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ONE CAN NOT LIVE ON PEANUT BUTTER AND WINE ALONE: ADVENTURES AT A CANCELED ROCK FESTIVAL copyright 1996-2006 Robb Strycharz part 22 SATURDAY, JULY 11, 1970 continued WHY NO CORKSCREWS ON BOY SCOUT KNIVES? It goes without saying that we got stoned... and of course, started on the wine. As I was busy rolling a joint Greg impatiently began to remove the plastic necking from the bottle only to face the new obstacle. "Anybody got a corkscrew?" I pulled out my old Boy Scout jack knife. It was quite versatile but its makers did not think to include a corkscrew. They obviously assumed kids in their early teens would never grow up. Maybe the adult Scoutmaster editions had corkscrews. So much for the Boy Scout motto about "Being Prepared." How could we not be frustrated? Here Greg and I had made the wine purchase of the year, possibly of the new decade, and there was no way we could even get the damn bottles open. Fuckin’ cork! Done in by our own good taste. Well there was more than one way to skin a cat. Greg began the long process of digging the cork with his knife... piece by piece, fragment by fragment. It was a very cute jackknife that had a mini-fork and spoon. They were worthless, of course, but the fork served well as a roach clip. If everybody else was halfway through their easy-open American pop wines, that was OK. Let them slug their cheap swill. The Chab-lis was on its way! "SHIT!" We turned to see if Greg chopped off a finger with the knife. He hadn't. "The fuckin' cork fell in." He held the bottle up to whatever gave off some light. "Ahhhh shit, man. All the little pieces fell in too." Getting impatient to sample our new wine I urged Greg to hurry up. “Common man, cork won’t kill us. Grandma called it roughage. ” Greg carefully took the first slug, trying to avoid a mouthful of microscopic pieces of cork in the process. His eyes widened and his cheeks puffed out. It was not a good sign. My spirits fell. Obviously only heroic self-control, and a respect for the fact it was wine, was all that prevented Greg from spitting it out. Seconds later he took the painful plunge and swallowed it. "AHHHH. This stuff sucks, bigtime. It tastes like horse piss!!" What the hell was he talking about? It was wine after all. Wine, by definition, was good... though Wild Irish Rose was admittedly borderline. Greg passed the bottle to Davy. His reaction was the same. He could have just as well taken a slug of ammonia. "Oh great... first the apple butter... and you got two bottles of this shit? You guys can drink it." Davy passed the bottle to me in disgust. Indeed, it was unlike any wine I ever conceived could exist. How could something this bitter be derived from sweet ole grapes? But, we were collectively committed to the tune of $2.10. What could we do? Maybe a lobotomy might make it palatable... but I was sure they weren't performing any, free or otherwise, at the Hospital Tent. "Maybe it'd taste better if it were chilled." "Being warm ain't its problem. Face it... it’s irredeemable." Responded Davy. Billy the Brave was next. He took the biggest slug, putting on a show of smug satisfaction as he did. "Ah. That hits the spot." "Bullshit." Said Greg. "Let's see you take another slug." Billy just grinned his Cheshire Cat grin. "Love to, but I'd hate to deprive the masses. Nelson? Tom?" Tom declined, passing a joint to Nelson. Nelson washed down the hit with a slug. “My father makes wine but even in a bad year I never tasted anything this bad.” So, indeed Greg's and my selection would become the stuff of stories. None the less, it was wine and wine was not to be wasted. We'd get through both bottles if it killed us... or just made us puke. Plan B was to hope we'd find our dwarf friend or maybe even the pushy wino from downtown. Next door our neighbors had a large panel truck. As the night went on we absorbed them into our party. It was either one of the Truck People or an aimless Babbling Man who arrived to darken our door. Were we to take him seriously as he recited his laundry list? "Man, am I soooo fuuucked-up. I did three tabs of this Strawberry Fields, man it's really good acid. But then I was rippin" so I had a bottle of wine to bring myself down. I needed to mellow out 'till I peaked. Then I did like 6, 7 hits of speed... like all of them were meth. And pot, shit... I smoked about a dime of this really good Mexican. Hell, think I musta gone through a couple more bottles of wine..." And on he blabbed. Getting a buzz on was a badge of honor. Getting really wasted might earn respect in some circles. But, this guy was just too much of a bullshit artist. We just wished he'd give us a break... then just go away. Maybe it was really Mr. Bahama trying on a new disguise. Same script, different asshole. As our fireside party dragged on, some of us noticed that it was increasingly difficult to even stand. Hell, even it was enough a challenge to just sit up without falling over or rolling into the fire. I knew I was really wasted when my attempts to roll one joint dragged on interminably into a 20-minute project... and even then I never finished. (Bloody hell. What will my apprentices think?) Someone, probably one of the Truck People produced a guitar. Nelson, apparently being the only one of us who both played and could still sit up, began a jam. "Davy, got yer harp?" Out from our Army and Levi Jackets came our harmonicas. We had a couple different keys but that was to be expected. Others joined in by clapping or by banging rocks on wine bottles... (Hey, you with the Horse Piss. You might want to bang just a bit harder.) I can't imagine that the jam sounded anything other than hopelessly pathetic... yet, in such matters we were never really truly objective listeners. Even Davy could shut off his otherwise high expectations of what music should be and unselfconsciously jam. To us, everything we did sounded great. Apparently a number of bystanders agreed. In retrospect I suspect they were just severely musically deprived. Maybe a more accurate gage was that record producers were not standing in line to sign us up. If they had, we might have named ourselves the South Podink Jug and Bottle Band. At some point the Freak who babbled on about his drug consumption talked about getting something to else eat besides drugs, presumably at the Free Kitchen. I could see Davy tense up... the guy was still nursing what was left of Davy's wine. It looked as if Davy was almost ready to go with him and stand guard but the guy somehow remembered and handed the bottle back. At another point one of the Truck People left with their truck. Who knew to where? As the party dragged we, and the remaining Truck People, began to slowly drop like flies. Soon it was my turn. When the few remaining differences between the two states of consciousness merged, I succumbed to sleep's seduction. Davy slept a fitful sleep, all the time wondering if the truck would return in the dead of night and run him over as he slept. I can see the headlines now: Extra, Extra, "Freak Show Invades Small Catskill Town. No Births, One death, One Pathetic Party."
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