Interesting People on the Fringe: This Week - Darrin Munch!

This week’s interesting person on the fringe is none other than my old neighbor, Darrin Munch (pronounced like monk). Darrin lived over the hill about ¾ miles south of our farm east of Exira. We were born exactly one year apart on April 12^th. Darrin and I used to get together after school for three-wheeler and motorcycle mayhem. Darrin’s folks, Darrell and Marilyn, started a restaurant/bar, Darrel’s Place, which is still thriving in Hamlin, Iowa (they have THE best pork tenderloin sandwiches!), when we were kids. Now, let me explain: there is nothing better than having friends whose parents own a bar. No, it has nothing really to do with ease of access to alcohol as underage folk; there are plenty of other avenues to pick up beer and booze. It lies in the fact that these parents are never home, and thus it allows the kid to pretty much have free run of the place. Which, of course, means that all the friends of the dude have a place to hang out without any parental supervision. As I mentioned: mayhem.

We used to tear up the countryside east of Exira on our motorized two and three-wheeled vehicles. That was back in the day of the ATC, the All-Terrain-Cycle, which was as good as outlawed in the late 1980’s as the manufacturers like Honda and Yamaha were forced to stop producing the three-wheeler. It seems that too many youngsters, out for a visit on Grandpa’s farm, got on the thing, and thinking it was just a little kid’s tricycle with a motor, proceeded to do something stupid and ended up dead. Now, I myself have had my share of mishaps with the ATC, but nothing that serious, and it really could be as safe or as dangerous inversely proportional to the level of experience of the rider. Anyhow, we used to have a blast riding around the gravel and dirt roads, looking for an interesting ditch or construction site to test the capabilities of our motorized contraptions. I remember when they put some tiling in at Darrin’s place, and an entire cornfield was a mass of steep hills and water-filled ditches. What fun!

As we became older and more “sophisticated” teenagers, Darrin’s place became a Friday night magnet for all the mobile kids of the town, sometimes to Darrin’s dismay. Darrin’s folks were one of the first to get a VCR back in the day, and we used to show videos on Friday nights, usually a couple of movies, followed by “Friday Night Videos” on NBC, which was like a couple of hours of MTV for kids without cable, as we in the country all were. As civilizations rise and fall, we also degenerated in our programming, which soon took a pornographic twist, after we discovered that I could pass for 18 at the Atlantic movie theater, where we rented our videos. To pass for 18 years of age, I simply needed to wear a collared shirt, which I usually wore anyway, walk determinedly into the establishment, greet the cashier and, looking them in the eye, say, “Could I peruse your adult collection, please?“ at which point the chick behind the counter would pull out not one, but two HUGE binders full of their XXX rated videos. Obviously, this was a booming business in small town Iowa. Looking through the folders, I would pick out a couple that looked promising, such as Debbie Does Dallas II or something with Marilyn Chambers. Then, that evening, Darrin and I came up with the idea to charge admission, so we could recoup our costs plus have a bit of money to buy refreshments for the party. Let me say this: our attendance really peaked when we switched to this format. I remember some girls in my class who showed up and, lying mesmerized in front of the television, kept saying, “Oh, this is sick!” and such, but alas, their eyes were glued to the screen.

Darrin and I started hitting the party scene together at about the same time, and he got the moniker, “Drunk Munch”, which he didn’t really like. We took our talents at collecting money to collecting 35 - 40 bucks for a keg of beer. I would hang out at the DX gas station in town, and kids would drive by and give me dollar bills. Then, I would find some dude old enough to buy beer, and we would drive to a tavern, such as Toy’s in town. I had to keep a low profile during this process, as my uncle, Jr. was often bellied up to the bar in Toy’s, so we went through the back door, which was next to the keg cooler anyway. After getting the keg and tapper, which was without a deposit in those days, we traveled out to the designated party spot, usually an unmaintained, dirt road out in the country. Darrin had a pretty good stereo system in his Camaro, which we used, trunk popped open, for the musical accompaniment to the party. Once in a while, however, somebody must have ratted us out, as a county sheriff’s car would suddenly show up with cherries flashing! Everyone would, at that point, bolt for the cornfield. Once, after about a quarter-mile of fast sprinting, I was crouched next to a creek bed, when suddenly Darrin popped up out of the corn. He was dismayed as his stereo was jamming, something by Boston, I think, loud as hell throughout the countryside as the cops confiscated the keg. Darrin’s worries were of naught, however, as the cops just took the keg, probably for their own party later, and busted no one.

After I left for college in 1986, Darrin and I would see each other occasionally on certain weekends, usually at the local bar, Jerry’s Joint, but we never really hung out like before. He had moved to town with his family, and our interests diverged. The last I heard, he was living in the Carroll, Iowa, area.

Darrin, wherever you are…Down the Hatch!