Besides that, young people like me liked to be around Uncle Boog. He was always up to no good, and no good was only thing he was good at. He was a strong advocate for nearly every vice that a person can imagine, and for most of the people in that part of the county who were of my age, especially the teenage boys, that meant hanging out with Uncle Boog was “F-U-N.” And you see, fun is in all capital letters. Drinking, cursing, and the heavy using of tobacco products of all sorts was the most basic entertainment that Uncle Boog provided. I can’t swear to it now, but I think Uncle Boog gave me my first chew of tobacco, some apple jack-flavored stuff. I was probably about twelve, maybe younger. He kept pouches of leaf tobacco, boxes of snuff and other smokeless cuts, and cartons of name brand cigarettes in the glove box of his truck nearly all the time. Sometimes, he would have those fruity cigars with the plastic tips. I don’t remember him ever having a pipe, but I like the smell of pipe tobacco, so I don’t know why he never had it. He always liked to keep plenty of what other people wanted, probably so they would hang around with him. I don’t know about that. I do know that he didn’t give me my first cigarette. That was one of my grandma’s neighbors named Linda Platter, who was three or four years older than me. She also taught me how to kiss but that was a few years after the first cigarette and a different kind of story. Anyhow, by the time I was thirteen, if Uncle Boog had cigarettes or other tobacco products and my dad wasn’t around, he would give me some whenever I wanted.
Likewise, I know for a fact that he didn’t give me my first beer. My folks drank beer in our house on special occasions like fish frys or New Year’s Eve, and they would pour beer into those little crystal orange juice glasses, and my brothers and I would all get enough of a sip to make us green in the gills. It was a grown-up deal, drinking that nasty tasting stuff. Malt liquor would grow hair on your chest, I was told, and that is what Daddy drank from the can with a salt-shaker always handy to sprinkle salt on the lid. I don’t think anyone could drink that stuff without the salt, and that is the truth. Whew! I can still almost taste that bitter swill.
Uncle Boog always had a cooler full of cold beer, but he carried more popular brands that weren’t so bitter and cabbage-tasting as what Daddy and his buddies drank. Anybody could get a cold beer out of Uncle Boog’s cooler. He liked to share except when he was on a bender. Then, it was wise to keep your hands out of his ice chest. Most of the time, though, there was plenty of cold beer, and the free-for-all attitude was very much promoted by Uncle Boog. Folks can probably imagine how easily somebody can get to loving something that is always on hand, especially when he doesn’t have to pay for it. You know, you develop a taste, a craving. I got rather fond of free cold beer. It might have been my undoing, but whatcha gonna do?
One time when I was fifteen or so, I was hauling hay with a crew of teenage boys that Uncle Boog got together and supervised from the relative comfort of his truck seat in the shade, and I was hot and thirsty enough I felt I was about die. We had been working steady in the sunshiniest part of the day and the foggiest dust of an old barn loft where there was no air moving, and I can’t recall that I had had anything to drink since I washed down a fried bologna and commodity cheese sandwich with a swig of sweet tea from a plastic gallon jug at lunch, so I had built up a powerful thirst that was going to be quenched. In between a trip to the barn and back out to the field, we all stopped in the shade by Uncle Boog’s truck. I ran around to the back of the open camper and grabbed three cold beers from deep in the icy cooler and lined them up on the tailgate. I popped each tab and sat the three open cold beers, glistening with icy perspiration, in a row before I turned them up one after another, gulping each down with hardly a breath between the three. The cold and wet sensation felt awfully good on my tongue and throat, awfully good. Well, my good feelings about quenching my thirst lasted all of maybe sixteen seconds, and then my stomach got all pinched up in a cramp, and I got sick as a dog, puking up nothing by the gold liquid and suds of cold beer for five minutes until I only had the dry heaves. Uncle Boog laughed and laughed at me. Somehow, at that time, his laughter made even my vomiting seem like fun. He still brings that up whenever I see him, which isn’t often. He still doesn’t know that I can’t stomach that particular brand of cold beer anymore. I won’t have it in my house. I reckon some things just leave a bad taste in the mouth. Sometimes, that bad taste lasts for a while.
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