humor

Stupid Alcohol One-Liners Found on the Internet

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1. Alcohol should be served in Capri Sun pouches. When you can’t get the straw in the hole you’ve had enough.
2. Alcohol doesn’t turn people into somebody they’re not. It just makes them forget to hide that part of themselves.
3. Life and beer are very similar …..chill for best results.
4. I’m not an alcoholic. Alcoholics need a drink, but I already have one.
5. Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.
6. If you drink too much alcohol you are an alcoholic. If you drink too much Fanta, does that make you Fantastic?
7. I don’t recycle because it makes me look like a huge alcoholic to my garbage man.
8. I’m not an alcoholic alcoholics go to meetings, I’m a drunk, we go to parties.
9. Alcohol doesn’t make you fat… it makes you Lean…… on tables, chairs & random people.
10. My body is not a temple…..it’s a distillery with legs.
11. No! for the last time stop asking if i am drunk. I am not drunk! Who would name their kid drunk?
12. You say alcoholic, I’ll say alcohol enthusiast.
13. Take me drunk I’m home.
14. Anyone who says that alcohol is a depressant isn’t drinking enough of it.
15. When life hands you lemons, find someone with tequila and salt!
16. Dont drink and drive, it will spill everywhere
17. A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
18. I’ve been told I’ve got A.D.H.D (Alcohol Drinking and Hangover Disorder)
19. It’s true alcohol kills people, but how many are born because of it?
20. Alcohol is never the answer… But it does make you forget the question.
21 c A man’s got to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another drink.
22. My doctor told me to watch my drinking, so now I drink in front of a mirror.
23. “Relationship” has 12 letters but then again so does “Time For Shots”
24. Confucious says, “Man who drink beer all day, have Wet Dreams all night”.

Aunt Ader’s Place Part Eleven

 

evil-womanTrouble had its own plan and always lurked in the shadows waiting to jump me.  The simplest thing could go wrong.  There was just no way to anticipate what was down the road.  Billy and Troy were out of pocket when Uncle Parnell was ready to leave.  Daddy sent me and Sue to look for them.  Some neighbor boys told us they had seen them close to the railroad track.  Daddy had told us many times not to let him catch us on the railroad track.  We played close to it all the time, but out of consideration to him, were very careful not to let him catch us.  The kids went along to help.  Near the railroad, we found Billy’s sling shot.  I knew he would never have abandoned it.  This was serious!!!!   One kid slipped under the fence and scrambled up into one of the railcars, pulling the other up after him.  We heard them exclaiming, “Golleeeee…would you look at this!

pig-graffiti

Realizing they had probably found the boys’ bodies, we forgot about our warning and flew after them into the car.  There weren’t any bodies, but we stared in disbelief at graffiti-covered plywood walls. Most were in pencil, but many were brilliantly colored.  Monsters, naked women, effervescent angels, lurid devils, chimeric animals, faces of both beauty and evil, and, beatific pictures of Jesus looked back at us. Creativity in the form of poems also adorned the walls.

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Since I had only a smattering of suspicion of the meaning of sex, I found the artwork and poetry edifying, though I suspected its use would land me in the doghouse at home.  Caught up in this rare cultural bonanza, we forgot about Billy and Troy.  Anyway, I was pretty sure they would turn up, but this was going to be my only chance at an educational opportunity of this magnitude.  Apparently, there are a lot of creative people riding the rails.  I certainly never saw anything like this at Sunday School.

As we continued our inspection, we heard a low rumble and felt the car jolt.  Holy Cow!!!   We jumped out and raced for the house as the train squealed and jerked into movement.  It was nearly dark! Caught up in all we’d seen, we’d completely lost track of time.  We sped for the house, knowing this was the most heinous crime we’d ever committed.  We were almost out of breath, when we met Billy and Troy.  “Boy are y’all in trouble.  Everybody’s out looking for you.”

