Mr. Write's Page

College memories are a hoot.

The subject of this story is an incident that occurred early in my freshman year of college. I don’t remember it in elaborate detail, but the main characters and pertinent facts are etched into my memory banks.

Let me set the scene…

When I went off to the University of Georgia in the fall of 1960, I didn’t know a single soul on the UGA campus. We Smiths had just returned to Georgia after living in Europe for four years. I had applied for college admission by mail and was accepted by mail. I’d never set foot in Athens.

Campus life was, therefore, a bit unsettling at first. Most new students already had at least a few friends there. They knew people from their hometowns, either fellow freshmen or kids who had gone off to UGA a year or two ahead of them.

Even the foreign exchange students (mostly well-off kids from Southeast Asia whose parents packed them off to the U.S. to keep them out of the Vietnam War) usually came to Athens in groups.

So, the first friends I made in college were the guys on my floor in Reed Hall, the dormitory for male freshmen (all of them, no exceptions).

Of course, my circle of acquaintances soon widened. I met people in my classes, in ROTC, and elsewhere. The initial feeling of being an odd duck didn’t last long.

The incident of which I speak happened with a group of my Reed Hall buddies, undoubtedly on a Friday or Saturday night. I’m sure of that, because we were on a quest for alcohol, and I never did such things on school nights.

In those days, the legal drinking age in Georgia was 21. I was a mere 17 years old then — wouldn’t turn 18 until January 1961. Most of my friends were 18, some 19, so the odds of scoring a beer or two were not good.

However, we lived on hope — hope that an upperclassman might show us pity. Hope that a kindly bartender would look the other way. Hope that someone in the group had managed to get his hands on a coveted fake I.D. card.

On the night in question, our little group walked across campus from Reed Hall to downtown Athens, a distance of about half a mile. Our destination was the legendary Old South Tavern on West Broad Street.

The Old South Tavern is long gone. The place was shuttered and bulldozed decades ago to make way for a row of commercial buildings.

Even in my day, the Old South was ancient and on the decline. Frankly, it was fast becoming a seedy old dump. But it was a genuine Athens institution and wildly popular.

Today, the Old South Tavern lives in the hearts of generations of male students who spent countless evenings there, trod the creaking floors, jostled their way through the boisterous crowds, and waded through the inevitable inch of standing water on the men’s room floor.

That night, we were a party of four, all freshmen: my roommate Paul, his longtime best pal Warren, a third fellow from the dorm whose name I don’t recall, and me.

Ah, Warren. What a memorable character. Warren was shortish and stocky, ebullient and brash. As is the case with some people, he was of indeterminate age.

He simply looked older than his years. And you knew he would look precisely the same at age 29, 39, and 49. If you need a mental picture: the actor Jack Black.

Warren was a small-town rich kid and very popular in Reed Hall. That’s because his father was a moonshiner, a wealthy and successful man who was influential in Middle Georgia politics.

Thus, Warren had access to a modest, but never-ending supply of premium quality, professionally-crafted, illegal corn liquor. It was truly sublime stuff. Everyone wanted to be Warren’s friend.

Warren accepted me because I roomed with his buddy Paul. And that school year, I was privileged to sample Warren’s father’s white lightnin’ many times. It was incredibly pleasant and smooth. Gentle and kind to palate and throat.

Commercial whiskey, served neat, tests the fortitude of a normal person; Warren’s father’s moonshine was as potent as a shot of Jim Beam or Jack Daniel’s, but no more harsh than a sip of apricot nectar.

We learned, of course, not to ask Warren to share his nectar. He took offense at that. Instead, we just waited until he made the offer. When his supply was adequate, he was a generous guy. When his supply was low, we were out of luck.

That night when we assembled to head downtown, Warren did not make the offer. But clearly, he had sampled some of the merchandise before he left his room, and he was feeling no pain.

As we all knew, Warren was a fun guy when inebriated. He was a friendly, happy drunk. But, even though he was joyous and jovial when he got sauced, his inhibitions evaporated in proportion to his alcohol consumption. When Warren got plastered, he became unpredictable.

Unpredictable, as when he decided, one dark night, to totter down the yellow line in the center of Lexington Highway as drivers sped past him in both directions, swerving and cursing and blowing their horns. How he escaped death, only God knows.

The evening was mild and pleasant when we arrived at the Old South. The bar was teeming with activity. And Warren was too tipsy for his own good.

But something that night was different. Milling around on the sidewalk in front of the main entrance was a large scrum of male students. Why, I wondered, is everyone standing outside? Why aren’t they filing into the bar?

Then I saw the two stone-faced bouncers in the doorway, checking IDs.

The four of us stood at the rear of the scrum and communicated with looks. Awww, man! Can you believe this? When did THIS start? No FAIR!

Actually, only three of us had that silent conversation. While we were lamenting the sobering turn of events, Warren had melted into the crowd and was making his way toward the entrance.

Now, you should know one additional detail about the situation. Although both bouncers were appropriately beefy and menacing, one of them was a woman.

Unexpected, yes. I have no explanation for it. I doubt if even the Athens PD had female officers at the time. But there she was.

And at the moment, she was watching with interest as Warren approached her with a raised forefinger and an amiable grin.

By the time we reached the entrance, Warren was standing a few feet from her — looking up at her, actually — chattering and chuckling in as suave a manner as he could muster.

She glared back at him without expression.

A few steps away, the male bouncer glanced at the two of them, concluded that she had things under control, and returned to whatever he was doing.

During those brief seconds, Warren’s banter was largely unintelligible, delivered away from us and in quiet tones. But his next words reached us with crystal clarity.

He leaned forward, placed one hand on the lady’s forearm, and said in the seductive manner of a Hollywood screen Romeo, “You and me, baby… Me and you…”

One second later, Warren’s arm was pinned behind his back, and the lady was hustling him around the corner and out of sight.

——————

I never learned what consequences Warren paid, if any, because of the episode. He always brushed off the matter with a chuckle and declined to elaborate.

Today, he and Paul probably are still out there, running their respective family businesses back home.

And someone, somewhere has photos of the late, great Old South Tavern. I wish I did, but I don’t.

The best I could do: this photo of West Broad Street in the 1960s, looking uphill toward downtown. I highlighted the Old South’s neon sign in red.

The photo below shows the same block of West Broad Street in 2013:

College memories are indeed a hoot.