21st Birthday
I celebrated my 21st birthday In a bar In Sioux City, Iowa.
I drank whisky and got roaring drunk with some of my friends from Spencer who were in Sioux City working for a construction firm. They had plenty of money and were eager to celebrate. We wedged our way into a small booth and kept the waitress busy with orders for booze and cigarettes and having her flip a coin to see who had to play the jukebox. Throughout the evening I felt that there must be a magical moment when I would feel that I had officially become a man. I wanted the event to be something special, something that I could always look back on as a turning point of my life. Something good. That evening did not produce anything of that nature. Instead, it was like any other night that I got drunk with these same guys, the only difference being that I was drinking legally now. We left the bar at 2:00 am and the waitress told us about a place in South Sioux City that stayed open all night; you had to have your own bottle though.
We had enough booze in the car, and one of the guys knew the area well enough to get us there without any difficulty. It was a dingy bar that had a one-way mirror on the door so they could be particular about who got in and who didn't. When we did enter, we saw why they had been so fussy. The dance floor had changed into a casino with crap tables and blackjack tables and slot machines. I knew the man who was running the crab table. He used to work for my father in the Black Hills as a dealer. I don't remember much after that. The only impressions I have are of talking to the dealer and drinking a lot of booze, and some time a fight broke out. I awoke the next day around noon in the backseat of the car with the windows rolled up, and it was very hot. There were two or three flies buzzing in the car, and I had this terrible hangover. I didn't feel the magical moment.