The Infamous Urine-Tossing Incident
I hope you enjoy this story. Everyone is always asking me if it's true, and what really happened...so, here it is, once and for all.
In 1972, I left my college rock and roll band (The Pillowcayse...with a 'y'...we don't know why) in East Lansing, Michigan, and came back to Oyster Bay to spend the summer on the premise that I was going to earn enough money to buy a second-hand electric piano, which, I convinced the guys, would greatly enhance our band. The fact that I was totally inept at playing the piano must have escaped them. Maybe they were as sick of our noise as I was...but, at any rate, home I came.
(I had graduated from Michigan State in 1971, but had stayed in the college town to seek musical fame by getting demolished and playing frat parties. Yes, to avoid mainstream work and growing up.)
Back on Long Island, I worked as a cement carrier during the day, and as a waiter in a hot bar at night. I played on a local softball team (The Oyster Bay Beverage team, believe it or not), avoided the girl I was dating, and stayed pretty smashed for about two months.
Chris, Jackie, Carl
At the end of the summer, the fog cleared, and I had no money. I convinced a girl I worked with at the bar to lend me the money for the piano, I found a used one in Queens, where you can find, used, anything you need 24 hours a day, and went and bought it...a Fender Rhodes 88. Ahh. Now, all I had to do was get it to Michigan.
Jackie & Carl in 2010
I had no car, so I convinced my old friend Carl, the 6'4" drummer from my high school band (The Sonics), to drive me and my new old piano back to the Midwest in his '64 Mustang convertible.
At some point I guess my mother decided she wanted to go and we said okay. Looking back on the situation I can only guess that she had either kicked in some for the piano or volunteered gas money, so we couldn't refuse. I can't see me just saying, "Yeah, Dot, hop in, we're going cruising." I mean, she can be fun, but I was a 24-year-old screaming asshole, and Carl wasn't much better. You know...now that I write this, I have to correct myself. We definitely would've said 'hop in.' The more the merrier.
We got a few cases of beer, put a lot of it on ice, gave my mother a fifth of rye whiskey, and loaded us and it in the car somewhere around ten in the morning. (We of course wanted to get to East Lansing before the bars closed.)
My mother was sitting on the right in the back seat, I was shotgun, and huge Carl was at the wheel. The Mustang had a tiny trunk, and I remember at least half of the Fender Rhodes sticking out like a shelf. On my mother's left, on the seat, was the cooler...Carl was huge and had to have his seat all the way back in the tiny car, so there was no room behind it...and she played bartender. Being an experienced traveling beer drinker, I had an open-top pitcher with me, so we wouldn't have to pull over every time I had to pee. That would've stretched the fourteen hour trip considerably.
As ridiculous as this may read, these are the facts and these were my actual thought patterns at the time. Jesus.
So we're barreling down either Route 80 or whatever you used in the sections of Route 80 that weren't finished yet, drinking, laughing, and having a merry old time. Dot had a bottomless glass of rye on ice, and we had only to reach out for her to hand us an ice cold "chillie," which is what we called a beer (at any temperature) when I was in college. In a Mustang convertible, even with the top up, wailing along at 80 mph, we had to talk pretty loud to be heard, so the energy level was high and higher.
At some point, I'd imagine somewhere between beer #5 and beer #6, winding through the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania, I had to take a leak. You put off that first one as long as you can, because it primes the pump, and you then start needing to go more and more often.
I grabbed the pitcher, turned around and got up on my knees on the seat facing my mother, the conversation and party never skipping a beat. I remember talking to her and laughing as I was going into the pitcher, with Carl in total disbelief (he had been 6'4" since he was in eighth grade, so he was cursed with having had to act like an adult his entire life...whereas I had yet to even try it).
When I was done, still yakking away, I simply opened the window, stuck the pitcher out as far as I could reach...so none would get on the car...and turned it exactly upside down. I swear, that was the move and the thought process.
Of course, as I did this, I was still talking and looking at Carl, when we heard a blood-curdling yelp from the back seat.
I turned around, as Carl looked into his rear-view mirror. The wind rushing past the car had blown the pee back in the window, and it splashed right into Dot's face. By the time we saw her, it was dripping off her nose, down her cheeks and forehead. She was laughing uncontrollably, and so was I, and at the sight of this, Carl erupted so violently that he almost lost control of the car. We were swerving down the road like a snake with a piano tail. Thank God no one was driving next to us. Or watching.
I honestly don't remember our next move. I'm sure we raced to the nearest exit, cleaned her up, wiped the car, got in, set up another round, and were on our way.
A classic story...my mother didn't get pissed off, even when she got pissed on.
I guess I should ask her if she remembers the incident, but she never remembers any of this stuff, and it drives me nuts. Wouldn't you remember that if it happened to you?
