College Town: Blue Laws
Meta note (feel free to skip)
If I had the money I'd buy a domain and better blogging software so that I could just give each bit a tag or two and it would be filed away in series so that all one would have to do is click on the "college town" link to hear about my Macomb experiences or "Master Plan (to take over the world)" to read about how the global conquest is working out. We have Blogger and the Google enhanced search bar. In the future I will name all related pieces in this way so that all one has do is type "college town" and the search results should do the rest. I also plan stories about the steel warehouse I worked in perhaps a nostalgia trip back to the high school days and of course my teen years working at summer camp. This format will allow me (and other members of Shockingly Provincial, when their lives become less busy(ok only the Shy really. I don't forsee Joe cool writing anymore)) to continue to rant about the days events and drag out a bunch of tales from the vault. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
End Meta note (story follows)
When I was living in Macomb, the county was dry on Sunday. That is to stay that blue laws were not only on the books about the sale of alcohol on Sunday, but they were (and still are as far as I am aware) enforced. Bars and liquor stores were closed on Sundays and the alcohol sections of the gas stations and supermarkets were blocked off. Somehow this makes the Sabbath more holy. Or did it.
Restaurants got around the blue law restrictions. They started serving alcohol as early as 11:00 and were generally packed the day through. While there might be a few college students taking advantage of this situation, these places were primarily filled with all the people who worked in bars around town. On occasion we would get off work at four in the morning on a Saturday and if the mood hit us right we would stay up all night moving from the bar to a house and on to the restaurant . If you ever see a car load of rowdy bar workers pulling into your parking lot on a Sunday morning you might think " Oh (scatalogical explicative deleted)" but you might also think "I'm going to make a (scatalogical explicative deleted) load of money today." because, fools that we were, we would go armed with wads of singles and fives and maybe even a couple twenties after a good Saturday night, and of course we tipped generously because we worked in the same industry and were or were in the process of becoming very, very drunk.
The college town is a small town and everybody in the service industry knew everybody else. If I saw my Sunday waitress or bartender come into my bar on a day off, that person would be treated like royalty. A few free drinks. A shot when they want. If they are out with a date you make sure the date knows that they are getting the special treatment because your Sunday server has the hookup. This would buy me and mine a few extra hours to sit at the bar while the Sunday people cleaned up and closed down. This kind of back alley barter went on every place in town but more about it some other time.
Moving on we come to the less well connected and the lower order (the drop-outs, pot heads, junkies etc). Not everyone could afford to sit in the restaurants on Sunday and if they weren't students (and even some of them) they would need to get their Sunday party on. This brings me to the other major issue with the blue laws. It promoted drunk driving.
The county was dry on Sunday but if you were willing to drive far enough (thirty or forty minutes) you could always find booze. This was best done with a local. Students would want to take major highways as they are the only direct routes to the outlying townships that they know. When nine times out of ten you are in a car where at least one of the people with you probably has a hitter box on em you want to avoid the main roads. The state troopers are on patrol and they love to stop a car packed full with idiots were clothes that proudly proclaim stoner lifestyle love.
The best method of course would be to buy extra booze during the week and save some for Sunday. This kind of foresight never works out. The party goes on until every last beer is gone and you just can't stomach another hit of off the three dollar bottle of whiskey or vodka. (The mix has long since been used up). Living in the shack on the tracks someone would invariably show up on a Sunday morning full of life because he or she had missed the previous nights activities and insist it was time to road trip a couple towns over to pick up a couple, three, four cases of beer.
Taking the back country roads we could stop at a bar have a couple starter cocktails and then head over to the liquor depot and get a couple cases of whatever was on sale. Miller high life is often on sale. Pabst Blue Ribbon is often on sale. Keystone light is often on sale. No Becks or Guinness for us. It was about quantity not quality. When I was a much younger man and had college loan money to spend I would say life is to short to drink cheap beer. I got over that.
Of course there was also a little bit of variety to mix things up on occasion. Sometimes if it turned out that after work in the bar there was mostly a bunch of muscle bound idiots (these were the dance club guys) left they would make the decision to head on to the strip club a couple towns over. From what I've heard the strip club is /was populated with some the oldest, most used up looking strippers, in the history of the profession, to ever grace the pole. I always passed on these trips as the idea didn't appeal to me. The muscle guys bragged on the exploit until the next big trip. I just don't understand.
Some Sundays we would head out to the Iowa riverboat casinos. I'm not a big fan. I didn't have much money to start out with and always walked away from the casino poor. The only good thing about these trips is that before the boat we would hit an olive garden or a lone star steak house. I would make the trip just for the chance to get a better quality of food.
And that was a Sabbath in college town. We were pretty religious in that we did the same things from week to week in a ritualized fashion. I just can't see calling the taco joint that I spent so many Sundays planted on a bar stool in, a church.
More Laters.
