Ribbon Candy

[Clipper]

Ahh Captain Morgan and Coke. ARghhh Matey! I don't drink, but my friends all seem to think that spiced Jamaican rum is the latest craze. I imagine that the rum in Jamiaca is REALLY good stuff if ya like rum.

I guess rum is a step up from their LAST craze. That was Yagermeister. They used to make horrible faces when they drank it, and when they tried to disguise the fact that they had Yager in their paper cup at the bowling alley, the sickish cough medicine smell was enough to gag ya.

[dgriffin]

Clip, remember the "good ole days?" Yuck! What was it that drove us to drink the most obnoxious liquids made in a vat? Well, actually, we know, but that didn't make the stuff any more palatable.

[stoney]

I didn't say "Jamaican rum", I said "Jamaica mon!"

[Clipper]

Dave,I remind myself daily what the nasty stuff tasted like, and it reminds me daily that I don't need to try it ever again, haha.

I drank mostly Christian Brothers Brandy or Blended Bourbon, and chased it with beer. I thought it to be the drink of more discriminating alcoholics, with a redneck chaser, haha. There was a time when a bartender would set up 3 shots of brandy and three split bottles of Old Vienna when I pulled in the parking lot. I sure don't miss THOSE days.

It is amazing what chemistry can do to a person. It turned my liver to a rock and my life to SHIT. LOL.

Anyone that tells you that straight whiskey, rum, brandy, or Vodka, tastes good is a damned liar or they have long since burned out their last taste bud.

I tried social drinking a couple of times over the years, and didn't get drunk or fall back into old habits, but why tempt fate. It has been a long time now since I drank anything alcoholic, and I realize that there is no sensible reason for a person that has had a drinking problem to try to drink socially.

The miracles of chemistry once more came into play and my liver softened and regenerated while my life regenerated and became good again, all thanks to a diet of Friendly Ice Cream, and Folger's coffee in place of the rotgut, haha. ;D

[stoney]

Good for you, Clip! I wish my father had quit before it was too late...

[Clipper]

Actually Stoney, I was talking to Dave over breakfast at Perkins, when he stopped here in Bristol a couple of years ago, and the subject of drinking and memories of the bars in Utica came up. I told him I was a recovered alcoholic, and that I didn't drink anymore, with the exception of one beer a couple of times a year, with my next door neighbor, while mowing the lawn in the hot weather.

Well, with Dave's well developed power of deduction, he reminded me that if I had a problem with alcohol, and now had a wonderful life, it was kinda dumb to tempt fate even ONCE a year for the sake of having a beer with my neighbor. That was great advice. I always drank bottled water while mowing in the past, so why play with fire.

We keep the travel trailer plugged into the 110 outlet, and I simply keep a case of water in the trailer to quench my thirst during outdoor work, and it keeps the house refrigerator free for other stuff.

I wish your father had quit before it was too late also Stoney. It is an incidious disease, and has taken fathers and husbands at their prime for eons.

I had a good friend from down the valley that had gone through rehab at the same time I did. We were both living at the Y and attending AA meetings regularly. Well, his wife would not let him see his kids, and he got depressed and relapsed. He was so ashamed and discouraged to have gotten drunk again, that he hung himself in the shower room at the YMCA. Very sad. He was only 40. The Y was not a real pleasant place to live, but it was a place to start over, and it only cost $6 a night.
Drinking, desperation, and depression are all very real problems, and the combination has taken way too many lives over the years.

[stoney]

My father actually worked at the YMCA in Utica during the 60s, though he lived in Ilion (where I'm from). What's weird is that I provided an elderly group counseling there at the Y where they met each day in the 80s.