Yep, the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville in 1991 was a little strange. It wasn't in an exotic locale, like the Sugar Bowl; we didn't get to go to DisneyWorld, like at the Citrus Bowl; however, we were right there on the beach, everyone of us, and, moreover, we drank more than God that week, and pretty much made complete and total drunken idiots of ourselves. In short, the Gator Bowl trip was, for the most part, and despite various limitations, just about the most completely debauched I have ever seen the Virginia Pep Band.
It didn't hurt that an entire class of Pep Band Legends-To-Be were First Years that year, and were just shaking out their debauched little wings. Mick Stone, Mandy Moore, and Wahoo Delerious (aka Chris "Wiegie" Wiegand) really had a go at it. Mandy drank an entire Texas Fifth (1.75 litre) of Jim Bean in about 4 days. Mick stumbled around on the beach one night, too drunk too live, and speaking (quite literally) in tongues at anyone he could button-hole, until we couldn't bear it any longer, and buried him in the sand to his neck. (When he finally managed to get free, he went and lost bladder control in the hotel elevator.) [We'd have pictures of all of the above, except that your faithful chronicler was far too drunk, himself, to realize that there is no such thing as a 400-shot roll of film; the flash kept going off - I kept shooting.] And the youngsters weren't the only ones: Elder Bill Pemberton recounts drinking a fifth of Dickel on each of three consecutive nights.
We rambled through the Gator Bowl Parade, and got to ride on an armored personnel carrier for a while. We drank way too much before, and on the way to, the game. We made fun of the Oklahoma marching band (which was only fitting and proper, as the Oklahoma football team was eating our football team for lunch, to the tune of 48-14 - ouch!).
One interesting, and unfortunate, thing happened to me in particular. So interesting, in fact, that it is not particularly believable. It sounds a lot more like something out of a John Hughes movie. But it really did happen, and it happened like this:
We brought a lot to drink into the Gator Bowl. A lot a lot. And not just in terms of alcohol content - also in terms of volume. We had gone to make a liquor run on Sunday, and, finding the 1st store we went to closed, exclaimed, "Oh shit! we blew it - blue laws!" [It turned out later that alcohol did sell in Florida on Sundays - it was just that the one place we went to happened to be closed, and we immediately assumed the worst.] So, several people forthrightly purchased cases of beer, and a bold subset of those people brazenly endeavored to smuggle all that beer into the stadium. With perfect success, I might add, until yours truly fucked things completely up.
In a word, I was FUBAR that day. Having been distracted by a lively volleyball game on the beach until 45 minutes before our departure time, I panicked badly at being so sober at that late hour - and overcompensated badly. The theme drink at that particular bowl was the Green Demon - and I used several stiff versions of that never-very-forgiving-drink to wash down several shots, before loading up some flasks and mixing a stiff one for the road.
Suffice it to say that by half-time, I was not my usual clear-thinking self. Despite that handicap, I was very interested in doing some juggling in the half-time show that was coming up fast. Only, my juggling objects (in this particular case, golf balls) were in someone else's backpack. I optimistically went to go retrieve them.
But first I gathered up my flask to take with me. Like the flasks of many Pep Band members, mine holds an entire fifth in it. Shortly before half-time, I retrieved it from my trombone gig bag and secured it (more or less) in the waist band of my pants (it didn't nearly fit in any of my pockets). I then stumbled toward the front of our section of the stadium. By the time I managed to get my head together and initiate all this activity, however, pretty much the entire rest of the band was already on the sidelines of the field, milling around and poking and prodding at the Oklahoma Band. I made an attempt to pick up my pace.
Reaching the railing, and the front row, of the stadium, I managed to locate the bag that held my revered golf balls, and squatted down to access it. This particular bag also happened to contain a number of other items: I pulled out a flask of very expensive Myers dark rum with my left hand. I pulled out three cans of Budweiser with my right. I continued to rummage, and peered intently into the bag, shuffling large numbers of beers around. Then, something caught my eye. Something that, I felt very sure, really shouldn't have been there.
At first it was merely an ominous patch of navy blue. As I became aware of it, it began to resolve itself into two vertical patches of dark navy blue. Two navy blue pant legs. With shoes at the bottom. "This is bad," I finally had to admit to myself as I gazed at these two dark navy blue anomalies. "This is not good." Biting my lower lip, I resolvedly began swiveling my head upwards, following the two vertical patches of dark navy blue. Sure enough, they led into a dark navy blue crotch, and then a dark navy blue belt with a big gun on it. Ultimately I was able to resolve the entire large dark navy blue form of none other than the fabled Officer Friendly, 6 inches in front of me.
Officer Friendly grinned broadly at me, albeit from underneath a Bushy Friendly Moustache. Of course, he was required to grin almost straight down, as close as he was to me. I could do no less than grin back. (Straight up.) Yes, I was holding a big flask of bourbon in my left hand, and three cans of Budweiser in my right - but I grinned back no less enthusiastically.
"How you doin'," I made bold to inquire, not abandoning my grin. "Pretty good," Officer Friendly replied. He let the silence hang there for a moment or so. "I guess you're wondering what I'm doing here with these," I suggested, holding forth the bourbon and the beer in my hands. I then proceeded to hold forth with a well-crafted, and very believable, tale (I still believe) about how said bourbon and said beer really had no substantive connection with me, but how I was just looking for my golf balls (to juggle with) and had come across this outlawed paraphernelia incidentally in my searches for the elusive golf balls- you see, it really wasn't my backpack the two of us were huddling around, you know. "Right," responded Officer Friendly, helpfully. As if to punctuate that affirmation he reached casually down and removed the fifth-size flask of bourbon from my waist-band. "I guess this isn't yours, then, either," he speculated from underneath the substantial moustache. It was at that point that I gave up all hope. Quite reasonably, I think.
Feeling, rightly I believe, that my bargaining position at that point was more or less compromised, I undertook to negotiate some sort of deal with the Esteemed Officer Friendly. The form that this compromise ultimately took was as follows: I would pour out every drop of alcohol within the immediate vicinity, and no one would take me to jail. I had to admit that it sounded like a pretty good deal. I started pouring.
Not to say that was easy. When I was there shaking out the last drops of each individual beer can I couldn't help but ask Officer F. if it would be alright if I could please at least drink those last couple of drops. He refused my humble request. At last the potables, in all the forms, were no more than a roiling river rumbling their way along the lower level of the Jacksonville Stadium. Officer Friendly and I went our seperate ways.
I imagine we had similar missions at the point, though. Just as I was relating my exploits to, not only every member of the Pep Band in sight, but also every skeptical member of the Oklahoma Band around (there were scores of them, waiting to perform their half-time show), I like to imagine that Officer Friendly was regaling the whole of the Jacksonville Police Department with an account of his little run-in with little ole me. Who knows, maybe there's a Jacksonville Police Department Web Page now, with an identical account of these exploits gracing its pages. If what actually did happen is possible, anything is.
[In the interest of full disclosure, the author would like to point out that he was pretty much completly loaded as he wrote this narrative - which is only fitting....]
