Ok folks, here goes an attempt to get back in the saddle again. This story comes to us, I believe, from roughly 2002 or 2003. Our standard running crew of alcoholic morons was out at the Trumpet House; Biff, Chowdah, Mongo, Stinky, Blimpie and myself. We were proceeding towards extreme amounts of inebriation, as per usual. In addition, my good friend Chowdah was rapidly approaching his normal drunken state of barely restrained destruction. Consequently, the stage was set for what we in the biz like to refer to as “Bad Decisions”.
In any event, at some point in the night Chowdah found himself needing to use the Little Boy’s Room, as anyone drinking prodigious amounts of alcohol is wont to do. He eventually made his way through the crowd of drunken revelers, saw a man about a horse, and like any dignified gentleman in polite society, flushed. At this point, “something” happened. Details are sketchy, as the only person in the room was an almost blacked-out Bostonian, but the word I’ve heard is that there was some issue of concern with the toilet’s flushability.
As an upstanding and well-meaning citizen, Chowdah looked to rectify the problem and consequently popped the lid off the back tank of the toilet. Unfortunately he followed it up like any degenerate alcoholic and proceeded to immediately forget what the hell he was doing. Suddenly finding himself holding a relatively heavy tank lid, he obviously moved to quickly remedy the situation. Unfortunately, the quickest solution was to toss the lid directly into the bathtub.
With a tremendous commotion, the lid proceeded to shatter into thousands of tiny porcelain shards. To his credit, Chowdah immediately grasped the seriousness of the situation and hauled ass as quick as he could out of the bathroom. Upon exiting, he ran into Mongo, who had hear the ruckus, saw the distress on Chowdah’s face, and determined that something had Gone Down. Chowdah, realizing that other people had noticed things, tore off towards the front door.
(A little background is necessary here, I feel). Chowdah is about 5 feel tall and routinely described as a “meatball”. Not fat, certainly, but solid as a fireplug. Mongo, conversely is in the neighborhood of 6′6″ or so and probably was carrying between 230 to 250 pounds of muscle at that point. Physically, this was Goliath vs. David’s younger, smaller brother.)
Mongo, as any good underclassman would’ve, hauled ass after Chowdah. It was sometime in the dead of winter, possibly January or February, and Chowdah had absconded without his winter coat. By virtue of his long wingspan, Mongo was able to catch him by the back of the collar, but, as alcohol is the great equalizer, was unable to physically stop him and instead was dragged along in his wake as Chowdah began to initiate evasive maneuvers. When Mongo described it later, he said he felt his arm jerk suddenly left and then quickly back to center. It was at that point that he slammed headlong into the telephone pole which Chowdah had drunkenly dodged. The resulting collision caused him to see stars and obviously lose his grip, and Chowdah spun drunkenly and unsupervised into the night. After hearing the story, we were concerned, but ultimately not enough to leave the party.
One of the older tubas, Pecker, had not been out with us that night, and thus was heading back home alone later that evening/morning. As he traveled back to the Tuba Haus, however, he saw someone leading a very familiar and obviously very drunk figure down the sidewalk. As you might have guessed, it was Chowdah. Calling out his name confirmed this fact to Pecker, as well as engaging the man who had control of him.
After catching up to and chatting, Pecker was able to find out that this random guy had awoke to find Chowdah, whom he didn’t know, rummaging around his house. To Chowdah’s great fortune, he recognized that this was the kind of drunken trouble college students occasionally find themselves in, and instead of calling the cops he decided to help this wild inebriate find his way home. Unfortunately for him, Chowdah was far past the ability to remember his address, and as a result they had been wandering the streets since that point. Pecker assured the grateful man that he did indeed know this particular degenerate and would get him home.
The next day, we were able to get the gist of the story out of the meatball. Apparently, in a misguided attempt to rectify his earlier transgression, Chowdah broke into what he “thought” was his friends house in order to take the lid from their toilet to replace the one he’d broken. Once again, however, he fell victim to his base drunken nature, and once inside proceeded to rummage through the fridge in search of something to satiate his drunken hunger. It was then that the guy discovered him, to his considerable consternation, and through some manner he was able to have a moderately useful conversation with Chowdah to get to the bottom of the misunderstanding and amazingly decided to help him out rather than call the cops.
Like any good story, all’s well that ends well. I’m not sure if Chowdah did ever end up replacing the lid, although it seems likely. However, odds are it was far from the worst crime we ever perpetrated at another band house in the name of drunken destruction, and it certainly wasn’t the last such occurrence.