War Story #8 McLean VA 'Shoulder Tapping' for Beer on a Weeknight, with J.J., Chasing Down Some Rednecks in a 1970 Orange Ford Mustang Who tried To Steal Our Beer, & Taking our Beer Back at the C.I.A.

By Patrick Tyrrell

By Patrick Tyrrell (C) 2025 Patrick Tyrrell and RockNRollConcerts.com

Hey, Luke. I just typed why I am back in the jail to my son and his teacher, so I don't want to retype the whole thing, but very briefly, I got no new charges, violations, or transgressions. A vindictive gangster judge named judge Cullen told me if I appealed his verdict, then I would have to go back to jail. So, I appealed his erroneous verdict anyway. That's why I have been in this jail for two weeks in solitary confinement -- because I appealed. LOL.

He's really an idiot, Judge Cullen is--"He's the Gang Leader Judge"--I think that is his slogan. (No Judge Cullen, I will not shut up, so you go ahead and heinously pervert this great country, America's legal system. Throw me in the klink).

Judge Cullen has a couple of white gangster deputies in the jail, or maybe he has just one, but every other one of the deputies in there is cool and is not 'his' deputy as he refers to his as. This is not Siberia, but hey, Judge Cullen -- "He's the Gang Leader Judge!" -- would fit right in in the Soviet Union. That's a fact, no I will not shut up, order me to Cullen, and I will not.

I believe in America, not Judge Cullen's bitch-ass.

Judge Cullen recently was accused of making a woman suffer complications in a pregnancy in his courtroom. The woman almost had a miscarriage he treated her so badly in his courtroom the Washington Post reported.

I have been locked in here since two Tuesdays ago, with no tablet, phone, phone passcode, or phone numbers, or ability to make a phone call.

I finally got my tablet now; it had a password configuration issue till now. As of right now, I still have no phone passcode so I can't make phone calls still. I'll probably be back out Thursday.

Since I have been in here, I have defeated two more bogus charges: "assault" based on the accuser committing proven perjury, proven by a video tape, that was dismissed, and "violation of a protective order' which was also dismissed for the same reason. So, now I have beaten three of the five charges because the charges were all B.S., with two more to go. And I also, as of this date, do not have any criminal record from all my years on this Earth, other than one DIP (Drunk in Public) in 2002--that's Impressive, Luke, right?

What else do you want to know about?

If my battery holds out, I might write the War Story #8 in this email.

War Stories #1-4 are a letter from jail to my dad which can be read HERE at the bottom of my website, Rocknrollconcerts.com

War stories #5-7 are a letter from jail to my homeslice, J.J. Johnston which I have published HERE on rocknrollconcerts.com

And here goes War Story #8:

War Story #8, The Art of 'Shouldertapping' for Beer in the Hills of McLean Virginia.

By Patrick Tyrrell

I attended Gonzaga College High School in the early 1990s, located in Washington D.C., on North Capital Street, in Northwest D.C.

That's where I slept during the day, with my head faceplanted on my arm on a desk. (In the day anyway).

I arrived by carpool in cars driven by other students in the mornings because my driver's license was generally suspended for whatever reason; and I was driven back to the hills of McLean, Virginia every weeknight where I lived.

There in McLean, as well as at the nearby towns of Great Falls, Fall's Church, Arlington, Annandale, and Georgetown in D.C., among other places, my friends and I had a lot of fun, mostly outdoors, often in stretches of forests and woods which dot those towns. We drank a lot of beer, like every single night. We built fires, and we swung from vines and rope swings. We swam in the Potomac River which contained typhoid fever back then. (It has been cleaned up now). We all partied hard, like most people don't know how to, and, basically, we just raised a lot of non-Satanic Cain.

I only used my house as a bed to crash out in when I got really tired.

I partied so much with my marauding, roving posse of friends, like every single day, and throughout the nights -- be it a weekend or not -- that Gonzaga College High School made me see a psychiatrist. I never have had any mental illness, which professional psychiatrists agree I do not have any.

Nevertheless, the late Brother John (Gonzaga is a Catholic High School and he was a 'Brother' in some Order of religious men). He called me into his office and accused me of committing "Academic Suicide," in his words, which in his eyes apparently is as bad as actual suicide.

But not in my eyes, it's not.

Brother John was distraught because the SAT scores had come in . . .and mine were the highest, or near the very highest of any student at the elite private high school; yet my grades were Ds and Fs.

"Egads!" thought Brother John.

To him, for some reason, so called 'Academic Suicide' was borderline sacrilegious. Somehow Brother John thought it equivalent to actual suicide, which he should know -- calling himself a religious man -- is entirely not the case.

Nevertheless, I reluctantly agreed to see a Bethesda Maryland psychiatrist monthly who turned out to be a very good guy.

