"Just Memories of Some Silly Crap I Did"

Went by the local flea market today and found a couple of old albums on reel-to-reel: "Iron Butterfly: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", and "Vanilla Fudge: Renaissance". Both of which contain some great music from the 1960's, and I even still have the Iron Butterfly one on l.p., but I don't have anything to actually play reels on. I just thought they were sorta neat, still there in their original boxes and for a buck each; felt like I had to preserve that bit of music history, I suppose.

Actually, music recorded on reel-to-reel is some of the best I've ever heard. There was this buddy I had back in the late 1960's named Mike Grady. Mike had been in The Army and stationed over in Germany where he picked up this really fine r-to-r system. he could put on a reel of recorded music and it'd last around 4 hours, then reverse itself to play yet another 4 hours recorded on the backside of the tape. Whenever he had a party he'd simply put on one of these long-playing reels and never have to fool with changing the music. Which, of course, leads into a funny story.

One I'll tell on myself about a time I think I probably got my worst "drunk".

When I was around 17 or 18, I went to one of Mike's party's. Naturally there was an abundance of alcholic beverages around, and that night I believe I must have drank a little of everything available: beer, apple jack, tequilla, wine...you name it, I had at least a "taste" of it.

Well, when the party was over and time for me to get home, I was pretty plastered. Way too much to even consider driving. But a buddy of mine who just lived down my street was there and he offered to drive me home in my car and let his brother take his car on home, then he'd just walk on down the street to where he lived.

I had yet to move from my folk's house in those days. Or, maybe I had already moved out once, then moved back in again for a while, but anyway, to get to my room in the house, I had to walk through my folk's bedroom.

I recall going into the house as quiet as a mouse, turning off lights and sorta walking by pure instinct to where my bedroom door was...but I was off by a couple of feet and stumbled into my folk's dresser. Sitting upon this dresser was an antique oil lamp (which I still own to this day), that that night, I knocked off! Miraculously, in the dark, I CAUGHT BOTH PIECES! I quickly and as quietly as possible put the lamp back together "by feel", and sat it back upon the dresser.

I was doing just fine...until I said "Excuse Me!"....to the lamp.

I then went into my bedroom, feel across my bed and was oblivious to anything until at least 11 AM the next day.

I'll have to say that my folks were pretty cool about the whole thing. They'd never seen me drunk before and honestly, I wasn't a "big partier" like a lot of my friends. In fact, the only thing I can recall being said was my dad remarking that I'd had "a little to drink the night before".

I would say it's best that they never knew how much!