The Trip

Sometime around the early 1970's my friend's Keith, Janice, Jewel, Elaine and I decided to do a road trip. At the time we were all living in Butler, PA which is 32 miles north of Pittsburgh. We drove Keith's Ford Cortina station wagon to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls where the drinking age is 18. I know Keith and I were 19 at the time. After getting a very large, 3 bed hotel room we proceeded to the nearest liquor place we could find. I still remember Blue Nun Wine? I'm not sure it was wine and we got lots of other strange named things to drink. Did I mention that because Keith was paranoid when we were getting close to the border, that he decided we should all take the rest of the acid he brought along. We were severely tripping when we got and drank that booze. Then we decided to go sightseeing. What a sight! Of course the first thing I thought of when we got close to the falls was "I've gotta pee." All that water rushing was just too much for my weekend bladder. We eventually ended up going to a restaurant that reminded me very much of the Space Needle in Seattle. Same concept I think and it overlooked the falls and it was spinning. We rode the elevator up to the restaurant and then went to the observation area to look at the falls. Not many diners there at that time of night and we happened upon a door leading to a very small deck surrounding the outside of the restaurant and lo and behold a ladder leading to the roof. Of course we had to go up and so we did. There we were, all 5 of us, hanging on to the flagpole on the tippy top of this building, in the wind, staring down at the multi-colored lights of the falls. Beautiful! I don't remember anything else from that trip but a couple years ago I was telling this story to my friend Colletta, Jewel's mom, when Jewel exclaimed, "THAT WAS REAL!!? I thought I dreamed it!" Oh what you can do when your young and stupid. No wonder I'm scared of heights