They Just Do Not Stop Having the Mafia in Providence
After having driven north of Connecticut for the first time shortly after the conclusion of my freshman year at Fairfield, I headed to a suburb of Providence, whose name I have since forgotten. I met up with five other Fairfield friends to crash at Allie's family compound complete with a pool and tennis courts. I didn't know actual people played tennis, let alone owned tennis courts. After a day full of feeling insignificant in the presence of true wealth, it was time to drown my lack of worth in cheap draft beer. Being that none of us were older than 19, our options were limited. The six of us piled into my car, which although it was the smallest, could fit one living person in the trunk. The trunk was actually quite spacious since it was a hatchback. You could see out of the rear window and the back seat opened up into it, so you could still smack the heads of those sitting in front of you. This had since been dubbed "the drunk trunk." We made our way into Providence and got into the only bar that would let us in without carding us, thought I think a few of us had Maine IDs that said we were born in the Ford administration. After entering without incident we promptly began celebrating. After a short time, Adam, being Italian, found other seemingly underage Italian patrons and struck up a conversation. Before long he was inebriated and must have said something to offend his partners in conversation because we had to pull him away from them as they shouted obscenities back and forth. I'm not sure exactly what was said, but apparently the other two said they had mob connections, and Adam disagreed. It seemed very plausible to the rest of us that they might, so we did what any other group of friends would do. We continued to feed him shots so he would pass out and cease attempting to explain to his Italian brethren that they were full of shit. The plan backfired as Adam's brain was set to "vomit" instead of "pass out." After managing to get him out of there, the only sober person among us grabbed the keys to my car and proceeded home with me in the drunk trunk. After pulling over several times to allow Adam to evacuate his stomach, we noticed we were being followed. Also, we were lost. Also, we were drunk. Also, we were probably listening to the Weezer blue album. The car following us pulled ahead of us and stopped. The guys in my car ran out to meet the guys emptying out of the other car. I, naturally, was locked in the trunk. I was yelling for someone to let me out as I saw the two masses of dudes converge. When they met it seemed to me like the scene in Braveheart when the Irish and Scottish charge each other in battle. They suddenly stopped and started shaking hands. In silence, I watched as they laughed and all walked back to their respective cars. I quickly learned that the car was being driven by Allie's boyfriend who thought we were the car full of the other Italian dudes from the bar that Adam was screaming at. Apparently they said something about Allie and he was out for blood. He just followed the wrong car. He had to be drunk because what group of guys claiming to have Mafia ties would ever drive an orange Ford Focus hatchback? We all had a good laugh, and Adam proceeded to throw up all over Rhode Island. Good times.
Let it Roll Baby Roll
The same summer as my trip to Rhode Island, I was working with my aunt doing catering jobs. One particular weekend we were catering a private party at somebody's house in South Jersey. I was tasked with picking up 12 dozen rolls (which I recently learned is called a gross) early in the morning and taking them to the party. Of the 144 rolls, maybe 50 were actually eaten. I threw the rest of the rolls back in my trunk after the party was over with the intention of maybe eating a few and tossing the rest. However, my procrastination proved to be highly beneficial in this case, for after three weeks of convincing myself that I would get the rolls out of my trunk tomorrow, I discovered that they had become rock hard. In most circumstances, this would prove to be insignificant but the timing of the discovery came at an opportune time. I had been hanging out one night in front of Bunn's house, and when Bunn and I went to drive off somewhere Polsky said something to irritate us both. I told Bunn to grab one of the brown bags from the trunk and not ask any questions. When he reached into the bag he didn't have to. As I cruised by Polsky while he tried to impress a local young strumpet, Bunn winged a roll at Polsky. When Polsky turned to see what the hell hit him, he was hit by several more. One or two may have missed and hit the young lady, but this was a casualty of war. There were around 90 rolls in my trunk and for the next month, when someone heard the words "Roll 'em," they knew to run the hell away. Towards the end they were so rock solid that when I broke one over Joe Face's head it sounded like I broke his skull with a bat. This sent him into a rage, causing him to steal my car and drive away with it. I had one of the brown bags on me and threw a roll as hard as I could through what I thought was an open window. To my surprise Joe Face had the foresight to roll the window up and the roll struck the glass. How the window didn't break, I'll never know. The sound echoed for about a minute and a half. At this point Joe Face and I knew it was time. We had gone too far. The rolls were put in the trash never to be used as a threat again. The disarmament has resulted in a more peaceful time, but every summer I think of heading back down to the Black Horse Pike to buy a gross.
