Intro Disclaimer: Although this story describes drinking a whole lot of alcohol, just as with the doper stories, this was a long time ago and that kind of excess was endemic at the time. The Cadillac Man is not now nor has he ever been an alcoholic.
The Cadillac Man and I ran together quite a bit and we often wound up at the College Inn, a neighbourhood bar which had almost nothing to do with the college. Some of the biggest dope dealers in the city would hang out there right alongside life-time drunks but no-one was making deals there, it was just a place to hang and drink some beers. This was the headquarters for the Clifton Boys and it had been for decades. That wasn't a gang, it was just where you went in Clifton and most of the people who were hanging there had grown up together.
Usually the Cadillac Man would drink a lot of beers as the College Inn had a pinball machine that paid off and he would go into kind of a trance playing it trying to win that big payout. He just had to get that Big Win. Once he started playing, that pretty much finished things as he couldn't hear anything except what the machine was doing. That might have been cool if he were the Pinball Wizard but that was Tommy and quite a different story.
Skyline Chili was across the street and the way things usually went was that whomever was running that night would suck up some beers at the College Inn, stumble over to Skyline for some chili, and then everyone would go home. I didn't live that far from the College Inn so I would just walk if the Cadillac Man really got hooked-up with the pinball machine.
So it went on this particular night and he got pretty good and drunk before he finally decided to head out. This was a problem as it was quite a distance to his parent's house and part of the drive was along the Interstate highway. He said later that he could keep himself going straight on the highway by keeping the overhead lights moving across the windscreen. Somehow he survived.
He was just barely conscious by the time he got to the last corner on the street to his house and there was one little problem, more accurately quite a large one, between he and that destination. There was a big-rig semi-trailer parked on the other side of the corner. In a glorious display of sparks and bending metal, the Cadillac Man drove right between the wheels of the trailer and this quite neatly took off the whole top of the car.
The reason the crash didn't take off the Cadillac Man's head was that he passed out and rolled over to the seat just before he hit. The impact didn't hurt him but it did wake him and he discovered he was covered in broken glass from all the windows. He was so drunk that he just shook it off, thinking, hmmm, this is unusual. Then he decided since he was so close to the house he would just walk the rest of way.
He did make it to the house and even found his way into his bed ... and this is where the cops found him not long afterward. He hadn't been hard to find as they only had to follow the debris from the crash that had left a trail behind him as he stumbled home.
How he explained this to his parents is your guess as I sure don't know. Explaining it to the judge must have been even more fun.
As I wrote up front, the Cadillac Man was never an alcoholic. Maybe this accident wised him up. I'm glad it did as he's been my bud for at least forty years and he's still going strong, albeit without the College Inn and its pinball machine or its beers.
The Cadillac Man and I ran together quite a bit and we often wound up at the College Inn, a neighbourhood bar which had almost nothing to do with the college. Some of the biggest dope dealers in the city would hang out there right alongside life-time drunks but no-one was making deals there, it was just a place to hang and drink some beers. This was the headquarters for the Clifton Boys and it had been for decades. That wasn't a gang, it was just where you went in Clifton and most of the people who were hanging there had grown up together.
Usually the Cadillac Man would drink a lot of beers as the College Inn had a pinball machine that paid off and he would go into kind of a trance playing it trying to win that big payout. He just had to get that Big Win. Once he started playing, that pretty much finished things as he couldn't hear anything except what the machine was doing. That might have been cool if he were the Pinball Wizard but that was Tommy and quite a different story.
Skyline Chili was across the street and the way things usually went was that whomever was running that night would suck up some beers at the College Inn, stumble over to Skyline for some chili, and then everyone would go home. I didn't live that far from the College Inn so I would just walk if the Cadillac Man really got hooked-up with the pinball machine.
So it went on this particular night and he got pretty good and drunk before he finally decided to head out. This was a problem as it was quite a distance to his parent's house and part of the drive was along the Interstate highway. He said later that he could keep himself going straight on the highway by keeping the overhead lights moving across the windscreen. Somehow he survived.
He was just barely conscious by the time he got to the last corner on the street to his house and there was one little problem, more accurately quite a large one, between he and that destination. There was a big-rig semi-trailer parked on the other side of the corner. In a glorious display of sparks and bending metal, the Cadillac Man drove right between the wheels of the trailer and this quite neatly took off the whole top of the car.
The reason the crash didn't take off the Cadillac Man's head was that he passed out and rolled over to the seat just before he hit. The impact didn't hurt him but it did wake him and he discovered he was covered in broken glass from all the windows. He was so drunk that he just shook it off, thinking, hmmm, this is unusual. Then he decided since he was so close to the house he would just walk the rest of way.
He did make it to the house and even found his way into his bed ... and this is where the cops found him not long afterward. He hadn't been hard to find as they only had to follow the debris from the crash that had left a trail behind him as he stumbled home.
How he explained this to his parents is your guess as I sure don't know. Explaining it to the judge must have been even more fun.
As I wrote up front, the Cadillac Man was never an alcoholic. Maybe this accident wised him up. I'm glad it did as he's been my bud for at least forty years and he's still going strong, albeit without the College Inn and its pinball machine or its beers.
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