Not even close. All things in moderation. Funny how the meaning of moderation changes with time. Back in the 60s I had a thing for rum. Being a rightous hillbilly and generally lacking in the slightest bit of worldliness, having a thing for rum seemed pretty darn sophisticated. (I grew up just down the road from Irish Malamphy, the local moonshiner.) Since it was the night before graduation, it had been a very busy day. My buddy and I had a contact who worked at the Yelm liquor store, so we had taken orders from our classmates and filled the trunk of his souped up Falcon Sprint with enough booze to inebriate half the class of '67 and their dates - which explains the many bottles of Southern Comfort (a more wretched example of liquor has never been made).

Handling all that cash made me nervous. It was more than I'd paid for my Nasau blue '55 Chevy. Our job was half done, having traded a bunch of money for more booze than I'd ever seen outside of a store - Wild Turkey, Bourbon Supreme, Jack Daniels (the rich kid I guess), Canadian Club, Seagram's 7, Smirnoff and Popov vodka, the previously mentioned S. Comfort, and a few fifths of Bacardi rum. And because I had an important job in this endeavor, a pint of Bacardi cuz I thought I'd have a chance to get an early start on my graduation celebration. After I had a good buzz going, my buddy and I realized we hadn't had dinner and shouldn't show up at home after we'd started drinking. So we went to the Bucoda Tavern, the closest one we could get in, being 18 and all.

We had some yucky pickled tavern food and sandwiches along with a few schooners, when one of the guys at the pool table wanted to pick a fight with me. I have no idea why I might have looked like an easy mark; just my lucky day. I mumbled on about mistaken Identity, since I was growing more confused by the schooner that didn't mix well with rum and pickled sausages and eggs, . . . or the bag of candy I found in the glove box of Denny's car. Somehow it came out that I had to invest a quarter in the table and play a game of pool with this guy. Let the record show that I've probably won less than a half dozen games of pool in my life, but I practically ran the table and won this game, even though I was needing the table in order to stand up at this point. The details are lost to memory, but having fed ourselves we left the tavern, and drove out to the cattails, the local drag racing strip where I heaved my guts out a time or two. Since I was feeling kinda' sick from the bad food, I drank the rest of the pint of rum and fell asleep as far as I know.

Neither Denny nor I remember how it happened. But graduation rehearsal was at 10 AM the next morning. I was there plenty early, having awakened laying on the grass in the "key", a keyhole-shaped grassy area with flowers around the school flag pole that all the school buses and cars drive around in front of the school to drop off the students. Somehow all the under-class students had ridden in and got off the buses without me being aware of it. (We seniors had finished a few days earlier.) Denny's car was parked over in the student parking area. He and a couple classmates picked me up and propped me up in the line just in time to march in and rehearse our high school graduation.

A quick lunch at the Jiffy Cafe and trip home to clean up and we had to get back to school. We parked over near the shop class near the football field and waited and checked off as one classmate after another came by to pick up their order. I had it all down on paper, and we delivered every bottle promised, wished each other well, and joked about how the parking lot was going to be busier than the dance floor at that night's graduation party. I drank only moderately the rest of the day. My plans still went awry over the course of the evening however. In spite of my best planning for graduation, I got too drunk to get laid again that night. And sorta' lost my thing for rum for about 10 years.

So the answer is no, I have never been near that drunk.