If I had the money I'd buy a domain and better blogging software so that I could just give each bit a tag or two and it would be filed away in series so that all one would have to do is click on the "college town" link to hear about my Macomb experiences or "Master Plan (to take over the world)" to read about how the global conquest is working out. We have Blogger and the Google enhanced search bar. In the future I will name all related pieces in this way so that all one has do is type "college town" and the search results should do the rest. I also plan stories about the steel warehouse I worked in perhaps a nostalgia trip back to the high school days and of course my teen years working at summer camp. This format will allow me (and other members of Shockingly Provincial, when their lives become less busy(ok only the Shy really. I don't forsee Joe cool writing anymore)) to continue to rant about the days events and drag out a bunch of tales from the vault. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
End Meta note (story follows)
When I was living in Macomb, the county was dry on Sunday. That is to stay that blue laws were not only on the books about the sale of alcohol on Sunday, but they were (and still are as far as I am aware) enforced. Bars and liquor stores were closed on Sundays and the alcohol sections of the gas stations and supermarkets were blocked off. Somehow this makes the Sabbath more holy. Or did it.
Restaurants got around the blue law restrictions. They started serving alcohol as early as 11:00 and were generally packed the day through. While there might be a few college students taking advantage of this situation, these places were primarily filled with all the people who worked in bars around town. On occasion we would get off work at four in the morning on a Saturday and if the mood hit us right we would stay up all night moving from the bar to a house and on to the restaurant . If you ever see a car load of rowdy bar workers pulling into your parking lot on a Sunday morning you might think " Oh (scatalogical explicative deleted)" but you might also think "I'm going to make a (scatalogical explicative deleted) load of money today." because, fools that we were, we would go armed with wads of singles and fives and maybe even a couple twenties after a good Saturday night, and of course we tipped generously because we worked in the same industry and were or were in the process of becoming very, very drunk.
The college town is a small town and everybody in the service industry knew everybody else. If I saw my Sunday waitress or bartender come into my bar on a day off, that person would be treated like royalty. A few free drinks. A shot when they want. If they are out with a date you make sure the date knows that they are getting the special treatment because your Sunday server has the hookup. This would buy me and mine a few extra hours to sit at the bar while the Sunday people cleaned up and closed down. This kind of back alley barter went on every place in town but more about it some other time.
Moving on we come to the less well connected and the lower order (the drop-outs, pot heads, junkies etc). Not everyone could afford to sit in the restaurants on Sunday and if they weren't students (and even some of them) they would need to get their Sunday party on. This brings me to the other major issue with the blue laws. It promoted drunk driving.
The county was dry on Sunday but if you were willing to drive far enough (thirty or forty minutes) you could always find booze. This was best done with a local. Students would want to take major highways as they are the only direct routes to the outlying townships that they know. When nine times out of ten you are in a car where at least one of the people with you probably has a hitter box on em you want to avoid the main roads. The state troopers are on patrol and they love to stop a car packed full with idiots were clothes that proudly proclaim stoner lifestyle love.
The best method of course would be to buy extra booze during the week and save some for Sunday. This kind of foresight never works out. The party goes on until every last beer is gone and you just can't stomach another hit of off the three dollar bottle of whiskey or vodka. (The mix has long since been used up). Living in the shack on the tracks someone would invariably show up on a Sunday morning full of life because he or she had missed the previous nights activities and insist it was time to road trip a couple towns over to pick up a couple, three, four cases of beer.
Taking the back country roads we could stop at a bar have a couple starter cocktails and then head over to the liquor depot and get a couple cases of whatever was on sale. Miller high life is often on sale. Pabst Blue Ribbon is often on sale. Keystone light is often on sale. No Becks or Guinness for us. It was about quantity not quality. When I was a much younger man and had college loan money to spend I would say life is to short to drink cheap beer. I got over that.
Of course there was also a little bit of variety to mix things up on occasion. Sometimes if it turned out that after work in the bar there was mostly a bunch of muscle bound idiots (these were the dance club guys) left they would make the decision to head on to the strip club a couple towns over. From what I've heard the strip club is /was populated with some the oldest, most used up looking strippers, in the history of the profession, to ever grace the pole. I always passed on these trips as the idea didn't appeal to me. The muscle guys bragged on the exploit until the next big trip. I just don't understand.
Some Sundays we would head out to the Iowa riverboat casinos. I'm not a big fan. I didn't have much money to start out with and always walked away from the casino poor. The only good thing about these trips is that before the boat we would hit an olive garden or a lone star steak house. I would make the trip just for the chance to get a better quality of food.
And that was a Sabbath in college town. We were pretty religious in that we did the same things from week to week in a ritualized fashion. I just can't see calling the taco joint that I spent so many Sundays planted on a bar stool in, a church.
More Laters.
posted by Rich Rosenthal II at 2:11 AM
2 Comments:
You're cracking me up! My roommates and I used to try to stock up so we could have a weekend party, but then we'd go out during the week, spend all our money getting drunk, come home and drink all the booze we'd stocked up for the weekend. The next few days we'd all call our parents, hock things, or - my favorite - call the credit card company for a limit increase, so we could go out on the weekend.
Also, my cousin and his buddies are like the muscles guys, they're always about the stip club, after a few beers at any other bar, they start talking about the strip club. I don't see the big deal about strippers.
The big deal about strippers is that they are nekkid! Nekkid womens! Woo!
Ok my macho male bit for the year is done.
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