Note: Excerpted from the forthcoming memoir “Jim Blahnik: Separating the Man from the Myth”, written by James P. Blahnik and edited by Frederick J. Blahnik
“Green Death”
By James P. Blahnik
First, allow me to provide a little background information for my assorted readers to make this story more complete. In the fall of 1961 I was scheduled to do my student teaching assignment at Spring Valley High School–Spring Valley, Minnesota—while in pursuit of a high school teaching degree from Winona State College (it was still “College” at that time rather than the more pretentious “University”, a name change which was to come myriad years later). Commuting from our Blahnik family farm just northeast of Austin, Minnesota was impractical and undoubtedly too far for someone living on cartoonishly limited means like me. My Uncle Fred and Aunt Catherine Blahnik, who lived and farmed seven miles north of Spring Valley, next sprouted angels’ wings and graciously invited me stay with them for those three months of student teaching, simultaneously making my educational internship feasible and greatly reducing my living expenses. I obviously jumped at their offer without thinking twice.
One Saturday that fall Fred and Catherine invited me to ride along with them on their weekly grocery jaunt to Spring Valley, and I gladly accepted their offer. My social schedule at the time, given the fact I was living about forty miles away from home and didn’t know a soul in or around Spring Valley, wasn’t exactly bursting at the seams so even an invitation to chaperone my middle-aged aunt and uncle on a pedestrian shopping excursion sounded about as exciting as personally attending the deciding seventh game of a hotly contested World Series. I should probably note here that Catherine did not possess a Minnesota driver’s license (her choice) at the time and so that is why grocery shopping for the married couple was a two-person endeavor.
After Fred parked their car in front of the grocery store in downtown Spring Valley, Catherine suggested that I might like to accompany Fred over to the municipal liquor store across the street from the supermarket to have “a beer” while she shopped for household goods. I had turned twenty one years of age the previous spring and felt that one beer was more than doable since I’d had a few myself during my legendary earlier sojourn in Winona (Heh heh heh!!!). Thus my short, stocky, nearly bald uncle and I sat down at the bar in the liquor store and I expected Fred would probably order a popular tap beer, which he would then sip leisurely while relishing every last drop.
Wrong!!!
Wrong ten times over, Jim!!!!!
Fred immediately ordered a can of Stite beer from the bartender. My readers in the year 2021 have probably never heard of Stite before. I had. Having listened to a phalanx of neighboring farmers whispering conspiratorially with Cheshire grins away from the womenfolk when I was much younger, I knew that Stite packed a much bigger wallop than ordinary strong beer; the alcohol content in that tepid stuff is somewhere around five per cent. Conversely, Stite was a malt liquor and contained around fourteen percent alcohol. In other words, it possessed the eye of a tiger and the kick of a furious mule. Of note, Stite malt liquor was also nicknamed “Green Death” owing to its putrid green color. Stite came in eight ounce metal cans that required the use of a “church key” type opener to punch a hole in the top before one could consume any of the contents.
I figured that Fred would unhurriedly sip on his can of Stite while I casually drank my twelve ounce glass of tap beer. Wrong again! Fred chugged that small can of malt liquor like a Green Beret on a deadly mission and instantly ordered another even while I rushed to finish my glass of draft beer. Catherine usually took about thirty minutes to do her shopping so Fred was obviously operating on borrowed time, and trust me when I say he knew it and knew it well! If I recall correctly, that wild man from the rural environs north of Spring Valley threw down FOUR Stites in all and we subsequently stumbled out of the tavern with glazed-over eyes and slurred speech and met Catherine just as her groceries were being loaded into the trunk of their massive automobile by a supermarket employee. And I must confess to my readers right now that I was having a hard time keeping the four glasses of draft beer I had poured injudiciously down my gullet in less time than it takes to fart in cadence from suddenly reappearing unexpectedly out of the same orifice they went in just minutes earlier. I don’t remember much about the ride home to Fred’s and Catherine’s farm north of town that day, but the fact I am writing this essay right now offers incontrovertible proof that Fred somehow managed to navigate the route safely. A little voice in the back of my brain tells me the man probably had considerable practice doing so…..
Now let’s fast forward several months to January, 1962 after I had returned to Winona to continue my matriculations at the state college located there. It, once again, is a Saturday afternoon and I’m sitting alone in the sparsely furnished room another guy and I have rented for next to nothing. For some reason which I don’t recall today, I decided to do some drinking.
