Almost forty years ago now, I heard these lyrics, from a song by the Boomtown Rats:
Bits and pieces I remember slightly, it was a long time ago
We'd have our hot and holy conversations
And solve the problems of the drunken world
This was about 1980; I was 16 most of that year, but it was never an issue to get alcohol in the Wisconsin of that era. And we'd have hot and holy conversations, although sometimes we'd fall short of that. We didn't get drunk all the time, but when alcohol was available, we availed ourselves of it. Sometimes it would be in somebody's basement. We would also rent motel rooms; I remember playing penny ante poker at Bloomer's Motel with some buddies and mixing sloe gin with orange-flavored Mister Misty slush drinks from the Dairy Queen. Class all the way.
Later, I remember going to a party at the Guest House Inn the following year, in which a number of my drunken classmates trashed a hotel room. I remember leaving quickly as the mayhem started to ramp up. I don't believe anyone actually got arrested for the incident, because the person who booked the hotel room paid cash and booked it under the name of Duane Roland, who was the guitar player for Molly Hatchet. The garbled police report that ran in the local paper a few days later claimed Appleton police were looking for a "Milwaukee woman" in connection with the vandalism. Don't think they ever solved that case.
That was 1981. That was an actual crime I witnessed. I was there because the girl I liked at the time was there. She wasn't involved in trashing the hotel room, either. The statute of limitations has long passed. I still wouldn't identify the classmates involved; none of them have gone on to a life of crime, as far as I know, and even though there would be no legal consequences, it wouldn't be good form to rat them out now, now would it? Some of them are now grandparents; most of them have had good lives. I'm sure the insurance at the Guest House Inn paid for the vandalism.
More to come.
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