Church Festival

I was 15 and serving beer at my churches summer festival.  I don’t know if I was supposed to be serving beer, I’d imagine I was not.  But I jumped on a tap and started pouring.  Turns out I was pretty good at it.  Even though it was highly illegal and most likely, a sin of some sort; neither fact mattered much to me.

In a short amount of time a few of my friends noticed I was manning a tap.  Needless to say they gravitated to me and started asking for beer.  I carded them, much to their surprise.  Father Mike patted me on the back and said “Good job son”… 

Soon enough the adults trusted me to act alone and serve beer to the adults, only.

 

So, my ruse worked.

Carlos came up and said, “Stapes, how the hell did they allow you to serve beer??”

I said, “beats the hell out of me, want a beer?”  Then I told him to go buy a coke and dump it out and then I would fill his cup with beer.  Which of course he did and he told PC and his brother.

So all 3 of them show up and I gave them beer.  They sat around and talked, I poured more beer.  We talked and more beer.  We got to talking about scoring some pot, which sounded like a great idea.  Then we drank more beer.

After a few too many beers we started to get sloppy and Father Jim busted me.  “Todd, what the hell are you doing?  Who allowed you to serve beer??  Get out from behind the bar!  I’m glad to see your friends had more common sense and stuck to soda!  Good job boys”…

After I got kicked out it seemed only natural that we would follow thru on getting some grass.  PC (which stood for Petrified Chicken, because that’s what he looked like) and his brother Chris had just bought a car.  It was a Dautsun B10, a crummy little thing without plates.  Chris just got it the day before, for free!  All it needed was a new alternator.  He also installed a bitchin (his phrase) stereo.

So we all hopped in the little car, Carlos and I jumped in the back.  Chris drove like a freakin maniac; he might have been a little drunk.  We got onto Sherman Blvd, which was just up the street from my church.  He got that little car up to about 70mph, which was about 40 mph too fast. 

Led Zeppelin Dazed and Confused was on the stereo as he weaved in and out of traffic dangerously.  I was frightened in the back seat and looking all over for the seatbelt, but could not find one.  Carlos was giving me the “we are gonna die” look, which I could not agree with more.

We passed a carload of nuns, no doubt coming from the same festival we had just left.  I made brief eye contact with one of the sisters as we blazed by at 80 mph.  I swear she made the sign of the cross as we passed. 

We flew over the bridge near the Army reserves base at about 90 mph.  There was a slight curve coming up that I knew we would not make alive unless we slowed down.

As Dazed and Confused blared at a distorted volume I shouted, “Dude you are going way too fast for the curve!!”  To which Chris shouted back, “Man, I am in complete control of …” 

We hit the curb doing about 80 mph and the car was in the air.  Led Zeppelin was still playing and we were weightless in the little car.  The front fender hit the ground and we spun into the air again, Zeppelin still blared.  We hit again on the roof and kept twirling, rolling over and over again. 

We finally came to rest against a light pole in the park.  The car was uneasily rocking on the driver’s side, Led Zeppelin was playing through muffled and crumpled speakers “befff Dazzfffed un coommmfffduss soooo Loonff…”  The tires were still spinning and everything smelled like gas. 

Carlos was hanging from the “oh shit” handle and let go, slamming into me as I lay crumpled against the door.  We laid there for a second, as the chaos and car parts settled around us.  Aside from the Zeppelin, everything was quiet…. 

Carlos was the first to say anything and he shouted “WOW MAN!!  THAT WAS JUST LIKE TJ HOOKER!!!”  Above the din of destruction… 

We climbed out of the broken windows as the car load of nuns came running up.  Off in the distance we could see a small troop of Army reservists running towards the wreck as well.  Chris attempted to push the crumpled mess to the ground, thinking he could drive away.  That was not an option, of course. 

As we stood there hearing sirens approaching Chris and PC turned to us and said, “We are going to split man, I don’t have a drivers license and the car isn’t registered.” I was like, “dude, you can’t split!  You just wrecked a car!” He looked at me and said, “It’s not my car!”  As they walked away. 

I looked at Los and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here!” and we slowly backed away from the chaos of the wreck.  Oddly enough no one seemed to notice as we quietly walked away and blended into the trees of the park.

We heard a kid yelling, “There they go!” as the squad car pulled up.  But I’m pretty sure they could not see us.

The worst injury of the accident was my ankle was cut by the springs of the drivers seat.  This was surprising considering that the car looked like a crushed beer can.  There was a little blood and I was able to get the bleeding to stop pretty quickly.

So Carlos and I walked back to the church festival and tried to pick up Catholic school girls by telling them “we just got into a car accident, look at my ankle”.  Which actually worked, I think her name was Pam.  It was an entertaining day…