And not just wimpy, piss-ant drinking either……
No no no, professional, industrial-grade drinking like only a lonely college kid feeling down on his luck can do!!!
Hence I threw on my bulky parka and trudged a few blocks down the street to a nearby liquor store. Perhaps recalling Fred’s Stite escapades from a few months before and how much my squat uncle had seemed to enjoy the putrid green stuff, I purchased a six-pack of Stite malt liquor. Upon returning to my rental room I proceeded to consume that entire six-pack, but at an admittedly much slower rate than Fred had done back in Spring Valley. Things would have turned out great if this story ended right now, but of course it doesn’t because that would be wholly unentertaining to my readers. I decided to retrace my steps back to the same liquor store in downtown Winona and bought a second six-pack of Stite malt liquor. I believe I threw down one more can of “Green Death” in my rental room before an epiphany visited me and I decided right then and there that this might be the perfect time to attend a varsity basketball game being contested on the Winona State campus. Drinking stupidity had taken over by this juncture and I made certain to stuff a can of Stite malt liquor along with a church key opener into my coat pocket to ensure I wouldn’t get thirsty at the game.
There was a fairly good-sized crowd at the basketball tilt that night but I managed to find a seat about halfway up the fold-out bleachers. After a short interlude of watching basketball I grew slightly bored with the action and decided that now was the perfect time for some liquid refreshment, ergo I reached into my parka pocket and retrieved the can of Stite and church key opener I had brought along precisely for that purpose. But…..having jostled about in my pocket for quite some time while I cheered the basketball exploits taking place in front of me, the beer was especially eager to escape the metal can constraining it. Upon punching a hole in the top of the can with the church key opener, a loud Psssssssssttttt pierced the air all around me before a disgusting gusher of malt liquor raced from the metal can and sprayed all over a young woman sitting directly in front of me in the bleachers.
Well, ahem, ahem………………let’s just say that attractive young woman didn’t embrace me in a warm bearhug and extend glad tidings in my direction after having been thoroughly inundated with malodorous “Green Death”. Instead, she was ferocious and more put-out than a wet hen in a high pressure car wash and who could rightfully blame her?! The coed proceeded to verbally assail me in a vicious manner as though I had stuck a .45 pistol in the small of her back and demanded not only all of her money, but presented her with a list of sexual favors I was expecting as well. I know I would have been upset too if I had been accidentally sprayed with beer, but probably not as much as her. Let’s face the bald truth here, Readers: The pretty damsel in distress grossly overreacted to a relatively minor transgression…..
That said, the ornery bitch finally settled down and went back to watching the basketball game and I eventually finished drinking my devilish Stite and was then faced with the decision of what to do with the irksome empty can. Of course, the prudent, responsible course of action would have been to just stick it back in my coat pocket and carry it back to my apartment and thereupon dispose of it in a trashcan, but in my omniscient “Stite Wisdom” I alternatively decided to drop the empty receptacle below the bleachers during a lull in the action where it landed on the hard floor with a resounding clatter that could easily be heard throughout the cavernous auditorium.
Cool, Jim, that was such a cool, suave, impressive thing to do…….yeah yeah, so so COOL, y’know…..especially right after you gave that attractive young woman an unappreciated Stite shower and now you openly and loudly litter on the gymnasium floor and all these total strangers are giving you angry, dirty looks mixed with unmistakable pity!!
So anyway, after performing that stupid, impulsive act and distinguishing myself from the rest of the basketball crowd for the evening I returned to my room with no more fanfare and no further unsavory incidents. But the next day a good friend of mine who witnessed my buffoonery informed me that, unbeknownst to Yours Truly, a Phy Ed professor at Winona State College had been seated two rows behind me at the game the night before. Thank God that very tolerant bastard had mercy on one very fatuous fool because, at this particular time in the early 1960s, I believe proper punishment for a dumb infraction like I had committed—i.e. being visibly inebriated and openly consuming alcohol on campus–would have called for me to be expelled indefinitely from the institution of higher learning I had grown to love over the years.
So, once again……..thank you, God Above and, most of all…..thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, Lamebrained but Altruistic Phy Ed Professor!
Fred's Soapbox 