9 - Actual events

Being a runner – or athlete who was gradually going off the track was difficult. As I got older and more rebellious against my strict Christian upbringing and my out-in-the-sticks life in Clifton Park I began to have a few sips more of whatever alcohol I could get. Where it came from I have no recollection, but it found its way into my home. My father, now 98 in January 2004 still has not had a drop of alcohol and unless my brother brought some home I was the only one to have it in our home in Clifton Park. Even the church did not serve booze – just grape juice for our communion. ‘Take and drink’ or whatever the line was that symbolized the Christian cannibal act of eating Christ and drinking his blood. Of course, no Christian sees anything wrong with this picture but if we started to drink someone else’s blood or eat of their flesh, even symbolically there would be a problem. Whatever the symbolism, there was no water to wine or grape juice to wine in our faith.

My first alcohol drink that I remember was with a friend at a club for golfers or something. Perhaps his father was a golfer. I was in Schenectady, New York on a weekend evening. My friend gave me a mixed drink. I think it was rum and coke and soon I forgot about my horribly boring life and everything was fine. Finally, I had found a way to escape my lot in life. I had tried running away from an early age, probably about twelve or so but I was brought back. One time I was hitch-hiking to New York City and I got as far as Hudson, New York and I was walking through town around mid-night when the police picked me up, called my father and I waited for him to collect me a couple of hours later. We did not speak a word the whole way home and some forty-five years later he is still telling the story of when he had to go and collect me in Hudson, New York. As I edit this in 2006, and my father has a few weeks to go before being 101 (http://neuage.org/101) he still tells how he use to come home from work and lay down on the coach, not even taking off his shoes, not knowing where the phone call would come from for him to go off and collect me. Funny how he only recalls a few things like this and goes over the same stories over and over.

Not to be more confusing than sometimes I may seem, but, I have re-written this over a twelve-year period and in one paragraph I may add a reflection from actual events now in say 2004 and in another paragraph because I may be living in another country with different circumstances my reflections will note that date at which I am writing.

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