random thoughts on a hot day

The b/w photo to the left was taken when I was 3 or4. There are a number of pictures that my mom took of me that were intended to show that I was my fathers daughter. It's a little hard to see, but I'm wearing my dad's cap and I've got one of his 1/2 chewed cigars in my mouth. There are a number of photos buried somewhere in my storage unit of me around this age again with dad's cigar, and some where I am "passed out" with a jug of booze under my arm. In those photos I'm generally not actually passed out, not because I wasn't drinking, but because dad didn't give me booze around mom.

I was daddy's little helper. Whenever he went into town to 'get parts' (read into that; get booze), I went along with him. The day would consist frequent stops to get beer or schnapps out of the back of the pickup on the 40+ mile drive to town. Once we arrived in town, dad would spend an our or two at each bar in town (for you aspiring alcoholics, the trick is to only stay a few hours at each bar, because if you stay too long at one, people will assume you are an alcoholic). Back in those days, you could still get away with bringing kids into the bar, so that is where I spent my time. In some bars they'd even let him get away with ordering a "shot of rye for both of us". I wasn't much of a rye drinker til my late teens though, however, I was quite fond of beer foam and Tom & Jerrys (I was a little sugar addict too, doncha know).

Many of my fellow alcoholics speak of their first drink...they can remember every detail...their first drink was a life changing event. For me, I was pretty muchly pre-verbal for my first drink, and even my first drunk, but I can remember the first time I cognitively associated drinking with feeling better. I was 7 and I was overwhelmed with an oppressive feeling like the entire world was going to cave in on me and swallow me up into a ball of chaos, and I didn't know of anyway to make it better except to get drunk. Now, on any other day I could have stumbled across 3 different dad-stashes. The first place I looked was in a snow drift about 20 feet away from where that b/w photo was taken, but no luck that day. Next was the quancet which usually held several stashes, but sadly, strike two. Next, there was always behind the seat of the pickup, strike 3.

I guess dad was having a bad day too.