Charlie and the Boones Farm

Charlie McCreary was a nut, and may still be for all I know. He was deaf in his left ear and almost deaf in the other. He wore his hair long to try to hide the hearing aid he wore, but Charlie had the kind of hair that seemed to always look unwashed even right after he washed it.

Charlie and I were teammates on our junior college cross country team. He had a little old black dog named Roach and he’d bring them to our home meets. Charlie’s mom knitted a sweater in the school colors for Roach to wear. He became our mascot.

Charlie had a speech impediment that made whatever came out of his mouth sound perverse. I think he kind of played that up, too. He would bring a dimestore porn novel with him on our road trips. One was called Breaking in Sister. Charlie would read various passages aloud — “and then he slipped his throbbing mass into her pulsating” — that kind of thing. And one guy, Todd, was studying for the seminary and well, he’d get an erection that would tent his sweat pants and he’d get all embarrassed as we’d crack up laughing.

We sat Charlie where is dead ear would be against the back speaker and crank up the volume because it didn’t bother him.

One track meet Charlie outdid himself. During a relay race he changed out the baton with a dildo, knowing that the guy he’d be handing off to was Todd. So here he comes and there’s that dildo. It falls to the ground and Todd won’t pick it up. Charlie picks it up and hands it to Todd who recoils and well the other runners have passed him by now. Coach was on the far side of the field and was wondering what was happening but he didn’t have to wonder for very long or very hard.

Charlie could play other tricks, too. He told us he could read lips. At a bar once, he spotted these women at a nearby table and told Larry, a marine cadet who was a good-looking guy but usually a little full of himself, told him,

“Hey, Larry, those women are talking about you.”

“How do you know?” Larry asked.

“Whaddaya mean how do I know? I can read lips. I’m telling you, Larry, they’re really talking about you. They wan’t to meet you. Go on over there!”

Well, Charlie wasn’t any lip-reader and Larry came back feeling like an idiot. It was great!

So the great day of the Boone’s Farm story finally arrives. My team was up against a powerhouse 4-year school. It was simply a dual meet, which means it was us against Eastern Illinois University. Seven runners compete and the top five finishers for each team over the 10K distance count. The lowest score wins. A perfect wipeout is a score of 15–50. Our first guy came in 37th. So it was more like 15 to 193.

Embarrassed and furious, our coach laid into us the entire ride home. Ahh, after a few minutes we tune him out and I tell the guys about a party going on at a house called The Ghetto that I could get us into. but first we have to catch this 50’s band concert at the student union that night.

Dr. Bop and the Headliners featuring the White Raven was the band and they were very good even if they were a poor-man’s Sha-Na-Na. During the show, Tracy Loffenholtz, the best-looking woman on campus comes up to me.

“Hey, Jeff, how ya doing?”

How am I doing? I think. I didn’t even know she knew I was alive.

“Hey, it’s great to see you. I’m so glad you came. Look, I wanna…,”

She cuts me off. “You know Tony Joe over there don’t you? Can you take me over and introduce me to him?”

“Sure.” I said, thinking, it’s gonna be one of those nights.

So I hand her over to Tony Joe. Tony Joe Brazas. He came from a nearby German town of about 6,000 that had around 30 bars and his dad owned about half of them. Blond hair, blue eyes. His dad owned half the town. I had no shot in the competitive field of junior college romance.

The show winds up. Charlie and I head over to The Ghetto. It’s a bring your own beer party and it’s strict. They don’t let us in. So we head over to the drive-through package liquor store.

Charlie drove an old Rambler wagon that didn’t have a windshield and now it’s snowing. Other motorists are doing double takes as they see the snow flying into the front seat through where the windshield ought to be. We use our hands as wipers to keep the snow from flying into our face.

We pull into the drive through but because I’m still a freshman and not of drinking age Charlie walks up to the window.

“What can I do for you?” the not-so-freiendly proprietor asks.

“Gimme some wine,” Charlie says. Now keep in mind Charlie’s impediment can make him difficult to understand under the best of circumstances. This was far from it.

“What kind you want?”

“I dunno? What kind ya got?”

The guy at the window sizes Charlie up about right. “Well, we got his and that and Boones Farm.”

“Boone’s Farm” Charlie interjects.

“What kind?”

“What kind you got?” By now the cars at the tail end are pulling away to go elsewhere. The guy is losing business and getting a little pissed. This has gone on long enough.

“We got Fuzzy Naval, Strawberry Hill, Zapple…”

“Zapple, give me Zapple!” Charlie exclaims.

“All right. What size?”

“What size you got.”

“We got large and small.”

“Gimme a small.”

So the guy goes back and comes back a minute later.

“Here. That’ll be 49 cents.”

“49 cents!,” Charlie says. “Get me another!”

So the guy goes to get another. Meanwhile all the cars that had been waiting are gone. They left. I’ve slinked down into the snowy front seat not wanting to be seen.

“All right. 98 cents.”

The next thing I hear is the sound of coins splattering on the windows counter and falling to the ground which is in pitch darkness. Charlie is paying with dimes and nickels and pennies.

“Get out of here,” the guy screams. So Charlie grabs the two bottles and comes back acting as if what had just happened was as normal as can be. And for Charlie, maybe it was. Who knows?

We get to the Ghetto and we find a teammate, a guy named Hasler, leaning against the wall, about as limp as a noodle. He’s got a beer in one hand and wine in the other. He’d never had a drink before and now he is long gone.

“Shake, baby, shake. Shake, baby shake.”

All he can do is squirm a bit, and repeat the chorus from Whole Lotta Shaking Goin On. And spit.

He’s sliding down the wall so we prop him against a futon for just a second until we can figure what to do with him, but he flops over onto these two who had been making out on the futon. He can’t get off of them and they can’t get him off either. They spill out onto the floor.

“Shake it baby shake.”

We find an empty room, toss him on the floor, throw a bean-bag chair over him and sit on him. He’s still squirming and still singing.

“Hasler,” Charlie warns him. “If you don’t shut up, I’m gonna punch you right in the mouth!”

“I don’t care,” Hasler says continues with his shaking and singing.

“Hasler,” Charlies says, this time with more intensity and a bright idea gleaming from his eyes. “If you don’t shut up, I’m gonna punch you right in the balls.”

“I don’t care, man, do what you want.”

Charlie lifts the bean-bag chair, makes a fist and POW, throws a punch right where he said he was going to.

“Hasler, Hasler! Did you feel that?”

“Feel what?”