I felt sick.  We went in slow and sad, the walk of doom.  Sure enough, everyone was furious.  The truth had beaten us home.  Froggy and Jamey had told them they left us  in the boxcars.  Daddy was furious!!!!  We’d done exactly what he had always warned us against and terrified them all.  Mother thought we had either fallen under the train or the hobos had gotten us!!!  Furiously, Daddy sent me to my room to ponder the evil I had done while Uncle Parnell grabbed Sue and Troy up and took off.  I didn’t dare open my door.  No one mentioned supper, especially not me.  Wild animals couldn’t have dragged me out of that room.  I rethought the whole incident over and over, re-scripting it in my mind, the way it should have been.  It wasn’t my fault.  I was only looking for Billy and Troy.  They could have been bleeding to death in the boxcar.  In my mind, I saved them countless times, risking my life as I jumped from the moving railroad car at the last second.  I imagined lots of different versions, none of them including me doing that I’d been forbidden to do.  No matter how hard I worked at it, I just couldn’t make it come out right.  I never realized it when I went to sleep, but my trouble was the first thing I remembered when I woke up.

I was surprised when Mother called me to get ready for school and eat breakfast, justlike  every other morning.  How could the day start out normally when I was in so much trouble?  I hated oatmeal, but ate it without complaint hoping to get on Mother’s good side.  She never said a word about my trouble and I certainly didn’t bring it up.  I went to school with a sense of dread, where it was business as usual, except I made sure to behave and avoid a note from the teacher.  I didn’t know if things could get any worse, but I certainly didn’t want to find out.

I hated to see the school day end.  I didn’t want to go home.  Daddy never forgot to take care of business when we’d gotten in trouble.  He wasn’t home when I got off the bus, a brief reprieve.  I did my homework, ate dinner, and was watching TV with the other kids when I heard Daddy’s truck.  I went to my room and sat in the gloom, waiting for the worst.  He and Mother laughed and talked just like they always did.  Finally, my door opened.  I shut my eyes and pretended to be asleep, but Daddy wasn’t fooled. He started his lecture the way he always did.

“We need to have a talk,” even though I wasn’t going to be doing much of the talking.  “You scared us all.  You did just what I told you not to do.  Something terrible could have happened.  Your mother thought either hobos got you or you were stuck on the train.”  He droned on and on like he always did, while I waited for my punishment.  I got in trouble all the time and knew the routine. I zoned out pretty soon, hearing just “rumble, rumble, rumble” like he was turning a crank.

I was careful to listen for the pause, when he always asked me why I did whatever it was I had done.  I had learned to stick with, “I don’t know” until he tired of asking because, I wasn’t  about to tell the truth: “I didn’t think I’d get caught” (“Smart aleck”- deeper trouble), or “I thought  such and such” (“That’s what you get for thinking”) or “I didn’t think so and so” (“If you’re not going to think you might as well be alike on both ends.”) Daddy’s lectures always went on forever until he got down to business, something involving a switch or belt.  I never did decide which I preferred, despite extensive research.  Unbelievably, this time ended differently.  Because my cousin Sue was involved, Daddy had gone by to talk to Uncle Parnell on the way home.

Uncle Parnell’s children didn’t enjoy the consistent discipline our family did.  Sue was a talented liar, and got off the hook with an incredible tale which Uncle Parnell pretended to believe.  Daddy was disgusted, and for some illogical reason, for which I was truly grateful, Daddy reasoned that even though I had disobeyed, at least I hadn’t lied the way Sue had.  I got credit for being the better person and was spared.  Good old Sue!!!

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 9

A visit to Aunt Julie’s house was wild times.  There were no rules, except one.  She needed her afternoon nap, so we had to lie down from one to three till she was done.  I thought two hours of enforced bed time would kill me, but we spent the time wisely, playing semi-quietly, tussling with puppies, kittens, turtles, frogs, or  lizards,  giggling, and building forts.  Eventually we’d get around to jumping on the bed and she’d be forced to quiet us with an expletive, a reward in itself since I never got to hear cursing or filthy talk at home.

