Chasing Alcohol In A College Town

Sitting in a parking lot
full of pickup trucks
with Confederate flags
and gun racks adorned
in their back windows, I
 
finally found a moment
to question why I had to
follow these country boys
here.  I guess somewhere
in the course of my first
 
taste of adult freedom along
with youthful exuberance
and the promise of beer, I
decided to hop in the back seat
of one guy’s beat up Chevy and
 
trek far, far away from the
safety of the college campus
all because he and his roommate
knew a guy who could get us
eager but underage pups a
 
couple of six-packs of
adult refreshment.  Something
should’ve told me that their
country twangs would lead me
into unchartered territory, but
 
the voice of reason may or
may not have spoken to me or
I was just a bit too loony and
just wanted to do something else
beside stare at my computer.
 
But in that moment of sitting
in that honkytonk of a
parking lot, I wished I had
paid attention and maybe I
would not have found myself
 
here in the middle of a
country nowhere staring at
flags and guns with visions of
hoods and nooses dancing
in my head.  All I kept
 
hoping for was that those guys
would get back in this Chevy
and drive away before any
of the locals saw this brown face
that was definitely out of place. 
 
Lucky for me no one did
and we all got out of this
redneck nirvana with what we
were questing for and headed
back to the confines of campus
 
where we sat in my room,
drinking the night away.  That’s
when the voice of reason broke
through my buzzed state, speaking
clearly the words I needed to hear:
 
Don’t you ever do that again.