The Sausage Part 1
Years ago, when I was still able to see youth if I turned around fast enough, I found myself at my parents house for reasons long washed bare by memory. The relationship between my father and I could best be described as granite rubbing against rocks, crumbling loose detritus about us. They were the clenched years. I had been away at school learning about bureaucracy and disappointment.
My allergies, at the time, ravaged me and would often leave my eyes so swollen I would skip classes. For whatever reason, I chose to tell Dad about this. Which led to our inevitable clash. "Why aren't you getting allergy shots then?!" "Are you kidding me? I've been bugging you guys to get me allergy shots since I was 12 and your response has always been 'You'll get used to it'!"
I've always found my guitar to be a salve for moments like this and I made use of the Charvette I had left up there. Several hard riffs later my father returned, perhaps realizing he might be in the wrong in this. In each hand he held a peculiar peace offering in the shape of smoked sausages. "Pick one," he suggested. And I did. Turning around he muttered that he would mail the other to my brother, also away at school. (Just to keep this from lingering in your mind, he never did receive a sausage in the mail.)
So I cautiously took the sausage home with me. Home at this point was a big ugly yellow haunted house perched around a bend on Route 1 in East Brunswick. Shared with a chunk of my band and 4 or 5 other people at different times as well as a basset hound that was immune to death. Now, being in a band, and living in a haunted house, the obvious line of thinking is there needed to be a Halloween party. And so it happened.
We didn't really have an understanding of how big this party was going to be until a week before when several housemates called a cab to take them to the bars in New Brunswick. The driver had turned around and said "Hey, aren't you guys having a party next week?" Our response was to put the cab companies phone number on every door in the house.
To give you an idea of how big it was, There were people there from all over New Jersey, and some from New York and even one from Georgia. There were 3 live bands that played til 4-5 in the morning. Bloodmobile, 3 To 6 Inches and Boss Jim Gettys. Some estimates had 300 people inside the house throughout the night, but there was also a party outside that never made it in. Noone was allowed in without a costume. 2 people came dressed as me.We kicked 8 barrels of beer, there was pumpkin punching in the kitchen. There were 23 cars parked on our lawn and down the street. Faces I didn't know thanked me for weeks. I remember one guy falling down a flight of stairs dressed as a zombie....twice. Each time all he had to say was "Brains....brains...". Unfortunately, I have photographic evidence of the cesspool that was our kitchen the following day.
And throughout all this debauchery, the house remained essentially unscathed. The only thing that went missing, was the sausage.
My allergies, at the time, ravaged me and would often leave my eyes so swollen I would skip classes. For whatever reason, I chose to tell Dad about this. Which led to our inevitable clash. "Why aren't you getting allergy shots then?!" "Are you kidding me? I've been bugging you guys to get me allergy shots since I was 12 and your response has always been 'You'll get used to it'!"
I've always found my guitar to be a salve for moments like this and I made use of the Charvette I had left up there. Several hard riffs later my father returned, perhaps realizing he might be in the wrong in this. In each hand he held a peculiar peace offering in the shape of smoked sausages. "Pick one," he suggested. And I did. Turning around he muttered that he would mail the other to my brother, also away at school. (Just to keep this from lingering in your mind, he never did receive a sausage in the mail.)
So I cautiously took the sausage home with me. Home at this point was a big ugly yellow haunted house perched around a bend on Route 1 in East Brunswick. Shared with a chunk of my band and 4 or 5 other people at different times as well as a basset hound that was immune to death. Now, being in a band, and living in a haunted house, the obvious line of thinking is there needed to be a Halloween party. And so it happened.
We didn't really have an understanding of how big this party was going to be until a week before when several housemates called a cab to take them to the bars in New Brunswick. The driver had turned around and said "Hey, aren't you guys having a party next week?" Our response was to put the cab companies phone number on every door in the house.
To give you an idea of how big it was, There were people there from all over New Jersey, and some from New York and even one from Georgia. There were 3 live bands that played til 4-5 in the morning. Bloodmobile, 3 To 6 Inches and Boss Jim Gettys. Some estimates had 300 people inside the house throughout the night, but there was also a party outside that never made it in. Noone was allowed in without a costume. 2 people came dressed as me.We kicked 8 barrels of beer, there was pumpkin punching in the kitchen. There were 23 cars parked on our lawn and down the street. Faces I didn't know thanked me for weeks. I remember one guy falling down a flight of stairs dressed as a zombie....twice. Each time all he had to say was "Brains....brains...". Unfortunately, I have photographic evidence of the cesspool that was our kitchen the following day.
And throughout all this debauchery, the house remained essentially unscathed. The only thing that went missing, was the sausage.
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