Why I Can't Stand Drunks

 First, let me clarify: "drunks," to me, are people who relish being intoxicated all day. They don't realize they have a problem, and they see no need to change. "Alcoholics," on the other hand, DO recognize their issues and are attempting to deal with them, either through groups like AA, or on their own. I have no problem with alcoholics, it's drunks I can't stand.

My father and both brothers were raging, nasty, mean, vicious drunks. They loved to get hammered and start fights. 

The youngest, whom I shall refer to as "Dead Bro," got in donnybrooks in just about every bar in the area. He also had substance-abuse issues, and finally punched his own ticket with a fentanyl overdose. He had been fired from several previous jobs for drug use. His last employer paid for him to attend an in-patient rehab program, and left him on full salary for the four months, and he repaid them by going into the lunchroom and shooting up his first day back. He even knew the lunchroom had cameras.

The middle one, "AFKAMB" (or "Asshole Formerly Known As My Brother") was particularly nasty. He was a scrawny, wiry son of a bitch, and usually carried multiple knives (he told me one time that he had eleven on him that day). He was also covered in homemade tatts, and had hair and a beard out of ZZ Top. Like many other weasels, he was able to charm the hell out of the ladies, due to his "bad boy" persona. I heard from a mutual friend that AFKAMB has developed cancer after smoking since he was ten (he's 63 now), cirrhosis from consuming a bottle of vodka and a 30-pack of beer every two days, and both Hep C and HIV from his tatts. He also had a drug problem, but managed to quit that when Dead Bro checked out; now he sticks to marijuana. He was constantly stealing money from the old man by using his debit card for the vodka, beer, weed, and smokes.

The old man was a real winner: sloshed every day -- a half-gallon of bourbon in two days sloshed -- and yelling and throwing things and smashing things. He also demanded that we follow his rules, which changed from day-to-day. He always ate the exact same thing: two slices of toasted Pepperidge Farms Cinnamon Raisin swirl for breakfast, one Underwood's devilled ham sandwich for lunch (and he screamed if we referred to it as anything but "his cat food"), and Stauffer's Creamed Chipped Beef on toast.* He struck the old lady once, and she retaliated by going after him with a knife. He also said that AFKAMB was the "only reliable one," apparently based on his willingness to get drunk and watch football with the old man, even thought for the first five years in Maine, Linda and I were the only employed ones in the house, and we were the primary caregivers -- cooks, butler/maid, chauffeurs, etc. The old man was retired, the old lady hadn't worked for years because it was "beneath her station in life," and Dead Bro and AFKAMB had abysmal employment records. AFKAMB got arrested for going off on his last boss, when the boss fired AFKAMB for an elevated BAC and a hot piss test on his CDL physical after he (AFKAMB) slammed his truck into the back of a stopped car. After Linda became disabled, I was trying to support six people on one very small paycheck.

The old lady, who had delusions of grandeur, had to have one glass of wine per day, or she became an absolute maniac. Granted, she may have had a psychological addiction, rather than a physical addiction, but it was an addiction nevertheless. She was also a know-it-all, and tried to correct a woman's grammar in a garden center. The other woman argued, and the old lady said, rather snootily, "I majored in English at Smith College." Turned out the other woman was the CHAIR of the English Department at Smith! She also tried to correct doctors on their diagnoses and treatment recommendations, apparently because she had watched some BBC series featuring a doctor back in Queen Victoria's day.

Oh, yeah, and I used to drink myself into a stupor most nights. But I realized what it was doing to me and stopped. Not completely, but I am still working on the 12-pack of beer Linda and I bought when we moved to Waldo County in 2015 (four more bottles, and I'll have to buy more). I know when to say "when," and except in VERY rare circumstances, it's after one round.

All this is to explain why I refused to get involved with a woman who got upset with me when I refused to take her out to get drunk. She said she liked to "get lit" on Fridays and Saturdays, and wanted me to drive because she couldn't afford one more DUI. She said that, I turned and walked away.

To hell with the drunks.

If you're an alcoholic, and you're dealing with your demons, all the more power to you, and I will do anything I can for you. But if you're noting but a goddamned drunk, to hell with you.

* the old man's lawyer tried to report me for elder abuse for feeding him the same thing every day. Fortunately, I had recordings -- both video and audio -- on him screaming what he wanted, and going off on me if I dared serve him something else. The DHHS investigator listened and watched, and closed the case right there, saying that I had his sympathy for dealing with such an asshole.

The Youngest Victims

 We are approaching the 108th anniversary of the Eastland disaster. The Eastland, a Great Lakes steamer, had been chartered as one of four or five vessels to ferry employees of Western Electric's Hawthorne Works plant near Chicago to Michigan City, MI, for an employee picnic (yes, they needed five vessels: that year, the Western Electric picnic would have hosted over 6500 guests). The Eastland rolled over in the Chicago River, just before setting sail for Michigan. 844 passengers -- virtually all party attendees -- died.

As this was the biggest employee function of the year, Western Electric -- which had an enviable reputation for the way they treated their employees -- had told employees to bring not only the immediate family, but extended family and friends as well. As a result, a staggering number of victims were children.  The most iconic image of the disaster is a shot of a Chicago fireman, anguish and horror etched on his face, carrying the body of a drowned child.

In so many disasters, it is the youngest and most innocent victims who often become the eternal memorial of an incident.

December 30, 1903, promised to be a winter day like any other in Chicago (a city which has seen more than its share of disasters). But then a stage light ignited a piece of scenery at the Iroquois Theatre, during a matinee performance of "Mr. Blue Beard," featuring the legendary Eddie Foy. By the time the fire was out, 602 people -- mostly women and children -- were dead, and another 250 were injured. Among the victims was Amy Holst, a seven-year-old whose brother, sister, and mother were also lost. One look at her picture, and you can tell she was a spitfire, and would have been raising pure hell with Chicago's boys in about 10 years.

In December of 1958, a fire ripped through the Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago, killing 92 school children and three nuns. As that fire occurred in "modern" times, there were plenty of photographs to choose from, to show the horror of the situation. The most iconic is firefighter Richard Scheidt carrying the lifeless body of ten-year-old John Jajkowski. Again, the anguish and horror are plain to see.

The deadliest domestic terrorist attack in the United States was the April 19, 1995, attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, by anti-government extremists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. 168 people were killed, and 680 injured, but the image that is seared in our collective memory is Oklahoma City firefighter Chris Fields cradling the body of one-year-old Baylee Almon.

These children, these BABIES, are seared into our memory for eternity, as symbols of the evil that pervades our lives. The image of innocence lost, of lives wasted, drives home the heartache of the scene.

Who knows what these children might have become? Might Amy have become a writer, possibly penning a novel to rival "Gone With The Wind"? Would John have been a doctor who discovered a cure for cancer? Maybe Baylee might have been the first woman President.

We'll never know.

But because of their lost potential, these children -- and probably millions more -- live on in our memories, and as long as one person remembers, they never truly disappear.