Aunt Julie’s kids were feral children, with no fashion concerns, styling about in their underwear, or step-ins, as Aunt Julie called them. I embraced this style and would have been a faithful follower, had Mother not shown up and stuck her big nose in my business.

“Don’t you EVER pull that stunt again. (EVER was spoken through clenched teeth for emphasis.). You KNOW better”

i always hated knowing better.  “But Aunt Julie….”  She cut me off.

“You heard me.  Get in the house and get some clothes on right now.”  The breeze on my flat chest was just a memory now.  Sadly, I went for clothes.  Mother was such a downer.

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 7

Aunt Julie looked like a wild woman, but I adored her.  She cackled like a hen when she laughed with her crinkly black hair standing up like a nest of stinging worms.  I saw her comb it once or twice, but it didn’t make a bit of difference.  Fortunately, she was easy going and didn’t seem bothered by it.  She was a skinny, little woman with a big stomach and pipe-stem legs.  The legs of her pants bloused out and never touched her.  Had I not known her since I was born, I’d have thought she was a witch.  She had a filthy mouth, peppering her language with forbidden words.  I learned early on Mother would warm my britches should I repeat anything coming out of Aunt Julie’s mouth.

One of Aunt Julie’s phrases always hooked me.  She often prefaced statements with, “as the old saying goes.”  I loved old sayings, so I was all ears waiting for what came next.  Sadly more often than not, she finished with something perfectly mundane like, “I  have to make a pan of biscuits.”  I never failed to be disappointed, feeling she had not followed through on her promise.  “Fortunately, from time to time, she finished up with a thrilling phrase like, “If I don’t get to the bathroom soon I’m gonna s___ my drawers.”  Her use of forbidden language always brightened days moderated by Mother’s prudish language.  We weren’t even allowed to say pee pee or doo doo.  It’s rough being a gee gee-er in a world of kids who doo doo or donkey.  I don’t think Mother cared how she marked us.  More on Aunt Julie later.

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 6

img_1578Aunt Ader’s Place held more thrills than Disneyland.  Much of my large extended family gathered on a beautiful Halloween.  The women packed the hysterical children into a caravan of cars and made the rounds of a dozen houses scattered about the country neighborhood.  The twenty-odd children piling fighting their way out of cars must have looked like Attila and his ferocious Huns as we descended on the locals.  The drivers quickly gave up the battle and headed back as sugar-fired kids battled for Tootsie Rolls in the back seats.

Ensuring the madness continued, just as evening fell, we returned to a roaring bonfire in Aunt Ader’s front yard.  That was all it took to turn us into wild people, rabid in hot pursuit of each other.  Eventually, we wore down and settled in to roast hot dogs and marshmallows  on the open fire.  Many were burned beyond redemption, but some were even eaten.

As the evening cooled and the fire burned low and we sat on logs around the fire the stories started, first the old favorites like Bloody Bones that no one really believed.  As we quieted and the little ones drifted off in their parents arms, the older folks started with “true” scary stories: the time a mad-dog tried to drag Great-Aunt Bessie’s baby  from a pallet in the yard, the time so long ago when a hog devoured some cousin’s neighbor’s kid who fell into the pen.  Cousin Ray told a a man seeking shelter from the night who was turned away from several houses because he seemed suspicious but was eventually was taken in.  The next day the family’s mutilated bodies were found and murderous man never seen again. They later learned, the same thing had happened somewhere else. The beauty of all these terrible stories was that they all happened long ago to perfectly expendable people we’d never met, so we were able to enjoy them guilt-free with no emotional investment except a tingle of horror.

Finally, the delicious tales ended and we piled into cars for a dreamless ride home, to the sound of Mother and Daddy talking low in the front seat.  Of course, Mother assured us those stories were just tall-tales, not to be believed, but that didn’t hender my pleasure at all.

