Boone’s Farm Apple Wine
Every once in a while, you’ll hear a place referred to as having been a “paradise” for kids, like some of the small towns in Maine that Stephen King writes about; bucolic paradises unless you’re not crazy about homicidal clowns or vampires. My husband grew up in downtown Miami in the nineteen-fifties. Back then, a kid could ride their bike to the beach, fish in the Miami River, and pick fruit right off the trees. The same thing was true for my son-in-law growing up on the big island of Hawaii. Paradise! But I believe that even the most mundane-seeming places can be pretty wonderful to a child depending on the times and that one magical added ingredient, freedom. Waaaay back when I hit my early teens, there was no such thing as a “helicopter” parent. My Dad worked long hours and my Mom managed the house, played golf, and had an active social life. So as long as we kept our grades up and didn’t get into too much trouble, (or get caught!) like most kids those days, we pretty much ran feral.
My brothers and I lived in the New York City exurb of Lake Grove, a small town far out on Long Island. I guess it was called that because it wasn’t far from the fabled Lake Ronkonkoma, the supposedly bottomless lake that was rumored to be a Mafia body dumping site. They eventually dredged the lake and discovered that at its deepest, it was only around seventy-five feet and contained no cement-shoed skeletons, just a bunch of rusted-out cars and beer cans. When we moved out there in nineteen-sixty-eight it was literally the end of the road, or at least the end of the Long Island Expressway. Friends and relatives would be horrified that they had to drive all the way to exit sixty to visit. Back then, Long Island was famous for its ducklings, potatoes, and produce because of the rich, sandy loam and we actually had a cornfield behind our newly minted track home. These days, most of the fields and farms have given way to upscale bedroom communities and vineyards, but I’m happy to say that the giant duck that stood guard over the duckling ranch, is still out in Flanders thanks to the durability of cement and the historical registry!
We moved into our new home about six months before they finished construction on the fabulous, state-of-the-art Smith Haven Mall. It was the first actual indoor mall that I’d ever seen and it quickly became the preferred hangout for us teens. It had a 30 foot tall Alexander Calder mobile as its centerpiece and the whole place was the epitome of nineteen-sixty-eight chic. Our favorite hangout was a terrific “head shop” with the kind of hippy clothes that you just couldn’t get in the department stores. I’m talking about the widest bell-bottoms I’d ever seen; ones that dragged on the floor and got nice and frayed even on a tall girl like me. And they had great psychedelic t-shirts and posters, and those wonderful fringed suede jackets. But the best part about the mall was that it was exactly one mile from my house. Walking (or hitchhiking) distance!
By the time I hit fifteen, my friends and I had begun to “experiment” with alcohol and cannabis. My best friend Cathy and I would get into my teetotalling but very social parents’ liquor cabinet and help ourselves to the clear liquors so as to add water to disguise our pilfering. The first time I tried what we used to call “pot” though, I was with my kind-of-friend Debbie. She took me over to meet her very much older and truly scary biker boyfriend Cat, at a real, bonafide bikers’ lair. I think the group called themselves the Pagans. We sat in a circle on the floor with her boyfriend, and I got my first taste of marijuana. I really liked it; much more so than alcohol. At some point, she left me alone with Cat in my very altered state and I believe it’s the closest I’ve ever come to being raped. He shoved me up against the wall telling me that he was “in love” and she came in and yelled at him just in the nick of time. She later told me that in bikers’ terms, “in love” meant that he wanted to f*ck me. Swell. Anyway, that was my first experience with weed. You’d think that I would have thought twice about repeating the experience but nope, I bought a “lid” (half an ounce) from Debbie and took it home to share with my brother and Cathy.
I rolled all the weed into joints and keeping one out for Cathy and me, taped the rest to the bottom of my dresser drawer. Pretty smart, huh? That afternoon while my Mom was out, Cathy and I got pretty high. We laughed our asses off, watched cartoons, and made a massive bowl of instant chocolate pudding. When we tried but failed to eat it all, we put it in the fridge with a message spelled out in pretzel sticks that said “eat me”! Pretty stupid, huh? We went out and did whatever stoned teenagers did in the suburbs back then (probably walked to the mall!) and then parted company. I came home to a total sh*t storm. After finding the clue we’d left in the refrigerator, my Mom tore my room apart and found the joints. She made my Dad come home from work and believe me, you didn’t want to come home to that kind of Sicilian fury. They sat me down and told me how disappointed and upset they were with me and flushed the weed down the toilet. My Dad was actually crying. He was so afraid that I’d become a drug addict; that stupid Richard Nixon and Harry J. Anslinger (look him up!). You’d think that experience would have straightened me out but nope, it just made me smarter about my hiding places.
Just because we’d discovered weed didn’t mean that we stopped drinking, but at that point, we were hanging out with a slightly older crowd who could get us beer and wine so we started drinking Boone’s Farm Apple Wine. Back in nineteen-seventy, it cost a dollar a bottle. Cathy and I would go to the drive-in with a bottle and two straws, or else one of those giant bottles of beer, but I always preferred the wine. Good Times!!! Now, I can’t even imagine how I ever drank it. You’d think it would be like hard cider, but it wasn’t. It was closer to those horrible malt liquor drinks that are popular now but much sweeter. never the less, it was cheap and until we discovered Mateus, that was our drink of choice.
The hard rock band Grand Funk Railroad was coming to Shea Stadium! It was summer, the tickets were cheap, and we were going no matter what. Somebody, I have no idea who chartered an old school bus and an even older driver to take about forty of us to the show, leaving everyone to party to their heart's content. Who on earth could have possibly agreed to this?! But there we were, Cathy and I, in the back seat with a cooler of Boone’s and sub sandwiches, getting properly drunk.
By the time we reached exit 25, the driver was threatening to turn around and go back, things had gotten that much out of hand. Somebody (not us!) had thrown an empty bottle of beer out the window and struck a car. Thankfully, nobody was hurt. We were in the back, innocently foraging for the sandwiches in our cooler when we realized that the ice had melted and the bread was soaked and mushy. One of us got the bright idea to make snowballs out of them and throw them up to the front of the bus. Definitely not one of my proudest moments, and probably among my bottom 10! We thought we were hilarious (Boone’s Farm!) that is until a teenaged dwarf girl(or a little person to be more politically correct)charged up the aisle yelling “Who’s throwing this shit?!” She was furious and terrifying and more importantly, definitely in the right, and we knew that she could totally take us. We literally slid under the seat in front of us and hid until she left. She’s probably never going to read this story but if she ever does, I am so, so sorry. I was an asshole when I was drunk which is why as an adult, I almost never let myself get that way. Though my husband insists that I’m a really funny, sexy drunk, I’ve flashed my breasts at enough get-togethers to know that funny is totally subjective.
On a side note, the concert was amazing. I think that Black Sabbath was the opening act and maybe a group called Mountain? Or maybe it was Rare Earth. I don’t remember. Boone’s Farm Apple Wine has a way of messing with your memories!
As a coda, Cathy read my story and reminded me that the opening act was a band called Humble Pie. We saw Black Sabbath later that summer. I’m going to encourage her to write about some of our misadventures as she’s always had a much better memory than I!