Swerving Down the Highway: Selected Reflections on the Golden Age of Drunken Driving

By Squire Malloy

Try if you will, to imagine a time when automobiles were virtual bars, DWI roadblocks were in their infancy and MADD's mothers were still in utero. A time when "impaired" drivers were not vilified and hunted down like wild animals, but praised and admired for their deftness, agility, and multitasking ability.
Ah my friends, but not so many years ago such an era did exist! Herein lies the tales of the brave young men who took to their vehicles, beer can in hand, fearing nothing but incompetent sober drivers and the occasional moving telephone pole.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465386359

Squire Malloy

The author is a vintage, Jesuit trained Irish ex-Catholic with a BA in philosophy and a masters in Sociology. He has been practically (and sometimes literally) living in bars for the past 40 years. He credits switching to beer from gin and other similar toxins with keeping him alive and in moderate health. He has spent (some say wasted) almost his entire adult life in the pursuit of the pleasures of alcohol and the pain of women. The author has yet to succumb to rehab, citing the cherished adage that says “winners never quit”.

Book preview

Swerving Down

The Highway

Selected Reflections on the

Golden Age of Drunken Driving

Squire Malloy

Copyright © 2011 by Squire Malloy.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011960582

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4653-8634-2

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4653-8633-5

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-8635-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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CONTENTS

I Drank Some Very Bad Beer

[With Apologies To The Chairman Of The Board]

Rule No.1: Never drive to the local establishment without eating first

8 Ounces Of Prevention…

Rule No.2: Never drive with any malfunctioning lights.

Golden Shower

Rule No.3: Never call the cops when you are drunk and are in possession of a car or its keys.

Lost And Fined

Press 2 For Spanish

Rule No.4: Never drunk drive slowly.

No, I’m Not Mario Andretti

Rule No.5: Abandon the ship.

Rookie Mountain High

Rule No.6: Drunk drive on familiar turf when you can.

I’m Getting Closer To My Home

To Protect And Swerve

Gut-’Wrenching’ Decision

Grand Theft Auto

The Bigger They Are…

Sour Dreams

Lost In Belmar

Keep Off The Grass

Rule No.7: Never drive drunk with a failed inspection sticker.

Snow Job

Rule No.8: Shut up.

The Longest [Mother’s] Day

Don’t Poke A Pig

Cold Comfort

Rule No.9: Never drive under the influence of reefer.

Mary Jane And I Have A Disagreement

Rule No.10: Don’t mix booze and bikes

Don’t Go West, Young Man

Know When To Fold ‘Em

In The Out Door

Breezy Rider

I Shoulda Stood In Bed

One Slice To Stay

On The Sidewalks (Southwest) Of New York

Rule No.11: Hit-and-run for the hills.

Better To Have Loved And Lost (A Little)

Rule No.12: If you can’t see, don’t drive.

Both Barrels Unloaded

Off Keys

Off With His Head

Wired In Nyc

A Bridge Too Far

Tow Fetish

Southern Discomfort

Go Away Little Girl

The Sun Also Rises

Transition Lenses

Go-Going, Go-Going, Gone

Knights In White Satin

‘Bear’ Bottoms

Down The Up Staircase

Epilogue I

Epilogue II

 "

I DRANK SOME VERY BAD BEER"

  [

WITH APOLOGIES TO THE

 "

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD"]

When I was just thirteen, I drank some very bad beer

I drank some very bad beer served up by old maids

In little corner bars

Their faces had scars, and their teeth were green

When I was only thirteen

When I turned twenty-one, I drank the same crummy beer

I drank the same crummy beer but strode into the joint

With my own ID

They were shocked to see, I wasn’t thirty-one

When I turned twenty-one

When I was thirty-five, I tried some imported beer

I tried some imported beer with funny sounding names

In bottles and on tap

It tasted like crap, I was lucky to survive

When I was thirty-five

When I was forty-four, I drank some more lousy beer

I drank some more lousy beer and often woke up

Not knowing where I was

And that was because

I’d passed out on the floor

When I was forty-four

When I was fifty-nine, the doctor told me, No more beer.

The doctor told me, "No more beer, you’re gonna kill yourself,

Or wind up on the street"

But my bartender was sweet, he said, You look just fine.

When I was fifty-nine,

And now the nights are short, I have to piss after each beer,

But I think of my life as one big keg,

I’ve suckled from the start. You can’t keep us apart.