Your Girdle’s Wet

Phyllis and I had been at it all weekend. It was her first weekend home from college in 1965 and she was on top of Daddy’s good list. Daddy liked his kids a lot better when he hadn’t seen us lately, so Phyllis was basking in the warmth of his rare approval. Since I still lived at home and was a smart-aleck, I was definitely was not on his good list. His ingratiating treatment really grated on my nerves, since he was gracious by proxy, ordering me to, “Do this for Phyllis. Get Phyllis some more cake. Stop what you’re doing and kiss Phyllis’s behind again.” Of course, Phyllis was soaking all this up since only two weeks before, she had been one of the peons who had to “Get so and so some more cake, Kiss so and so’s behind.”

We took a few hours off to sleep and let Phyllis’s behind get a little rest from all that kissing and picked up the fight where we left off. Sunday morning found me in a particularly bad mood knowing Phyllis would switch into her “sweet and precious persona” as soon as she stepped into the sanctuary, while “mean Phyllis ” recharged to be unleashed on me as soon as we got home. For good measure, I insulted her again just before going in to take a shower. She pounded on the bathroom door, demanding the girdle she had hung to dry on a towel rod. I got out of the tub, stripped the girdle from the rod, and flung it out the bathroom door, and yelled at her, “Here’s your darned old girdle! It’s wet anyway!”

This was all it took. Phyllis flew to Mother, squalling so hard, she couldn’t even tell Mother anything except how horrible I had been to her. Mother finally calmed her enough to find out what was wrong, and Phyllis blubbered out, “She said my girdle’s wet. Boo hoo hoo!”

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 3

warhome2Uncle Dunc and Aunt Lucille had a houseful of kids.  Sometimes we were lucky enough that Bert, the eldest would drop in our games, raising our rough play to fever pitch.  Naturally, he tired of us soon, leaving us deflated when he went about the business.  I was always leery of the two big girls, since they seemed smart-aleck.  Ava, the oldest, was pretty with a bouncy, blonde ponytail.  Though I overheard Mother whispering she was trashy for mowing in her swimsuit out by the road, I thought it made perfect sense and worked well for her since she married a guy with a greasy ducktail and had a baby before her seventeenth birthday.  I kept a watch on both girls to see if they sprouted leg hair like Aunt Lucille.

swimsuitI believe Ava saw herself like this.

Prudy, the next girl was skinny with a lot of pimples and wore those pointy bras common to the late fifties and early sixties.  Her swimsuit kind of wrinkled over her skinny behind so she didn’t mow out by the street.  In fact, she worked as a carhop down at the drive-in for a while after dropping out of high school before hooking Toxie, who worked at the filling station and always smelled like oil.  Red rags always hung out of his back pocket.  I never had any contact with Toxie except when he yelled at me from under the hood of an old car suspended from a tree branch in Uncle Dunc’s front yard when I hit a ball into it.  I never really liked him much after that.

Carolyn was just a couple of years ahead of me, but must have been easier to control than her big sisters.  Her long hair, parted down the middle was braided so tightly it pulled her eyes back and hung in tight, thin braids almost to her waist.  The other girls must have rebelled against their mother in their dress and behavior, but at ten or so, mousy little Carolyn suffered under Aunt Lucille’s bossiness, since she only wore dresses and had to attend fundamentalist church services along with her mother and younger twin brothers.  They were wild little boys a couple of years younger than I, still peed their pants a good bit, and didn’t seem worried by Aunt Lucille at all.  Carolyn said she wouldn’t be allowed to have boyfriends, drop out of school, or cut her hair till she was sixteen.  I was only six or seven at the time, but that seemed very unfair to me.

I made a point to stay out of Aunt Lucille’s way since she yelled at kids a lot and was fond of using a switch on Carolyn and the little boys when she could catch them.  I certainly never asked to spend the night like I did at Cousin Sue’s and Cousin Cathy’s house.  We only visited Uncle Dunc for a year or so, until he moved off Aunt Ader’s Place, which incidentally was very near Daddy’s favorite brother.  I heard later he gave up drinking after a car-wreck left him paralyzed and he had no one to depend on but Aunt Lucille.

