Hysterical Journey to Historic Places

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<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Honey



Hell. It wasn’t even good whiskey. Cheap Canadian rye is what it was, but it was free and it tasted just like honey to me. Every drinking man knows that there are some days when you get the honey, and some days when you get the bear.



Bless his kind heart and soul, my Uncle Dick was always generous with his cheap whiskey. Not intending to seem without appreciation for kindness of that sort, I saw it as my duty to revel heartily of that cheap whiskey; for the more of it that I could put away the less of it he had to drink. It was a simple way, as I saw it, to return one act of kindness for another.



It was Christmastime back in 1981 and we were celebrating the Holidays at the Pony Soldier Motel in Kent, WA. Dick and his wife, Carole, were managers of the motel and could not get away so by way of celebration the rest of the family gathered there. Also present were my cousins, Kevin, Lori, and Deanna. In the midst of that warm family gathering Christmas passed us by gently enough. We enjoyed a fine dinner that Carole prepared for the occasion, she was top notch pot-walloper, and we had settled down after the wreckage to play Family Feud. Maddening as that game is it went on for a few hours and the cheap whiskey flowed like a river. Dick and Carole excused themselves early and went to bed as they had to be up early next morning to run the motel. My cousin, Kevin, dropped out about 1030 in order to get freshened up a bit. He had hopes of seducing the desk clerk, Corrine, who got off at 11. He had not been drinking heavily for that reason. Lori and Deanna had not been drinking heavily because they had better sense than me. Sometime around midnight a song came up on the radio that Lori wanted to dance to. It was called <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Give Yourself Your Best Shot” by the singer Pat Benatar. In yet another act of kindness I got up to oblige Lori in the dance. My legs may have been a little wobbly, but that had never impaired my dancing before. My dancing has always been wobbly at best.



<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Bear



The moment that the dance began is the moment that the bear woke up and reared its ugly head. To this day I do not have a clue what that Benatar song is about. Apparently the manly art of boxing has nothing to do with it though. When I went to give myself my best shot it was an uppercut and I missed badly. Momentum from the swing toppled me over sideways and I did a face plant on the corner of the coffee table in the living room. Muhammad Ali could not have hit me harder than that coffee table did. If I hadn’t been drunk it might have hurt me. As it was it just knocked me senseless and gave me a deep gash above my left eyebrow that bled profusely. When I hit floor it shook the whole building. Dick woke up, put on his robe and came out to see what happened. He looked ruefully at its contents, put the cheap whiskey away, and told us all to go to bed. Lori kindly doctored me up as best she could.



Next morning when I got up my left eye was swollen shut and I had the Old Grandad of all serious headaches. Four extra strength aspirin tablets and a shower is what took the edge off and after breakfast I was all set to start in driving back to Cheney. It was about 300 gorgeous miles through a howling blizzard and I had to be at work that night, but didn’t make it. The blizzard had closed down the interstate highway system west of Snoqualmie Pass. A bit to my chagrin, because I was ashamed of myself, I had to return to the motel and wait out the storm. Kevin was still there. He had come over by bus and was planning to return by bus to Spokane on Sunday. It was decided that he would cash in his bus ticket and return with me after the storm let up.



When we finally got underway on Sunday morning I could make out a little crack of daylight through my left eye and some of the throbbing pain had diminished and the trip was okay until we got past Snoqualmie. After that the trip was a nightmare. The highway had turned into a skating rink. By the time we had got down to Vantage my old truck started hitting on fewer cylinders. There are damned few places to get a Jap truck tuned up on the Sunday after Christmas between Cle Elum and Spokane. Not that either one of us had any money. I kept nursing that old beater along and it kept going slower and slower. By the time we got to the Tyler exit it was 9 o’clock at night. We had been on the road for over twelve hours, and the truck had stopped running completely. The little store there was closed, we were stranded in the middle of damn nowhere on a cold night. The store did have a working pay phone and we found enough change in our pockets to make one call. After some discussion we decided to call the closest friend. It turned out to be Bob Kellie in Cheney. It probably wasn’t his favorite thing to do, but he came out and rescued us by about 10 o’clock. He could not be prevailed upon to drive Kevin clear into Spokane though. We did take Kevin as far as Four Lakes and Bob loaned us a quarter for the next phone call. Kevin called a friend in Spokane to come pick him up and he finally got home sometime past midnight. It was the road trip from hell. The bus would have been better.



Free whiskey always tastes like honey, even when it is cheap, but when that dang bear wakes up he can be a surly bastard.

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