Rhinoceros – "Apricot Brandy" (1969)

When you have ingested more alcohol than your liver can handle, your body responds by vomiting – getting rid of the undigested alcohol before it is absorbed by the body.

Vomiting has another salutary effect on people who drink to excess.  Because vomiting is so unpleasant, most people who throw up because they drank too much won’t make the same mistake for a long time.

But what if you are so drunk that you don’t remember throwing up?  If you have no memory of vomiting after drinking too much, you won’t learn that it’s not a good idea to drink yourself into oblivion.  

Of course, it’s a different story if you drink so much that you die of alcohol poisoning.

*     *     *     *     *

I once managed to drink so much that I had no recollection of throwing up when I woke up the next morning, but not so much that it killed me.  I guess you could say that I sort of hit the “Goldilocks Zone” of getting hammered – not too much and not little, but just the right amount.

That happened the very first time I ever got drunk.  Not that I’m trying to excuse my bad judgment, but my inexperience with alcohol was such that I had no idea what I was doing until it was far too late.

Let’s begin at the beginning.  It was 1970, and I was a senior in high school.  Several dozen classmates and I had signed up to represent our school’s Key Club at the annual district convention in Kansas City.

The first priority of those who were going to the convention was getting our hands on enough booze so we could get drunk in our hotel rooms once we got to Kansas City.

None of us were old enough to buy alcohol legally – the drinking age in Missouri in those days was 21, and all of us were 17 or 18 – but that didn’t stop us.

One of my friends managed to procure a bottle of apricot brandy before we left.

Another classmate boldly walked into a liquor store across the road from our hotel and walked out with several bottles of lime-flavored vodka.  (The guy who did this was without a doubt the squarest, straightest kid on the trip.  It’s been over 50 years since this trip happened, and I still remember the amazement we all felt with he came out of the store with all that booze.)

*     *     *     *     *

Our Key Club district encompassed Missouri and Arkansas.  About two-thirds of the local clubs in the district were from Missouri high schools, but somehow an Arkansawyer was elected district governor.  

That was partly the fault of my club’s voting delegates – including me.  I don’t recall attending a minute of the convention’s committee meetings or floor sessions, and I’m sure I didn’t show up to cast my ballot when the district governor was elected.   

What were we doing during the convention sessions?  Beats me.  But I remember what we did the evening after the convention had adjourned.

First, we spent a fair amount of time peeping in the windows of our hotel, hoping to get a glimpse of dishabille stewardesses who had forgotten to close their curtains.  (Our hotel was near the Kansas City airport, and several airlines had contracted with that hotel to house their flight crews overnight.  I doubt that any of the stewardesses were careless or exhibitionistic enough to expose themselves to us high-school peeping Toms, but dum spiro, spero.)

Second, we got drunk.

*     *     *     *     *

I think I had copious amounts of both the lime-flavored vodka and the apricot-flavored brandy, but I blame my bout of regurgitation mostly on the apricot brandy.  

I wouldn’t seek out lime-flavored vodka today, but I have no doubt that I could suck down a glass or two with no ill effects.  But just catching a whiff of apricot brandy would be enough to send me sprinting to the toilet.

Hopefully, I would get there before the upchucking commenced.  That apparently didn’t happen in Kansas City – according to my hotel roommates, I threw up just about everywhere except in the toilet that evening.

As I noted above, I have no memory of my barfing.  And I have no memory of cleaning up the disgusting mess I made.

That’s because I didn’t.  My roommates did.

*     *     *     *     *

I must have been hungover the next day, but I don’t remember feeling particularly bad when I woke up.

You would have thought that the three-hour bus ride back to my hometown might have made me feel more than a bit queasy.  But all I recall about the ride back was a lengthy and truly stupid argument about Daylight Savings Time, which I believe had gone into effect that night before.

Half of the bus riders were convinced we should set our watches back an hour.  The other half were equally adamant that we should set our watches an hour forward.  

I just learned that DST first went into effect in Missouri in the spring of 1970 – which was the year of our trip to the Key Club district convention.  The fact that we had no previous experience with DST explains why we were so clueless about the right way to reset our timepieces.  

A former teacher of mine used to say, “When the blind lead the blind, we all go in the ditch together.”  In our case, half of us would have not only gone into the ditch, but also would have had the wrong time on our watches.

*      *      *      *      *

I mentioned previously that a Key Clubber from Arkansas was elected governor at the 1970 district convention.  

I’ve never forgotten his name – it’s funny how the human brain works – so I Googled him while writing this post.  

In the next 2 or 3 lines, I’ll tell you what I learned from that Google search.

*     *     *     *     *

I’m sure none of you remember Rhinoceros, an American rock band that was formed in 1967 and broke up several years later after recording three albums that sold poorly despite considerable promotional efforts by their record label.

The band’s most successful single, “Apricot Brandy,” made it to #46 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in 1969.  It was an instrumental – which is why the usual two or three lines of song lyrics are missing from the beginning of this post.

Click here to listen to “Apricot Brandy.”

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.