Allan Johnson got out of the Air Force and came back to Kennett in the summer of 1972. Allan was a couple of years older than my group so I barely knew him. He may remember how we came to be room-mates but I’m not sure I do. AJ was the perfect roommate. He never complained. We never had an argument. He worked nights at Emerson, I worked days at the radio station so about the only time we saw each other was at one of the countless parties we hosted. –smays

“I Got Drunk and I Stole It”

There is a tape made back in time when Maze was a big-time DJ and talk show host, which is labeled New Year’s Eve ’73. Long before we knew what an Internet was, although we did practice gigabytes at times, Steve recorded some thoughts and sounds of the previous six years. I can’t say it brought tears to hear it again, but I did see a few yellow spots before my eyes, which by now I hope are floaters instead of the still lingering after effects of snappers.

I don’t drink much beer anymore and time has wiped away many of the specific memories to the point that many things I heard on the tape seem like a great movie I watched but did not participate in. (I have no public life to besmirch, so I’m not stonewalling -surely the papers will show up on my wife’s bedside table in a year or two) There are many events mentioned on this tape of which I claim direct knowledge, so I must have been there but you couldn’t prove it by me without photographic evidence. Had RP reached his “in your face” phase of photography by then?

What of the basement? You know it never seemed to smell like an old unused basement back then. Was it the beer, perfume, sweat, cigarette smoke flavor? It is surprising how the olfactory senses can bring back memories but to go down there today you wouldn’t know the place except for the walls. The continuous line drawings still exist and probably the spirit of somebody’s virginity still wafts in the room, hell, everyone lost a little cherry down there in some fashion.

To stand in the basement now and try to re-create the sounds in your mind of those bands with the psychedelic names and then I remember, that’s why I don’t hear so well anymore. How many times did the party reach a peak, one of many, with our heads nestled against RP’s speakers, volume turned waaaay up. You can almost look around the room with your friends playing their air instrument trying to balance a beer, a cigarette and feeling like Ginger Baker. He did die didn’t he? We never seemed to settle that rumor.

How about RP’s milk cartons which he borrowed from IGA. Well, they had a whole lot of them didn’t they? We never seemed to tire of asking him where he got the boxes though and he always enjoyed repeating one of our favorite lines, “I got drunk and I stole it.” That still seems like the perfect title to someone’s book. Or is this it?

I just came to “Toad” on the tape. I always punch the button on my radio when one of those drum solos come on now, just like my TV remote, but I had to listen one more time. It still sounds pretty good to me although marriage has muffled the effect that it once had, played at full volume. Why don’t spouses understand that to get full “fidelity” one must play certain songs – heavy base -full volume?!

What party brought about the return of one young lady who shall remain nameless who was delivered to her home and propped up against the kitchen door long enough for two other nameless guys to make their escape? Could you really hear the crash as you drove away? What party ended with, Bubba (or was itJoe) awakening in their car at Octa on old Highway 25? What party did Maze come home from, fall asleep on the floor in his room, and his dad just slid him under the bed with the dust bunnies? Who was the guy who came home to his room, pulled down his pants and crapped in his chair? Which levee party did Maze, all of waist deep in water, call for help and was semi-rescued by Jane? How many mornings after did we wake up in bed with lots of sand in our pants? I remember a levee party when I was leaving, with someone I respect too much to mention, and I stopped to relieve myself by the road. (It seemed perfectly proper at the time) I stepped off into the bushes for modesty’s sake, and fell about 15 feet to bottom of a large drainage ditch. When did Joe “Black” first appear? Why do I have this picture of Joe Browning up in a tree at a levee party? Who was the young lady that Richard, John and (?) tried so hard to beat at strip poker up at Cash’s cabin?

Remember in the early hours of a party when we needed more female companionship so Maze and the never-failing Bubba went looking for “leg?” Why did you only look at Teagues? Were they supposed to fall for our charms easier? Was Barbara, the waitress at the Cab Stand, first discovered at Teagues? Why do I remember singing “Barbara Ann” at the Cab Stand early one morning to this lovely counter maid? How did we ever find a gem like Karen Horton among the several that we hope never recognize us again?

Why don’t I feel guilty for my actions? Didn’t I have as much fun as I thought? Listening to the music from the basement still brings a grin to my face, which I can’t really explain to one who wasn’t there. It is as if we really did something different, special, a tad naughty, surely illegal, and did it to an extreme that our peers today wouldn’t have even envisioned in their youth. Everyone has good memories of some special time in life, I just wish that part about destroying brain cells wasn’t coming back to haunt me today. One more thing about memories: it is said that we tend to remember the good times and not the bad. That is true of my memories because there were no bad times in the basement.

What was the crazy-glue that held everything together? I have my list which others may expand and explain. There are three personalities around which the rest of us revolved, from my perspective. I apologize if someone is excluded or disagrees, but it is MY list. If I only had one more beer this list could be lot longer: First – the basement itself – then – any song by Creme, continuous line wall drawings, Busch beer, Party Girl “67, making a “sandwich”, beer runs, “lets go find some leg”, sperm cubes, Joe Black, “When did John leave?”, levee parties, Joe’s slip dance, using speakers for headphones, Jefferson Airplane,

“Soul Man”, snappers, McGees Drive Inn, Teagues, buying Sunday beer out at the river, the party at Cash’s cabin, strip poker explaining to my dad what I did the night before, and — RP, Jane, Mays.

The tape just ran out playing “Sukiyaki” (another chapter in the saga referring to RP’s phone calls from the Air Force. I think I feel a hangover returning, and I have to get up for work in the morning — what do I feel? Is that sand in my pants ????

— Allan Johnson, 7/14/98