First, We'll Make Snow Angels for Two Hours
In February of 2003, Fairfield County got hit with about 10 inches of snow overnight and into the morning...on a weekday. This had been the greatest thing to happen to Fairfield University class of 2005 since the cohabitation of Regis Hall. Gates had an early class that day, and woke me up like an eight year old on Christmas morning. After hearing class had been cancelled we began dancing around the room with a whiteness that matched the precipitation. Although it was only 9:30 in the morning, we celebrated the news with a cold Busch Light. Shortly after completing our first Busch Light of the morning, we celebrated our completion of our first Busch Light of the morning. This cycle repeated itself for several hours until the fear hit us. We had rushed through the beer at an alarming rate. The beer in the fridge was enough to get us through a few sleepy weekdays, but not an all out two day snow load. The situation had become dire. It was before noon, there was almost a foot of snow on the ground, we were too inebriated to drive, and we were going to run out of beer. Then suddenly, like an angel from heaven, Adam entered the room sober as a bird. This was clearly a sign from god, as Adam had not been sober since April of last year when he had accidentally slept through an entire day after celebrating his birthday. Though the odds of any stores still being open were slim, we charged Adam with a task of incredible magnitude. Though he had no car of his own, he gallantly volunteered to take the Focus into the blizzard though its control in the snow was known to be less than awful. After laughing in the face of danger, he enlisted the services of his trustworthy co-pilot, Duni. Gately and I gave Adam and Duni all the cash we had and wished them good lock and godspeed. Once the money had been distributed, Nolan showed up as well to assure us all that he would bravely wait with Gately and I to guard the remainder of the beer. We watched the two drive off from our dorm room window knowing full well, that we may never see them again. They were gone for nearly three hours. We were down to our last beer and were already reading the ingredients to the Febreeze to confirm if it would be a apt substitute. Then we heard a voice. As the voice grew nearer we noticed that the "r"s in every word had gone unpronounced. It was Adam, that beautiful Bostonian son of a bitch! Adam and Duni burst through the door bearing three duffel bags full of beer and Christian Brothers Egg Nog. Nobody asked what horrors the two had to entail to get the four cylindered machine up the icy hills and through the mountains of snow. When the snow melted a week later, there was not a scratch on the Focus. They had driven it, against the odds, through a snow covered hell I don't even want to imagine and came out clean on the other side. And that children, is how Adam and Duni saved Christmas...I mean Tuesday.
Run to the Hills
What the Focus lacked in horsepower it made up in heart. It was like the David Eckstein of automobiles. The first time I ever went camping in Northeastern Pennsyvania, I volunteered to drive Gates and King from Teeling's parents' house. This would be the one of only two times the Focus made it camping. I loaded my car with eight cases of beer, two extra bodies, a handle of Jager, a water bottle half full of gin, and a few duffel bags full of water shoes, cut-off t-shirts, combustible objects, tents, toga sheets, and ping pong balls...you know, the essentials. I had probably never had that much weight in my car before, and was unaware of the steep hills the Focus would have to climb. In the first half of the trip, I encountered a hill that would have been the demise of most four cylinder compacts filled to the brim with booze and hung over undergrads. The cars that I followed made the ascent without delay, but the Focus was not as adept at mountain climbing. The hill was probably only a quarter mile long, but it felt like it took me about ten minutes to will the car forward with the RPM dial stuck to the right and the mph dial stuck to the left. When I made it to the intersection at the top of the hill, the drivers behind me and those waiting at the intersection stopped where they were and appluaded. Nobody thought the Focus would make it. I never doubted her.
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '04
I remember waking up stuck to a brown, beer-soaked couch in some god awful smelling townhouse living room. I thought to myself, "What a fowl hour to be woken by some strange, pale faced lunatic shouting something about politics." I'm certain now it was Nolan, but at the time I wasn't sure. After eating a handfull of Anacin, I managed to slide into a gray canvas coat and hide my eyes behind a pair of somebody's sunglasses. It was the winter of 2004 and Nolan and I, along with various other members of Fairfield University's less desirables, were spear-heading Paul Duffy's underground campaign for class president. Duffy was smart enough to enlist a real campaign manager to put up campaign posters, talk to the papers, and make sure he didn't show up drunk for debates, but we were the ones who weren't afraid to get shit on our hands. Earlier in the month, through a series of covert operations, we were able to block the names of Duffy's compettion from appearing in bold letters accross a series of dorm hall and townhouse windows. Duffy was the first candidate ever to run for president against someone running for reelection. That's because the year before a sophomore was elected for the first time in school history. If Duffy was going to win, he needed our help. We had planned to concentrate our energy on the Freshmen vote that day. Freshmen weren't permitted to have cars on campus, so a team of us were going to drive from dorm to dorm giving freshmen rides to and from whereever the hell it is that freshmen need to go. Nolan and I spent over six hours in the Focus mentioning Duffy's various political stances, such as the deconstruction of the judicial counsel, weekly visits from the Super Duper Weenie food truck, and the expansion of the student body's existence on Fairfield Beach. We also happened to mention some of his competitor's goals for 2004-05, such as the creation of a dry campus, forced triples in the dorms, and the mandatory completion of advanced calculus III for all students. Also, didn't anyone find it strange that Duffy's rival's grandfather fled from Germany in 1944 and was sending him gold bars from a PO Box in Argentina? Nolan and I certainly did. After six long hours of delivering truth to the masses, the Focus could bare no more and one of my tires exploded like one particular candidate's hopes and dreams of reelection. I drove on a donut for two weeks before I had the money to buy a new tire, but Duffy won the election and evil was defeated.
 |
| RIP Ford Focus: 9/2000-2/2011 |