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 2

dog-trotHouse much like Aunt Ader’s

Not understanding the nature of inebriation, I assumed Uncle Dunc, a great name for a drunk, was just playful when he laughed at all our jokes and fell off the high porch chasing us. No one bothered to explain for years that Dunc was a drunk. He was one of my mawmaw’s youngest siblings, younger than some of her own children.  Her mother, Cynthia, was a scandal, having been twice divorced before she married John Miller.  John only lasted long enough to father a daughter and twin boys in quick succession before dying of lead poisoning.  He was shot in a bar fight, he was saved the heartbreak of his fickle wife’s abandonment.  Presumably, his son Duncan was the bad apple that didn’t fall too far from either parental tree. 

Aunt Lucille demeanor didn’t match Uncle Dunc’s.  She was a dour, strait-laced woman not given to smiling, though it’s not likely she had much to smile about, considering her life with Dunc.  She looked a lot like Smokey the Bear in a dress. I have never seen a woman more hirsute before or since.  Her unibrow and mustache dominated her round face and coarse, black hair, resembling pubic hair covered her legs, though I had no knowledge of such a thing at the time. After a visit there, Daddy always warned against us girls against shaving our legs or we’d end up with legs like Lucille.  I was far too young at the time to be aware of leg-shaving anyway, but I certainly didn’t want Smokey the Bear legs like that.

Most of the time when we visited Uncle Dunc’s place, many other Aunts, Uncles, and cousins were there.  After dark, a propane lantern hanging on the big front porch cast a cone of light and dozens of cousins chased each other hysterically in and out of the shadows while parents visited in the cool of the front porch.  Mamas rocked babies and put them down to sleep on pallets just inside the house where they could be heard if they squeaked.  Sometimes there would be home-made vanilla, peach, or banana ice-cream made in hand-cranked freezers.  The evening usually ended when exhausted kids were called in for ice-cream, but on the best nights, the old folks launched into deliciously terrifying ghost stories, made all the better because the teller believed them.

cousinsA few of my forty first cousins.

To be continued

Video

Sauce for the Goose

noteIt’s been more than fifty years and my brother Bill still has nose out of joint over a little goose bite that he suffered way back in first grade.  Hard to imagine holding a grudge against poultry that long.  Billy was Daddy’s shadow, making every step he made.  Though I was normally with them, somehow I missed this day.  Had I not discovered a note  very much like this he wrote to his friend, Donnie, I’d never have learned of his misfortune.

On this particular day, Daddy and Uncle Dunc swapped lies over coffee on the high front porch of Uncle Dunc’s place while Billy played with the twins, Fats and Little Boy on the hard-packed clay underneath. Despite the descriptive names, I couldn’t tell the boys apart.  The decrepit, unpainted house might have been sound at some point in the distant past, but it wouldn’t have withstood much of a windstorm now.  The corners perched crazily on stacked piles of iron-ore rocks, oxidizing to dust in the weather.  Chickens, ducks, and geese roamed freely over the yard and under the porch.  We were warned to watch for snakes in the shadows under the porch, but a far greater danger was the ever-present foulness left behind by the numerous fowl pursuing insects into the shade.

Daddy called out to Billy, “Son, go get me a pack of Camels off the dash of my truck.”

Unhappily for Billy, as he trotted toward the truck on his mission, he made an attractive target for an aggressive gander patrolling the yard.  Honking, the monster pursued Billy, chomping down on the backside of his jeans.  As poor Billy fled, the goose hung on tightly and flogged him roundly.  Of course, Daddy rescued him, but it must have seemed like it took forever, as the kids and adults all around him laughed at his misery.   He came home sporting a big bruise and a lifelong dislike of geese.