I hope you enjoy this story. Everyone is always asking me if it's true, and what really happened...so, here it is, once and for all.
In 1972, I left my college rock and roll band (The Pillowcayse...with a 'y'...we don't know why) in East Lansing, Michigan, and came back to Oyster Bay to spend the summer on the premise that I was going to earn enough money to buy a second-hand electric piano, which, I convinced the guys, would greatly enhance our band. The fact that I was totally inept at playing the piano must have escaped them. Maybe they were as sick of our noise as I was...but, at any rate, home I came.
(I had graduated from Michigan State in 1971, but had stayed in the college town to seek musical fame by getting demolished and playing frat parties. Yes, to avoid mainstream work and growing up.)
Back on Long Island, I worked as a cement carrier during the day, and as a waiter in a hot bar at night. I played on a local softball team (The Oyster Bay Beverage team, believe it or not), avoided the girl I was dating, and stayed pretty smashed for about two months.
At the end of the summer, the fog cleared, and I had no money. I convinced a girl I worked with at the bar to lend me the money for the piano, I found a used one in Queens, where you can find, used, anything you need 24 hours a day, and went and bought it...a Fender Rhodes 88. Ahh. Now, all I had to do was get it to Michigan.
I had no car, so I convinced my old friend Carl, the 6'4" drummer from my high school band (The Sonics), to drive me and my new old piano back to the Midwest in his '64 Mustang convertible.
At some point I guess my mother decided she wanted to go and we said okay. Looking back on the situation I can only guess that she had either kicked in some for the piano or volunteered gas money, so we couldn't refuse. I can't see me just saying, "Yeah, Dot, hop in, we're going cruising." I mean, she can be fun, but I was a 24-year-old screaming asshole, and Carl wasn't much better. You know...now that I write this, I have to correct myself. We definitely would've said 'hop in.' The more the merrier.
We got a few cases of beer, put a lot of it on ice, gave my mother a fifth of rye whiskey, and loaded us and it in the car somewhere around ten in the morning. (We of course wanted to get to East Lansing before the bars closed.)
My mother was sitting on the right in the back seat, I was shotgun, and huge Carl was at the wheel. The Mustang had a tiny trunk, and I remember at least half of the Fender Rhodes sticking out like a shelf. On my mother's left, on the seat, was the cooler...Carl was huge and had to have his seat all the way back in the tiny car, so there was no room behind it...and she played bartender. Being an experienced traveling beer drinker, I had an open-top pitcher with me, so we wouldn't have to pull over every time I had to pee. That would've stretched the fourteen hour trip considerably.
As ridiculous as this may read, these are the facts and these were my actual thought patterns at the time. Jesus.
So we're barreling down either Route 80 or whatever you used in the sections of Route 80 that weren't finished yet, drinking, laughing, and having a merry old time. Dot had a bottomless glass of rye on ice, and we had only to reach out for her to hand us an ice cold "chillie," which is what we called a beer (at any temperature) when I was in college. In a Mustang convertible, even with the top up, wailing along at 80 mph, we had to talk pretty loud to be heard, so the energy level was high and higher.
At some point, I'd imagine somewhere between beer #5 and beer #6, winding through the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania, I had to take a leak. You put off that first one as long as you can, because it primes the pump, and you then start needing to go more and more often.
I grabbed the pitcher, turned around and got up on my knees on the seat facing my mother, the conversation and party never skipping a beat. I remember talking to her and laughing as I was going into the pitcher, with Carl in total disbelief (he had been 6'4" since he was in eighth grade, so he was cursed with having had to act like an adult his entire life...whereas I had yet to even try it).
When I was done, still yakking away, I simply opened the window, stuck the pitcher out as far as I could reach...so none would get on the car...and turned it exactly upside down. I swear, that was the move and the thought process.
Of course, as I did this, I was still talking and looking at Carl, when we heard a blood-curdling yelp from the back seat.
I turned around, as Carl looked into his rear-view mirror. The wind rushing past the car had blown the pee back in the window, and it splashed right into Dot's face. By the time we saw her, it was dripping off her nose, down her cheeks and forehead. She was laughing uncontrollably, and so was I, and at the sight of this, Carl erupted so violently that he almost lost control of the car. We were swerving down the road like a snake with a piano tail. Thank God no one was driving next to us. Or watching.
I honestly don't remember our next move. I'm sure we raced to the nearest exit, cleaned her up, wiped the car, got in, set up another round, and were on our way.
A classic story...my mother didn't get pissed off, even when she got pissed on.
I guess I should ask her if she remembers the incident, but she never remembers any of this stuff, and it drives me nuts. Wouldn't you remember that if it happened to you?
