“Beer face” was a thing among young teenagers.
Discipline l was lax at my cousin’s house so me and my brother spent much time there. My cousin’s older brother was 18 and could buy alcohol.
Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill was the “gateway alcohol”, I was prob’ly 14.
Everybody knew real men drank beer so shortly thereafter I/we transitioned to Schaefer, the mildest flavor and least likely to cause “beer face”.
Budweiser was indeed the “King of Beers” but it was also more expensive, IIRC Carling Black Label was cheaper and more usual (the scale of our economy back then cracks me up today
).
My brother and cousin are both a year or two older so I was introduced to hard liquor quite early, Wild Turkey and Jim Beam were the usual. It fascinated me that you could pour a little of either on the street and put a cigarette lighter to it and it would burn.
Drinking until we passed out was usual, prob’ly about every other weekend. Senior year of high school, New Years at my brother’s apartment, grain alcohol I was passed out by 8pm
Watch “Dazed and Confused” to see how much high school kids ordinarily drank back then.
My brother and cousin became full blown alcoholics, I never even started to have that craving, which leads me to believe there’s a big genetic component involved with respect to alcoholism.
Both ended up in AA, nowadays both my brother (rehab counselor) and cousin (Teamster) make more retired than I do working.
I shoulda drank harder when I was a kid 🙂
