There were/will be a lot of these, so don’t feel bad if you miss one, by the way.

Anyway, fully thirty years ago, I was a pup in high school, hanging out with classmates and getting into trouble, and one of the kinds of trouble involved spending time at a John’s farm. His parents, polish immigrants, had purchased the farm with intent to farm it, but found it was much more profitable (not to say far less work) to rent out, and sit back and collect the rent. Consequently, they found themselves with a tolerable income and a lot of time on their hands, so they packed up in their Econoline and travelled the country a lot.

This left a large, empty farmouse and their two kids minding the store, so to speak. The elder, John, was my classmate, the younger a teenaged girl, clearly the most mature mind in the family.

Weekends, we’d wander over to the farm, stopping at Cook lounge to pick up some package booze, and supplanting it with homegrown wine, skimmed liquor cabinet booty, and paraquat laced ditch dope.

In those days, I was a lot younger, more flexible, and definitly more stupid. On one occasion, I climbed up the silo next to the barn, abrading my hands on the rusted bands holding the precast concrete blocks in place, and jumped off into a big round bale of hay. Which was far less soft to land on than to lay in, I discovered. That same weekend saw me attempt impossible conjugal relations with a 1967 Plymouth barracuda, and break every vertical board in the barn siding with my head. (it was an old dilapidated structure, the siding mostly rotten already) I just stood there in front of the sunbaked, rough pine, and whacked it with my head till it broke. My forehead still bears some of those scars.
Anyway: night would fall, and we’d retire indoors to drink, smoke dope, and try to imagine what John’s younger sister would look like in five years. At the time, Michelob was the beer of Choice, and there is a brief 8mm movie somewhere showing me standing in front of a fireplace sucking back a Mick, and throwing the bottle into the fireplace. I look around, and notice a bottle on the fireplace, roughly the same shape, and pull out my scout knife to get the top off. Before anyone could stop me, I’d uncapped the Lava lamp, and taken a long swig. Afterwards, i try to walk away, and noticing it’s still plugged in, I speak. According to the younger sister, the only sober attendee of the bash, I said “cool. Eletric beer” and chugged the balance.

I have no memory of this, and but for a few feet of 8mm film could deny that it happened.

No, ‘m NOT gonna tell you what it tasted like. Drink your own. Besides, the only memory I have of tasting it was on it’s way back out. It was blue.