The Keg
By Tracy K. Lorenz
I saw something on Saturday that I haven’t seen in a long time: a keg. It was during the Coast Guard Festival parade and was in a neighbor’s side yard, people were gathered around it like a campfire, occasionally glancing at whatever inane group was passing by. I’ve never been a big fan of drinking when it’s light out but the group surrounding the beer seemed to be enjoying the potential for a sunset hangover, with any luck the pain would dissipate before the fireworks kicked in.
When I was a kid a keg was a big deal, there’s just something about the potential for getting in trouble as a group that heightens the excitement level of an otherwise pedestrian activity. Kids were different back then; we cared about what our parents thought and didn’t openly flaunt our illegal activities like today’s youth. The secrecy was part of the allure. Dragging an 800 pound keg up a dune was less alluring.
The two main “keg” party spots were in Whitey’s Woods where, ironically, my parents now live and Beachwood Park where, ironically, I was almost killed when John Prekosovich lost his grip on a keg which sent it rolling down the hill with menace. The keg had picked up quite a bit of steam by the time I looked up and noticed it growing exponentially but I was able to step aside at the last second. Afterwards I was ridiculed for not stopping the runaway cylinder of aluminum death; they might as well have mocked me for not trying to stop a runaway cement truck of cement truck death. In such a situation the only thing you can do is get out of the way and let gravity take its course. When the thing stops rolling you just pick it up and head back towards the dune’s summit, it’s a very Sisyphusian process.
The thing about dune keggers, and probably all keggers for that matter, is there’s a consistency and protocol that I enjoyed. The plastic cups were either red or blue but a couple guys would always bring a beer stein or other “look at me” container that appeared no better at holding liquids than a plastic cup, it also appeared no better at attracting women. In addition to the specialty cup owners other notable participants were the guy who tells everyone to tip their cup to avoid foam and the guy in charge of pumping the keg to make sure there was lots of foam. The pump guy was usually a fringe planet in the high school universe, by standing next to the keg all night it allowed him to have contact with the more popular kids and see the inner workings of the buzz-bomb that is the high school social scene. On Monday he’d return to school and the anonymity that he so abhorred.
But there was a downside to high school kegs, most people had no clue how much they could drink before what went in decided to come out, usually in spectacular fashion. I remember one guy in the middle of a huge crowd in Brian Clarke’s living room, suddenly he got the chipmunk cheeks and the wide eyed look that will appear on the face of those about to destroy their social standing. But the crowd was so thick he couldn’t get to the bathroom or out the door so he placed his hands over his mouth like the “speak no evil” monkey and promptly shot chunks out his nose. That wasn’t good.
I saw another guy sitting on a couch when he decided to do the Technicolor yawn, rather than get up he just lifted the couch cushion, hurled, put the couch cushion down and continued to drink. I saw another friend throw up into the hole of a guitar. Which of those two was worse has long been subject to debate.
Throughout high school and college I can’t tell you how many keg parties I either went to or hosted but I never once got in trouble, never got caught, never got arrested, and never threw up. But I did come close to accomplishing all three at once.
It happened at a keg party overlooking Lake Michigan high in the dunes at Bronson Park. As usual the cops got wind of the event and broke it up (cops were actually pretty cool back then as long as you were cool back) and everyone scattered. At the time I was driving a pretty hot Mustang and the Mustang was parked with the front bumper about two feet from a tree. Immediately behind the Mustang was a cop car pinning me in. Eventually I had to walk over to the cop and asked if he could, ya know, move his car. The cop looked over the situation and said “If you can’t get that car out you must be drunk.” That wasn’t the response I was looking for. The Mustang lacked power steering, I had to make about 3,000 one-foot “Y” turns to get out. The frustrating part was, as one would expect, all my friends split like a banana so I had to go through the entire ordeal without a co-pilot. You’d think out of all the people there I could have found at least one…Bud.
