As I child, I learned that cars ran on gasoline from the Flying A or Texaco stations, and that the driver ran on beer or vodka from Pioneer Market or House of Spirits next door to the market.
Dad made sure to get out every last drop from his amber colored quart bottles of Acme Beer by “squeezing” them over his glass. It used to make my brother and me giggle with the absurdity of the joke. The giggles belied our terror of the unexpected behavior that Dad’s drinking brought to our lives.
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While cleaning out my mother’s files this week, I came across an article she’d copied from the L.A. Herald Examiner in 1986 about how the effect on kids, from growing up in an alcoholic home, was nearly identical to the effects on American Soldiers returning home from fighting in the Viet Nam War. I guess mom suspected that running the house on alcohol wasn’t such a keen idea after all. Maybe she felt remorse for exposing us to the violence attendant to the unpredictability of growing up in a house full of spirits, so she saved that article to shine a light of hope or apology from the grave?
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I fared better than my brother. The genetic pre-disposition to become alcoholic was passed to both of us, but the tide was stronger at his strip of beach, and rip currents pulled him under at an early age. He says he started drinking when he was ten, in 1952.
I was four that year and still had my front teeth. They got knocked out when I was five. (Funny how we calibrate years by where we lived, how we looked, what we were wearing, birth of siblings, etc.)
Dad had nothing to do with my teeth going missing. They had to be removed because they got hurt when they hit a coffee table at Danny’s house, when we were jumping on his couch. Ether was the drug of choice, in 1953. I must have felt very “ethereal” and maybe a bit like cornflakes “thereal,” when the teeth got pulled. It was very shortly after that event that the song, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth...” became so popular. I related to it strongly!
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I’m not sure what I run best on, but I seem to prefer sustained loving and high octane chocolate.
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