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"Okay, how much money do you guys have?" Jim asked. He was the adventurous one in the group, and the other four of us reached deep into our pockets and came up with thirty dollars, or thereabout. I wasn't convinced, but I handed my wad of small bills to him, only to pull them back at the last second.

"Are you sure this is a good idea? It's like...fifteen degrees out there."

"Come on! Are you with us or not?" he asked with a snort, and I reluctantly handed him my six bucks. As a group, we turned toward the door and walked out in unison with the first period bell. With that, we bid adieu to Morgantown High School and started the mile walk into the downtown area. Somehow, we had to kill an hour in the cold before heading toward South High Street, and somebody got the idea that we should hang out in the local library. The library. We were skipping school to hang out in the library. That made a whole lot of sense!

We found a table in the back, but, sure enough, what was destined to be a lousy day got off to a bad start. We started a round-robin paper football tournament, but when one of the guys argued too loudly about whether or not a field goal was good, the librarian kicked us out. Yep, she tossed us out in the street to freeze our butts off, so we slowly headed toward our destination, the state ABC (alcoholic beverage control) store. Back then, booze was sold in state operated stores in West Virginia, and we were too young to buy our hooch, but we had a plan!

"Here's the deal," Jim said, as we arrived at the store. "See that bum over there? I'm going to give him the money and tell him to get as many bottles of MD 20/20 as he can buy. See, we're going to let him keep one or two dor himself..."

We all got the picture. None of us were what you'd call drinkers, and this was going to be one of those steps that all boys take on the way to manhood. 9 am eventually rolled around, and Jim walked over to the cartoonish drunk and fed him a line of BS.

"Mad Dog!" the man roared. "Sure, I'll fix you up, but you could get something good with all of this money..." Eventually, Jim convinced him to go along with our plan, and in a matter of minutes, we had a bag conaining five or six bottles of cheap wine. We were set. I admit it now; I was excited, and we headed down the hill to the South High bridge. We sat down on a dirty bank, and watched the muddy, half-frozen water of Deckers Creek pass by. At the moment, it seemed to beat the heck out of sitting in my sophomore English class.

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