When I was a kid the laws of the land were quirky when they pertained to booze. Each state had, and probably still has, a series of unique statutes pertaining to the purchasing and consumption of alcoholic beverages.
In the kinder, gentler times before political correctness, before MADD, before alcoholism was a disease, we had ways to deal with our underage drinking.
I know that later on, when I was legal, I went around the US discovering new laws wherever I went. In D.C. you couldn’t move your drink from bar to table yourself. In Texas, at that time, at least in Dallas, you could only drink in private clubs but you could join those clubs for a dollar! In South Carolina, I think, you could only get bar drinks in small, miniature bottles, and the bartender would give you your bottle, your glass, ice, etc. and you had to open the bottle yourself.
Every place was different, but the laws that mattered to me were the ones that set the drinking age.
In Maryland, where I lived, the drinking age was 21, but in D.C. the drinking age, for beer and wine was 18 with 21 for hard liquor. New York was 18 for everything. I had only two destinations as a kid, D.C. and New York. New York was 200 miles away so it was a much less visited spot. D.C. was 40 miles, an hour down the highway, so it was number one on my list!
My best memories (the safest) were actually double dating and going to Washington for pizza and wine or beer in a restaurant at 14th and H Streets, an area no longer fashionable. In the day the restaurant, The Vineyard, had a downstairs with dining and dancing. That sounds today like ancient history I know, but it was great fun. (My son has just added this: 14th & H again is quite fashionable, so you have lived through several cycles of urban renewal, which by the way, was a very positive term that has been replaced by the pejorative "gentrification.")
OK, now the bad stuff. The need for the booze, the 18 year old liquor law, the 16 year old ability to pass for 18 and a highway full of drunk guys returning home regularly is more of a big scary thought! I don’t know how we all lived!
I did, as best as this foggy mind can remember, see and hear George Shearing, Charlie Byrd, the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra and a few other top jazz performers as well as some great DC local folk acts. I could not have had these opportunities in Baltimore.
I also remember going with my friend Jerry Rubin to D.C., drinking and returning home on a Lambretta Motor Scooter at night, on a highway, late in the year, freezing and shaking as we were passed by trucks and busses at 65 miles an hour!
When I was older, past 18, I could pass for 21 and often found local bars that would have me. The experiences in a small country music bar in downtown Baltimore are vivid, even though the name of the bar has escaped me. We went to see Earl Taylor and the Stoney Mountain Boys, a legendary Bluegrass act that played there. I had the opportunity to witness a real bar fight with chairs broken over people and a run out of side door to freedom.
In all my drinking and driving experiences, it never seemed like a bad thing, it was perceived (at that time, not now) as more of a sport. Today, I recognize the danger we faced but never realized.
We were young and immortal, of course. Our warrantees had not run out.
In the kinder, gentler times before political correctness, before MADD, before alcoholism was a disease, we had ways to deal with our underage drinking.
I know that later on, when I was legal, I went around the US discovering new laws wherever I went. In D.C. you couldn’t move your drink from bar to table yourself. In Texas, at that time, at least in Dallas, you could only drink in private clubs but you could join those clubs for a dollar! In South Carolina, I think, you could only get bar drinks in small, miniature bottles, and the bartender would give you your bottle, your glass, ice, etc. and you had to open the bottle yourself.
Every place was different, but the laws that mattered to me were the ones that set the drinking age.
In Maryland, where I lived, the drinking age was 21, but in D.C. the drinking age, for beer and wine was 18 with 21 for hard liquor. New York was 18 for everything. I had only two destinations as a kid, D.C. and New York. New York was 200 miles away so it was a much less visited spot. D.C. was 40 miles, an hour down the highway, so it was number one on my list!
My best memories (the safest) were actually double dating and going to Washington for pizza and wine or beer in a restaurant at 14th and H Streets, an area no longer fashionable. In the day the restaurant, The Vineyard, had a downstairs with dining and dancing. That sounds today like ancient history I know, but it was great fun. (My son has just added this: 14th & H again is quite fashionable, so you have lived through several cycles of urban renewal, which by the way, was a very positive term that has been replaced by the pejorative "gentrification.")
OK, now the bad stuff. The need for the booze, the 18 year old liquor law, the 16 year old ability to pass for 18 and a highway full of drunk guys returning home regularly is more of a big scary thought! I don’t know how we all lived!
I did, as best as this foggy mind can remember, see and hear George Shearing, Charlie Byrd, the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra and a few other top jazz performers as well as some great DC local folk acts. I could not have had these opportunities in Baltimore.
I also remember going with my friend Jerry Rubin to D.C., drinking and returning home on a Lambretta Motor Scooter at night, on a highway, late in the year, freezing and shaking as we were passed by trucks and busses at 65 miles an hour!
When I was older, past 18, I could pass for 21 and often found local bars that would have me. The experiences in a small country music bar in downtown Baltimore are vivid, even though the name of the bar has escaped me. We went to see Earl Taylor and the Stoney Mountain Boys, a legendary Bluegrass act that played there. I had the opportunity to witness a real bar fight with chairs broken over people and a run out of side door to freedom.
In all my drinking and driving experiences, it never seemed like a bad thing, it was perceived (at that time, not now) as more of a sport. Today, I recognize the danger we faced but never realized.
We were young and immortal, of course. Our warrantees had not run out.
On this side of the border, we all went to Quebec to do our drinking--if I had a nickel for each of my friends' stories about a near-death-experience in a bar in Hull or Montreal, I'd be a rich woman.
ReplyDeleteWas that THEE Jerry Rubin? YIP?!
ReplyDeleteRebar's Wife