The day I turned eighteen, Dad took me down to Di Novo’s Pub for my first beer. At least, it was my first beer as far as he knew.
“Hey, Bill. Come on over and meet my son, Mick.”
Bill Di Novo had owned the pub since time began. He was a second generation Italian with bright blue eyes and a really cool mustache. Years later, rumors circulated that he was the model for one of the Mario brothers. It did seem that he jumped up in the air quite a bit.
I think Dad was his first customer on opening day. They had formed a strong friendship and both played some really lousy golf together.
“Nice to meet you, Mick. I’m not going to have to card you, am I?”
“No, Bill. He turns eighteen today and is legal to do the old three point two brew.”
Ah, yes, three point two beer. Ohio used to have a law that stated it was legal to serve minors age eighteen to twenty-one beer with three point two percent alcohol in it. By eighteen, I had consumed copious amounts of real beer, but not the old three two. I believe that law had been repealed before I was eight years old. I’m not sure whether Dad knew this or not. I think he probably did but didn’t want to give up the tradition his dad started with him when he was eighteen. I also suspected that Mr. Di Novo had a few cases left in stock that he was still trying to monetize.
“Son, today you officially become a man and begin to find the path in life that takes you all the way through to the clubhouse. It’s time we participated in the time honored tradition of father / son hops and barley sharing. And, Son, no matter where your life leads, I will always support you and be damned proud of you.”
We quaffed a healthy share of our time honored brew. Dad had a real one, I had the three two. Supposedly it tasted like weasel piss when it was freshly brewed. Imagine what it tasted like ten plus years later. It took all my will power not to spew it across the table. I could never embarrass Dad like that in front of Mr. Di Novo, so I choked it down.
“Pops, this is not too bad. Think I could have a taste of yours?”
“No, Son, your time will come. And speaking of which, I think you are now mature enough to hear the true story of how your mom and I met.”
Oh, Lord. Bill knew Dad was cranked up for one of his stories and suddenly had to go check his inventory in the back. I swear he hopped over a few tables and did some midair spins on the way. Or maybe that was just the beer goggles.
“I was a little older than you are now. I had decided that a good looking upwardly mobile young man needed to set a direction for himself in life. My folks didn’t have much money, but I’d saved up enough to give a local college a try. I went to the University of Akron. My brother, Alton, had a small apartment next to the campus and let me stay with him. It was our swinging cool dude bachelor pad. It was the seventies so I’ll say no more about that.”
“Groovy, Pops.”
“Alton was out one night and I was there alone. He was a guitarist in a very unsuccessful garage band named Vomit Velocity. They tried mashing together many of the emerging rock songs with songs from earlier decades. Some of their titles were ‘Smoke on the Danube’, ‘Brown Sugar Plum Honey Bunch’, ‘Riders on the Stormy Weather…’”
“C’mon, they didn’t really do those songs.”
“Well, not maybe those exact songs, but something close. And they were really bad. Anyway, that night he had left his guitar and amp behind. I was still on my voyage of self discovery. I was pretty sure my skills weren’t quite good enough to make it as a golf pro…”
“Good self awareness, Dad.”
“… but the jury was out on rock star. So I plugged in and started to wail away. I thought I sounded pretty tight. About twenty minutes later, I heard a gentle tapping at the front window. I looked out and saw an angel.”
“That would be Mom.”
“Eventually, but that was the first moment I laid eyes on her. My heart did a few flip flops. I opened the window and invited her in with some pick up lines you are still too young to hear. I panicked briefly when I spotted my Playboy collection out in plain sight, but then realized she’d just have to accept that I was a worldly man.”
I was afraid if my eyes rolled any harder they would pop right out of my head.
“She came in and stared deeply into my eyes. She asked if I was the one producing those hot licks. I said I was. She then said that she’d like to kiss the lips of the man that could make that kind of music. And, Son, we have been making beautiful music together ever since. The moral of the story for me was to ‘Keep the Faith.’ And that’s exactly what I did.”
“Thanks for that, Dad. I think I need another beer (even a three two).”
The next morning, after Dad left for work, Mom plopped down beside me at the breakfast table.
“You smell like a brewery. Did Ralph take you out for that stupid time honored three two beer thing like he did with Jay?”
“He sure did. And can you try not speaking too loudly? I feel like I have the Italian army doing marching maneuvers in my head.”
“So you have the old weasel piss hangover. Well, I’m all out of kids. Mr. Di Novo is going to have to flush the rest of that awful crap. I suppose Ralph also told you that tall tale about how we met?”
“Yup.”
“You want to hear the real version?”
“Not particularly.”
“I was sitting in my off campus apartment trying to study. Suddenly, from the apartment below, I hear the most god awful sounds of small animals being tortured. I flew down the steps and pounded on the front door. The horrid noises kept up so I kept pounding louder until my hands were raw. I think I started screaming too. The door finally cracked open. I said something along the lines of ‘What the free bird are you doing?’ This tall skinny dude with stringy hair and coke bottle glasses stood there and just stared at me. To break the awkward silence, I asked if I could come in. He nodded his head, so I did. I noticed Mad Magazines and Superman comics were strewn about the place. I told him, with a voice maybe a teensy bit too loud, that I was trying to study and asked him to keep it down. I also told him that if he was a music major maybe he should try another course of study. He turned about ten shades of red and I began to feel bad about being so hard on him. The cat finally released his tongue and he began apologizing profusely. He didn’t realize he was so loud and never wanted to bother anyone, especially anyone as pretty as me. I found that kind of sweet. I sat down and we began to talk. I found myself beginning to be attracted to him. And I still am today.”
“That’s it?”
“Yup”
“That’s pretty different than Dad’s version.”
“But both wound up with the same ending. I guess, for me, the moral of the story is to not let first impressions cloud your judgment, even if they make you want to ‘Ralph.’”
That was pretty funny, for Mom. Even though the tales were pretty dorky, it made me realize that most people get the overall big picture right when telling their stories. It’s the details that might be a little fuzzy.