Beer Truth

I haven’t written for Charleston’s Free Time in quite a while, so I had to ask Eddie who reads his paper. His answer was the same as before. “People who like music and beer.” What a great demographic, I thought. My kind of people. When I think back over my life, especially my teens and young adult years, those were two constants, beer—occasionally supplanted and/or augmented by liquor—and music. Frankly, beer was the predominant factor, starting from the age of 16. Music, as in a movie, a grade C one in this case, was significant as a mood setter, important, but relegated to the background.

My first taste of beer was in 1956 at the Charleston Yacht Club, which, at the time, was located where the MUSC Family Medicine Center is now on Calhoun and Barre Streets. This was not to be confused with the more exclusive Carolina Yacht Club on East Bay Street, where lineage was not only a requirement for membership, but just to set foot on the property, and most of the people there had last names the same as the streets they lived on. The Charleston Yacht Club was more of a workingman’s organization, and although most of the members had one thing in common, boats, all them had another thing in common, drinking.

But what was really great about the place was that you didn’t have to be a member as long as you knew one who was willing to let you be his guest, a task easily accomplished, since these were the days when Charleston was a much smaller place and everybody knew everybody. And what was even greater was that you could buy a pitcher of Bud draught for $1.25. They also had a juke box, so putting those two elements together, the Charleston Yacht Club was the cheapest place you could take a date in Charleston.

For that matter, if you had even a borderline attractive date, you would get in without knowing a member, since the membership was 100% male and the officers, who were generally older, were 150% horny. It became a very satisfactory symbiotic relationship. Young, impecunious dudes like myself could take their dates to a place where they could both get blasted and dance all night for $5, and the lecherous old dudes could sit at the bar and leer, trying to jump-start their booze-soaked libidos.

As a side bar, I always thought it was interesting that the head officer of a yacht club was called the commodore, and I wondered that if a Russian submarine had been detected off the battery in the late 50s, if the commodores of the Charleston and Carolina Yacht clubs had been pressed into rallying their flotsam-bound flotillas to defend the city, would they still have been battle-ready, after first negotiating their heavy seas of alcohol. Actually, since there was no such thing as SUI (sailing under the influence) in those days, these guys were pretty adept at boozing and boating simultaneously, so maybe the citizenry would have been safe, maybe even more than we are now.

Of course there were more times that I hung out at the yacht club without female companionship than the opposite, at times almost becoming an involuntary member of the leering bar perchers society, pruriently evaluating other guy’s dates, who sometimes reminded me of antelope on the Serengeti, as they nervously twitched under the gazes of the starving, ravenous lions. Usually, it was three or four of my friends and myself sitting around a table swilling pitcher after pitcher, listening to Sam Cook, Lloyd Price, Ray Charles, The Platters, and so on, laughing at whomever got crocked the quickest.

My most memorable evening at the yacht club was when four of the give guys at the table decided to deal out our beer induced perception of justice to the fifth guy, who we all agreed was a sleaze bag. Over the years this guy had done thing such as steal money from his ailing grandfather, siphon gas out of cars, and most recently, take money out of a girl’s pocketbook at a house party. Even though during his last caper, he had fallen off a porch, caught his foot in the railing, and was left to hang there for hours by sadistic onlookers, including us, we did not feel sufficient punishment had been rendered.

This was not premeditated by any of us as far as I know, but as soon as this guy, who I’ll call Ronnie to avoid legal action, left the table to go to the men’s room, one of us—it may have been me; I’m not sure it was sort of “Lord of the Flies” environment—said, “Let’s whiz in his beer.” That statement was greeted with an instantaneous and resounding, “All right!” No debate. It was like Bush deciding to attack Iraq. And so, we passed the third filled pitcher around beneath the table, pausing briefly when Larry suggested not to get carried away, since we wanted to make sure it still tasted like beer. A couple of us poured in some from our glasses just in case. Since Ronnie would usually try to drink more of his share of a pitcher anyway, there would be no problem of his insisting that everybody have another glass.

Ronnie came back to the table, drank the rest of the pitcher, while we all sat there nonchalantly, trying not to explode or look at each other. He never said a word, never noticed. Actually, Walker joked that we had discovered a way to drink beer perpetually, if anybody ever got that desperate. Before exacting our grisly penalty, we had all vowed not to ever tell Ronnie. Why? Because we all feared his terrible retribution. We laughed about it later that night, and on through the years, though now, I never see those guys anymore. Ronnie died ten or twelve years ago, unrelated to what we did, I feel sure. I hope. I’ve been thinking about calling Larry, Harold, and Walker, and seeing if they’d like to have some sort of special reunion. Or is this something that’s better left within the walls of the now Family Medicine Center. If only it were e Department of Urology, the story would have an almost perfect ending.

Anybody want to go in on a pitcher?

(Originally published June 2004)