Stephanie Salter: In vin veritas? Maybe that explains the ugly drunks

TERRE HAUTE — I used to joke that when my generation got too old and frail to carry our load, “the twentysomethings will be shooting us in the streets just to get us out of their way.”

That thought occurred to me again Saturday, but it did not make me smile. I was downtown and forced to deal with some major jerks on “The Walk,” an Indiana State University homecoming tradition that involves lots of students and lots of booze. What I saw and heard matched a few other occasions I’ve observed this year, and they all give me anxious pause.

On the off-chance that a student may be reading this, let me first tell you where I am not coming from.

I am not a teetotaling enemy of alcohol. I started drinking in the late-1960s in college and have enjoyed the practice — moderated now — ever since. When I was young, I often got stinking drunk with my friends. Frequently, I then hugged the porcelain goddess and swore throughout the next day that I would never, never do that again, but I did because — except for the hangover — it was a lot of fun.

Speaking of swearing, I am a person who does a lot of it among friends. Too much time spent in pro sports press boxes or something. Like the drunken bashes of my youth, I do not tell you this because I am proud of the practice or because I recommend it as a model way of life. I tell you this so you will understand that what follows is not about low personal tolerance for stupid drinking, silly behavior or four-letter words.

Been there, done that, not one to condemn.

What I have not done — and what I do condemn — is a hostile, ugly and almost blindly profane brand of public drunkenness that I saw at “The Walk” and that I have seen in and outside some of the traditional watering holes on ordinary nights here in Terre Haute.

Am I talking about all kids in these venues? No, not even a majority. But I am talking about a sizable, angry and loud enough minority to effectively take over a scene, to cause a negative shift in the tone of a bar or a threatening air on the street.

I am talking about an attitude of incivility and entitlement that — combined with excess alcohol — transforms a public space into the basement of the Frat House from Hell.

Saturday, the bad vibe was thanks to The Walk — or rather to the stunning capitulation of alleged adults in this community to widespread under-age drinking, public indecency and myriad traffic dangers because “it’s only one day a year.”

So, plastered young men peeing in broad daylight in Gilbert Park is OK because it’s only one day a year. Same with their stumbling, mumbling young female companions who stop to bend over a sewer grate before noon to puke up their guts.

Because it’s only once a year, it’s fine that vendors from the Downtown Farmers Market literally folded their tents early rather than endure anymore rude, obscenity-yelling, beer-breathing students who hulked over their display tables, demanding to buy “one green bean,” or who screamed in mock fear from an adjacent parking lot, “E. coli! E. coli!”

What about the young man on Ninth Street who spotted me carrying bags of fresh vegetables from the market, rushed into my path and — inspiring guffaws from his fellow louts — began to shout the kind of incomprehensible taunts in my face that I used to hear from psychotic street people in San Francisco?

Sorry that tripped your fight-or-flight switch, lady. It’s only one day a year.

Except, it isn’t. I’ve sat in and outside popular bars in Terre Haute and watched young men and women teeter in, hurl “humorous” obscenities at friends on the other side of the street and, eventually, stagger out, car keys in hand.

A few Sundays ago after 7 p.m. Mass at St. Joe’s, my mother and I grabbed a bite to eat at a restaurant-bar on Wabash Avenue. Just as we were finishing, a group of dressed-up but loaded young women burst into the room with expletive-laden declarations that they were here and the party was starting.

“Good time to go, huh?” I said to Mom as we paid our check. Outside, more well-dressed young drunks gathered and waited for stragglers coming from the west on Wabash. I got Mom’s door and one of the young men, his eyes blazing, yelled at us, “I’m going to have a good time! Say, ‘Have a good time!’”

We said nothing. With no trace of a smile, the kid glared at us. “Say, ‘Have a good time!’” he snarled, again and again, like some deranged concentration camp guard.

“What was that about?” I said to Mom as we drove away.

“I have no idea,” she said, “but I sure hope none of those kids are driving.”

Look, I realize that the disappearance of courtesy, the bottoming out of standards for acceptable public behavior, the atrophied sense of community responsibility and the spread of generic rage are not exclusive to the young and intoxicated.

Adults flip off adults in traffic. Grade school children use the f-word on playgrounds. Strangers dump trash or newborn kittens in other strangers’ yards. Every third car radio blasts graphic tales of rape and violence that some (expletive deleted) perpetrated on some other (expletive deleted) who had it coming because that’s just the way it is, (expletive deleted).

I realize, too, that ugly-drunk kids have replaced silly-drunk kids in nearly every college town in the country. It isn’t just ISU or Terre Haute. In fact, in many places it’s worse than here. But this town is the one in which I live in. We can’t remedy the ills of society or reverse generations of social and emotional damage done to our young people, but you know what? We can enforce laws that already are on the books, and we can do it every day — and night — of the year.

That won’t make foul-mouthed, angry young drunks any less angry or obnoxious, but it will tell them their crummy, hostile behavior isn’t tolerated on this city’s streets.

College drinking doesn’t have to go. The Walk, with all its bar hopping, doesn’t have to go. The ugly drunks, who don’t know how to have a good time, they have to go.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.