|
Edited on Thu Jun-21-07 09:27 PM by adsosletter
...while stationed in Germany during the 1970's I made the ill-considered decision to "misappropriate" a jeep from our battery motor pool. :dunce: It's a long story, with many adventures, but the gist of it is that I spent 2 days touring the Bavarian back roads with 2 other friends. Beer was consumed, gasthauses were visited, beer was consumed, bier fests were visited, beer was consumed...you get my point. :beer:
Somewhere toward the end we stopped and picked up a case of Grafenwohr "flippies" (porcelain stoppers, liter sized bottles, high alcohol content) and headed out again. About 1:00am (and really foggy out) I drove the jeep into a ditch :banghead: which I couldn't get out of and the whole case of bottles flew out of the jeep and smashed on the road. Just then, from out of the fog, I hear "HEY, we been LOOKIN' for YOU guys". M.P.s... :yoiks:
So they take us back to our barracks at Vilseck. We walk into the Orderly Room and I am escorted into the BC's office. Its about 2:30am and our Battery Commander is sitting there in his bathrobe, pipe clenched between his teeth and, uh...displeased...as it were. :scared:
He questions me for awhile, interspersed by periods of extreme Tourette's Syndrome :grr: , then tells me to wait outside.
He calls the other two guys in for questioning.
One of them was named Archuletta. He goes in and the BC starts interrogating him. Over and over he asks him about whether I had been drinking while driving. Over and over Archuletta says "No, never saw him drink in the jeep".
Finally, BC shouts "Archuletta, by your own account you were sitting in the back seat of that jeep! How could you not have noticed whether he was drinking or not!!!"
Short silence. Then, from over the partition, I hear Archuletta say, very calmly, "Sir, when I was a kid our family had one of those station wagons with the far rear "jump-seat" that faced backward, out the rear window of the car. I was the youngest in my family, so I always had to ride back there. Ever since then, if I am riding in the back seat of a vehicle, I have to sit facing out the rear window...or I get carsick." :puke:
Short Period of silence. Then the BC growls "Archuletta...get OUT of my office."
I thought he was just gonna' take me out and shoot me at that point, he was so pissed.
True Story.
Drunk Driving, or even driving with an open container is no laughing matter, and I came to finally wise-up when I got a bit older. Too many people have found themselves with immense suffering because of it, and I condemn it whole-heartedly.
Archuletta was from New Mexico; if anyone reading this is from New Mexico and recognizes this story have him get ahold of me. I would love to talk to him again. :D
|