Malt Liquor

During my younger years, my seedy, heady college days, summer marked the only time my childhood friends and I could get together and kick back with a few beers.  Due to scheduling restraints involving baseball, menial jobs, and summer courses, the week was then whittled even further down to one day in which we all were free -

Sunday.

Now Sunday is a great day (just as good as any of the others) and by the time the calendar looped around to it, we, as a collective group, needed to blow off steam.  Fighting the "Man" for six days straight - be he boss, professor, coach, parent, etc. - a couple cold ones were in high demand.

As fate would have it, our hometown was dry on Sunday.  As a matter of fact, the entire state was prohibited from selling beer and liquor on the "Day of Rest" during those years.  Fortunately, our neighbor to the west, Maryland, sold beer out the ying-yang each and every day, and they especially welcomed Delawareans to stimulate their economy come Day 7.

The town of Marydel, half Delaware / half Maryland, was only fifteen miles away from us, so armed with fictitious identification, we would venture across the state line every week to pick up a case of the cheapest beer we could buy.

It was on one such Sunday evening adventure that we procured a case of Mickey's beer.
We had never heard of the stuff, but it came in wonderful short and stubby green bottles with a huge opening to drink from.  It even had a neat-looking label emblazoned with a cartoon bee.  How could we go wrong?

We hurriedly transported the contraband back to our secret lair in Delaware, cracked a few open, made a toast, and filled our mouths with the most vile, putrid liquid to ever knowingly pass our lips.

Not that I have ever partaken, but my first thought was "toenail juice."

It was at this moment that we all took a closer look at the label and discovered that in our haste, we had not purchased beer at all.  Mickey's beer turned out to actually be Mickey's malt liquor.

I have no idea what the difference is between the two chemically, but I can attest to the fact that as a general rule of thumb, beer tastes good, whereas, we had learned, malt liquor does not.

By this time, it was far too late to make a return trip to Maryland.  That boat had already departed and now we were young men stuck with nasty swill.

We roasted marshmallows that night and glumly chased them down with Tahitian Treat soda by the fire.

The next day we shot the rest of the case of Mickey's with 12 gauge shotguns next to the railroad tracks and promised never to buy it again -

unless it was strictly for target practice purposes.

I cringe just looking at it.