I hope I’ve made it clear.

I drank some very bad beer.

My nickname is Squire, short for Esquire. Sure it sounds a bit priggish, but it was actually bestowed on me by my friends, because, in my younger years, I would always represent myself as a law student to prospective love interests at bars. A grizzly can smell carrion two miles away, and rumor had it that a woman could do the same thing with a $100 bill. I wanted to smell like I would soon have some of those. An old adage says that a good pool shooter is the sign of a misspent youth. Yes, but one does not need to hang out in billiard parlors to fritter away one’s salad days. Drinking, gambling, and skirt-chasing are other choices. Those are the ones I made.

I was not alone in these pursuits. A cast of like-minded miscreants will figure prominently in the following tales. Besides myself, Big Jim, Benny, GM, Barney, and Transit made up the group referred to as The Boys. This collective moniker was more a reflection of our puerile behavior than of our age. These young men were my faithful drinking companions and, with a smattering of peripheral personnel, helped create the exciting experiences which comprise most of this book.

While most of the gray matter, whose role it is to remember things, has been borne away by a river of beer, enough cells apparently reached safety in the attic of my brain to enable me to recall these stories. While writing them, I could hardly believe some of them myself, but my sources (The Boys) assured me they were all sadly true. For reasons that should become obvious, most of the names and locations have been altered. (My editor has suggested that besides the names and locations, perhaps The Boys should have been altered.)

Some of the time—well, most—the pursuit of wagers and women fell prey to the pursuit of drink. For all these career aspirations, the car was a necessary component. Back in the day, before online gambling and sex chat rooms, one required transportation in order to pursue one’s happiness, a right guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence. With that right came the need for drinking and driving.

Even having now established drinking and driving as a right granted by our founding fathers, I must warn that there are those in power who are not loose constructionists. Drunk driving can be dangerous, especially to your pocketbook. Today’s fines and penalties (more about them later) would make Torquemada envious. Blotto driving can be even more perilous as it may lead to a trip to the body shop, hospital, jail cell, or even the morgue.

Studies show that most drunk driving accidents are caused by people who just don’t know how to do it properly. As I do support the Constitution, I would require driver’s education in schools to include courses on how to drive drunk. Until Sharia becomes the law of the land, people will drink and drive. Banning drinking doesn’t work (except for gangsters). Remember prohibition? Banning cars would save tens of thousands of lives each year (and make drunk driving impossible).

But imagine the loss of jobs with the abolition of the auto: traffic cops, median grass cutters, cement and plastic lane divider makers, sleazy auto dealers (redundancy?), grease monkeys, Big Oil and Gas execs, muffler makers, gas pump jockeys, toll takers, ER doctors and nurses, parking lot attendants, personal injury lawyers, etc., etc., and also the devastating trickle-down effect on the bartenders and waitresses who service these people (okay, mostly the cops and lawyers). In this economy, we must drive the automobile and must be able to drink.

Allow me here to draw an analogy between drunk driving education and sex education (gee, those abstinence classes were really a hit). You don’t want people having sex irresponsibly, because of the undesirable side effects—STDs and those unwanted crying and pooping machines, right? You don’t want irresponsible drunk driving either for the reasons cited above; fines, accidents, etc. The sensible thing to do is educate, and I believe that the following tales will prove constructive to most of us.

One of my friends’ uncle’s favorite sayings was If you are going to do something wrong, do it right. This certainly relates to drunk driving, especially since the definition of wrong has been so greatly expanded in recent years. I have been stopped well over a hundred times in my life (I’m white, go figure), but I will never forget my very first ticket (on my twenty-second stop!), and my next DUI will be my first. This last feat took some luck and a whole lot of strategy, all of which I will share in the following pages.

I also want to mention that while many pets probably did not show up at home the next morning, through sheer fortune, no actual important beings, i.e., humans, were harmed in the making of this book.

But before I begin, please let me reminisce on the days of yore (and provide a little social commentary).

Oh, how I yearn for the good old days of drunk driving; rolling down the highway blotto, legally blind and without a care in the world. No pesky road blocks to detour around and cops that would let you be on your way if you could only sing the alphabet. (Funny, I don’t recall the alphabet test when getting my license, and yet without that knowledge, I stood to lose it.) When one 16-oz. beer and a little Listerine would not put you over the legal limit, now universally at .08.