Kinds of Drunks

Evan Williams Poster

My grandmother had a name for men that drank and still went to work. They were drame drinkers. This is a word that she possible made up. The definition of this word in the not Webster Dictionary but the Nell Dictionary; would be someone that drinks at night but still gets up and goes to work. Dictionaries have more than one explaination of words so I will put another; someone who can drink all day and still work. Those would be the ones that drank in the cotton patch. Today it would be men that own their own businesses. These have other not so industrious people that work for them. Their basic day consists of going from job to job checking on the people that work for them. These are men that have uncanny luck to not get pulled over by the law. The reason they don't get stopped could be they are known by the law as owners of a business. Drink everyday and still do not fall to rock bottom as Daddy and Uncle Keith did.
Their drinking was of this nature. They worked long enough to make enough money to lay drunk for weeks at a time. The longest I remember Daddy staying sober was one month. I was very proud of this and baked him a cake to celebrate. He was not much on eating anything sweet. He did like plain cake with peaches poured over it. That is the celebritory cake that I baked for him that anniversary of being sober for a month. He came into the kitchen as I stood in at the counter in the kitchen finishing the plain cake. I had used a Duncan Hines Cake mix for the cake. He walked up behind me and I smelled it; I guess he was celebrating, also.
Sober for a month meant that he had saved enough money to get ahead alittle. He had possibly made enough maybe to rent us a house and leave my grandmother's. In my mind that would be not so good anyway. The thought of living in a house with Mama and Daddy as caregivers scared me beyond anything. I knew that when were still lived in Michigan that we were hungrey and cold most of the time. Grandmother had feed us and kept us warm. The beds were never left wet. This really was not a worry this time either that I should sweat. The month of sober just meant he would hit the couch once more. The couch with the gold plastic that my grandmother had covered over and over. The couch with sheet metal under the end that Daddy rested his head on while he lay there for a couple of weeks. The cushion of the couch was were the bottle was hidden. He lay there and would reach under the cushion to retrieve the bottle. He did not eat; only drank for the weeks he was on that couch. Going outside to the trunk of the car every day or so to retrieve the stash of whiskey that he had bought with the money he made. When he ran out of whiskey and money the coming off the drunk would start. His face would have white scales on it. He would be hungrey; beginning the ordering around of Mama to fix him something to eat. Mama could not cook making the anger he had from being out of money for whiskey worse.
He sat at the same chair at every meal. It was from that seat that he yelled at how and what she was fixing wrong. She in a freaked out manner would try to get it right. This on one occasion lead him to hit her in between the eyes with a glass filled with iced tea. The cut was not all that bad, but still I think of how bad that must have hurt.
In those days drinking and driving was not as harsh according to law as it is now. We drove the drunks around many times as children anyway. As kids we always wanted to drive anyway so away we would go. It did not matter to me that when I left it may be a day or two before we returned home. Daddy was not so bad; he wanted to drink at home. He could put the bottle under the couch cushion and not be bothered.

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Uncle Keith was different. He liked being out and about the first leg of his pulling a drunk. On one occasion I really thought that I was never ever going to get to go back to grandmothers. It was a big mistake that day to be selfish enough to just want to get to drive. If not for us stopping at Aunt Faye's for him to raise a little hell with her I may have had to sleep in the car.
Aunt Faye's husband drank, but not often. He was one that could drink and stop when his wife made him. His drinking binges were few and far between. He did create some drama a couple of times with his drinking. He was just a normal social drinker, I guess. The dictionary of Nell did not have one for normal drinking. The people she tagged as drame drinkers were her brother-in-law and a neighbor Preacher Courm. Preacher was not really a preacher. They just called him that, because he like to dress up when he was young and fresh out of the Navy. Uncle Luke was a drame drinker to her because he took a drink anytime one was offered, but that was about it. Drunks of all kinds. Men of all kinds are to me what makes the drunk. Some can drink and some can't.