Frank, you made me remember another one.
When I got divorced in 1980, I threw a party for all my friends who had stuck by me. I was going to furnish all the beer they could drink, but there was a brewer’s strike and I couldn’t get any beer. So, I went out to Henry Enry’s winery. It was really called Henry’s, but everyone called it Hen-er-rie En-er-ries, and they made the best rubarb and gooseberry wine in the world. They were all out of gooseberry, so I bought ten gallons of rubarb. You may think that ten gallons was a lot, but wait for the rest of the story.
When my friends started showing up, they all bitched because I didn’t have any beer. However, after a few glasses of ice-cold Henry’s, that all changed. For some reason, my best friend couldn’t make it. However, he made me promise to save a gallon of Henry’s for him. I hid that jug under my kitchen sink and put a lot of stuff around it and made sure that cupboard door was shut tight so it was really hid.
My two dogs were downstairs in the basement, and I had one of those weird hidden stairways that had two trap doors that opened up like an L. I left the first one closed, but left the one that bent to right open and put a barrier in front of it so no one could fall through. There was a flat area where the stairs took a hard right bend down into the basement. All night long there were people laying on the bellies on the carpet in the dinning room petting my dogs who were on that flat area below. The black cocka-poo dogs (Inky and Spud) loved all that attention.
Somehow that jug I had hid was discovered when the wine started to run low, and I actually had to get out my baseball bat and threaten everyone with a busted head unless they left it alone. They did, and later Bob got his jug of wine, but boy did he hear the story of me and the bat.
For a bunch of beer drinkers, those guys and gals sure sucked down that rubarb wine. Amazingly, no one got a ticket or had an accident that night. What a party!
Mike
P.S. I hate to brag, but I tell one hell of a story, and they are all true.