As the clock neared 8:45, I started to get anxious. It was the night before Thanksgiving and I had yet to solidify my plans for the evening.
Any other night of the year, having no plans before nine might not matter, but experts have proven the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving is the funnest night of the year. (Experts, it's been proven, have terrible grammar.) And if I wanted to maximize my fun, it was essential that I start soon.
I usually prefer a later start time, but in my hometown of Reedsburg, Wis.—where after-bar parties are few and far between, and late-night eating options are in short supply—that's just the nature of the scene. Last call comes sometime after 1 a.m. and beverage service usually stops when the cops pull up outside. Once the bars are clear, the town almost instantaneously goes dead until morning.
So when my ride finally showed up a little after nine, I feared I'd missed the important early stages night before Thanksgiving festivities. When I got in the car, I asked what the first stop was. The answer quickly reinvigorated me.
""The 5A,"" my friend, Justin, grumbled from the front seat.
""Who's gonna be there?"" I asked.
""We are,"" said my friend Pete.
It was music to my ears. The ""5A,"" otherwise called the Fifth Amendment, is part of downtown Reedsburg's holy trinity of bars. Along with the Touchdown Tavern and the Corner Pub, it makes up an impressive triumvirate of hotspots that are unavoidable on any night on the town.
Each bar has its own unique charm. Our first stop, for example, has a D.J. booth and an autographed stock car hood on the wall. The Corner Pub has live music and lots of parking nearby, which a disturbingly large number of bar-goers choose to take advantage of. Just across the street from the Corner Pub is the Touchdown Tavern, which is sort of like a Green Bay Packer-themed mix of the other two bars, only with more space than the 5A and more turkey bowling than the Corner Pub.
The one thing they all have in common is great conversation. At the 5A, I talked deer hunting with Pete and his brother. Though I couldn't speak from experience, I agreed with them that the best way to kill a deer is with a knife. You don't argue with people who kill things with knives.
Later in the evening I found my English 11 classmate, Megan. At just 22, I'm fairly certain Megan is the youngest certified professional accountant in Wisconsin, and she's got the fully furnished apartment on the far west side of Madison to prove it. Talking to Megan made me feel incredibly inadequate.
But in a bar where drunk driving is not so much a bad thing as it is a useful social skill, it wasn't hard to find a few burn-outs whose unabashed stupidy did wonders for my self-esteem.
Not that I mean to dump on any of those in attendance Wednesday night. They were out on the funnest night of the year, so they got that one right, but as the bars closed down most of them headed for their cars.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but when it comes to the funnest night of the year, the hood on the wall at the 5A is just about all the automobile my drunkenness can handle.
