
“I know this guy, right? And his mother died at home, right? Well, she had this rocking chair and a year after she died this guy heard it creaking in the middle of the night …”
“If there is a God, why do you think there’s, like, war and stuff?”
To the untrained ear, it sounds like nothing more than scattered thoughts fueled by barley and hops. But it’s the sound of ideologies and beliefs being developed in the expanding minds of young people. They learn plenty in the classroom, sure. But they absorb new information and form their own personalities and belief systems only when uninhibited and surrounded by the friends they trust.
It was odd how a keg party was advertised in a manner that spread across legions of young people but never reached the ears of intrusive adults. It was strictly word-of-mouth but it was as effective as any radio spot or television commercial.
“Keg at Scum Field tonight. Two bucks a head.”
“Right. Heard that in homeroom. Tony’s got a tap.”
And so, for the first time in our lives, we were experiencing tribal organization, fiscal responsibility and collective thought without the input of the adults who heretofore had guided us. We didn’t know it then, but the keg party was our first giant step from adolescence toward adulthood. And had we known it, we wouldn’t have given a damn.
And I know right now you’re shaking your head and getting out your poison pen to fire off a scathing letter to the editor. You think it’s reckless to reflect with fondness on the many joys of a party based around a barrel of beer.
The fact is, I could rail loudly on the evils of liquor in this space and it would not change the attitude of one young person. Remember all those educational presentations you sat through in high school? Remember how you went to a keg party at Sandy Bottom that very night?
Socializing goes on all of your life, but it will never be the same as those warm, summer nights out in the sand pits. Out there, you discovered your independence and formed, in an inexpressible way, a set of priorities that would shape your life. At the same time, you left the innocence of childhood soaking into the dirt below your feet.
The keg party is a passage from one place to another. It’s a topic as heady as any poorly poured cup of beer.
If I thought it could be done, I’d gather up the old crowd and try to get them out to the pits behind the armory. I went there recently and it looks a lot the same. I’ll bet Tony still has his taps, too.
But the magic of the keg party is lost on adults. They are tied up in adult things and too rigid in their opinions. The talk would turn to politics, the economy, the war in Iraq.
By and large, grownups suck the quiescent joy out of a party because they no longer possess flexibility and the sense of hedonistic whimsy. Like the beer left at the bottom of the barrel, the splendor of the keg party, for adults, has gone flat.