Hitchpost Tavern

 

WARNING:     If underage drinking, smoking, violence and general debauchery offend you, then please ladies & gentlemen..avert your eyes.

I know this is hardly the warning you would expect on my little Catholic photo-blog, but it was necessary just the same. You see, my grandparents had a bar in their basement. As if having a basement was not exciting enough to us always-lived-at-sea-level-navy brats, this basement had a bar in it. And there was nothing  my 5 brothers and sisters and I to do more than play bar. It was an easy game. You dressed up in the box that held my aunts’ old prom dresses, great-grandmother’s old wigs and the like. Then you grabbed a gun or two from the boxes that held my uncles’ old western stuff. Then you grabbed a lincoln log and pretended to smoke it. You dumped all the money out from the Fisher Price cash register and demanded a drink. Sometimes we pulled out whatever musical instruments we found in the basement and had some entertainment. Then my friends, we acted drunk. This was the best part of playing bar. To this day I’m not sure how we decided what acting drunk was. Now, we did go to public school and all, but my mom censored all the movies we watched and we grew up without  cable television. Our parent’s didn’t drink. Despite the mysterious origins, we thought we were so dang good at being drunk & playing bar. This especially amused my Aunt Mary. She was always game for playing bar with us. To this day she still teases my mom, “Liz, your kids sure know how to drink!”

Even though my youngest brother is now 14, we never pass up an opportunity to play bar when we are at Nanny’s. Mary still plays too. My conservative, youth minister husband was a little wide eyed the first year he experienced this game. This year though he was drinking us all under the table ;)

The special at a bar is Iced Mocha?! That kid IS homeschooled!!

The gang’s allllll here!

And it was all fun & games!

That is, until things got ugly.

  

real. ugly

Fortunately for the red head, we worked it out

And order was restored at Hitchpost Tavern.

Alright, y’all can all pray for my salvation now. Or criticize my mom’s parenting. Or pay for my therapy. Whatever butters your biscuit. But next summer, I know where I’ll be. I just can’t stay away from that Hitchpost Tavern.