When I was in college I was in a fraternity.

In our fraternity house we had a beautiful three story grand wooden spiral staircase. Well, it was sort of spiral, unlike something you would find in a lighthouse. Somewhere along the line one of us had a crazy notion to create the ultimate volume-drinking apparatus that would traverse the distance between the third floor and the first.

It would be a three-story beer funnel. Guinness World Book of Records did not return our calls.

So the construction plans were drawn up.

“Ok, we need 30 feet of clear plastic tubing…a funnel…some way to secure it all to the staircase…a garbage can in case people puke…and an on/off switch.” Fellow brother J declared.

“An on/off switch? What’s the point?” I interjected as I stared up the expanse of the three flights and wondered how long it would be before someone died.

“Dude it’s too big to set-up like a traditional funnel asshole” replied my fellow frater.

“Touche dickface”

Fraternities are like that. Hell, guys are like that. We call each other scumbag and dickhead as terms of endearment.

It is also interesting to note the part about the garbage can. “In case” people puke? It is a good thing we went for something that could hold a lot of bile, I mean liquid.

So off we went to Home Depot to find the parts for our dream. The checkout girl was a little baffled by the myriad of items we had. I helped the cause by claiming one of us was going to defy how the digestive system works and drink a funnel of milk while holding it in for at least an hour.

I think that to this day, she still is baffled both by my declaration and the forty feet of plastic tubing. Funny thing is I have a milk drinking story too. That is for another day and we had a funnel to build.

We headed back to the compound to assemble the monstrosity.

There it was, our addition to college folklore. What looked like a plastic tube dangling from the great beyond with an on/off switch over a 50 gallon trash became our signature. The only thing left was to determine the specific quantity of Golden Anniversary beer the funnel would accommodate.

Fade Out

Read the conclusion to The Three Story Beer Funnel