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Bemidji MN
Good one Bumper. I attended college briefly at Bemidji State (Go Fighting Beavers. . . .no kidding) during that same time period. My stay at Bemidji was rather brief, I hadn't developed my renowned scholarly streak quite yet. It was the last day of finals of the first quarter of my Freshman year. My day hadn't gone well, one of the professors didn't have a test to give me because he thought I had dropped the class before mid-terms (I was a pioneer of independent study apparently). That might have been the academic highlight of that day. My finals (and that chapter of my education I might add) ended early, and my ride back to Minneapolis couldn't leave until after his last test, mid afternoon.
Alcohol was prohibited in the dorms, a fairly stringently enforced policy in those years. I was going to drown my sorrows with a pint of Whiskey and two attendant cans of Bubble Up while hiding out in my dorm room. Things were proceeding swimmingly, I was quaffing madly from my oversized A & W root beer mug, having an increasingly better day as the morning (I know, I know) wore on.
I ran out of Bubble-up at about the half pint level. I have never been much of a straight Whiskey guy, so I was looking around the room for something to use for a mix for the second leg of my journey. Does anybody remember Fizzies? They were a tablet with similar action to an Alka Seltzer, and a variety of cloyingly sweet flavors to be dropped in water and yielding an end product like a lousy, carbonated kool aid. (I find myself queasy even thinking about them).
Straight Seagrams into the mug, followed by four fizzies, no water, no ice, just booze and fizzies. The end result wasn't pretty, I was the hit of our dorm floor, especially admired by the many sets of parents of my fellow students that had come to pick their kids up at the end of the quarter. I managed to become violently ill right in the middle of the hallway, so blocking the hallway that only an olympic caliber broad jumper could have cleared with clean shoes.
The sad end to the story resulted in a .07 GPA (I managed to squeak out a D in Freshman Orientation - more independent study) and a change of scenery and wardrobe to Ft. Campbell KY, and OD green. There probably should have been a lesson in there somewhere for the keen observer.
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