The psychiatrist would later meet with Saint Pope John Paul II at The Vatican, in Rome, in long face-to-face meetings on two trips the doctor made to Rome where the psychiatrist advised The Catholic Church on issues concerning psychology and The Catholic Church. The shrink also went on to be the President of the American Psychological Association of America in the late 1990s (or some similarly named such organization).

Sometimes my attention deficit disorder, which I do have, but no mental illness, will get me off on a tangent. Many average intelligence people who get college degrees or PhDs in order to prove they too are also a smart person like me, which they are not, sometimes cause trouble for me, quite frequently in fact they do Luke, and I know that's happened to you before too Luke, because you too are way smarter than most m%%@$$rs with any American school's degree they might have from whatever fu&&n' university they wasted their childhood getting into to be taught by people who -- if they are so smart, then why are they teaching fucking school at Princeton or wherever? Right? Right Luke? Right? -- Why you, you Luke, you might know because you were free and alive in the greatest country ever, America; such as the time you told me about, when you were living on the streets in Washington D.C. at the age of about seven, and you went and saw the Beach Boys play in D.C. by the Washington monument by yourself.

Alright, anyway this is supposed to be a War Story about shoulder tapping for beer in McLean, Virginia, which I participated in doing almost every night if I hadn't picked up 40s (bumpers) of Crazy Horse malt liquor beverage in Chinatown, in Washington D.C., on my way home from school that day.

Crazy Horse was phenomenal as a cold beer by the way. The colder you drank Crazy Horse, the better it tasted, better than any other beer -- malt liquor -- or otherwise. As the temperature dropped on its contents, Crazy Horse became the elixir of the gods, or perhaps of The Great Spirit. It tasted so good, but that's just me.

Anyway, they don't sell Crazy Horse '40s' anymore, and they never did sell them in McLean at the 7-11s which was where my friends and I 'shouldertapped' if we had no Crazy Horse or Mickey's Big Mouth beer to drink from D.C.

[I Insert a shoutout here, and I hope the person does not mind, Luke -- it goes to my homie Forty from a place called the 3CF. Always cool hanging out with that dude. He said his name was 40 because he drinks six bottles of 40 oz. malt liquor daily y'all].

Shouldertapping, def. Verb. To tap on the back of the shoulder a customer who is walking into a store, such as a 7-11 or a Village Pantry, a vender of alcoholic beverages to the public, the customer being old enough to legally purchase alcohol -- the purpose being to offer the customer money to buy alcohol because the shouldertapper lacks the age in years to legally buy alcoholic drinks using a legal government issued identification card.

We would usually 'shouldertap' for a 24-can case of Busch beer, Milwaukee's Best beer, or sometimes other brands of beer.

On one particular weekday sunny afternoon, me and my friend J.J. were trying to score the night's beer at a 7-11 store in McLean, Virginia, beneath the blue sky.

Ryan C. and his 1970 orange 5.0 engine Ford Mustang car were with J.J. and me.

(See War Story #4 in A Letter from jail to R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. from Patrick Daniel Tyrrell, including War Stories #4 "Junior Year in High School, Driving up to Boston in September to see The Grateful Dead Play at the Old Boston Garden--Popeye, Aardvark, Franco, and Jackoff". (Remarkable Females), on RockNRollConcerts.com about Ryan C., his car, and how I busted my friend, Holmes -- out of a Cap Cod Jail up there in Massachusetts).

So, we were standing in the parking lot there with our ten or twelve dollars in hand, and very soon four burly white guys wearing faded, slightly yellowed, old white tee-shirts and ragged baseball caps drove up in a black pickup truck with pieces of firewood in the back of their truck. Two of the Good Ole' Boys were in the cab of the truck and two more in the pickup truck's bed with the pile of firewood.

As one of the roundest among them was about to go into the 7-11 store, I tapped him on the shoulder, and I said -- while doing slightly goofy things with my face --

"Hey, man, how's it going? Do you think you or your friends could be so kind, as to let me give you this money? And you buy us a 24-can case of Busch beer? D'ya think you might be able to do that?'' I asked him while motioning at my two friends, who were standing near the wall at the 7-11 store.

'Well yaw, I bet I can do that for y'all," the man said appearing a little lit up on beer already himself.

I gave him the money.

J.J. and me and Ryan waited patiently outside peering in the store from its front wall which was a window.

A little while later the four Good Ole' Boys came out. One of them had the 24-can case of Busch beer under one arm. At first, they turned toward the three of us, but then all four of them ran a different direction lunging for their parked pickup truck.

Two of the rotund adults from parts elsewhere in Virginia other than Northern Virginia vaulted themselves into the back of the truck and the other two of them, including the driver leapt into its cab. The driver threw it in reverse, and they began their escape from us and the 7-11 parking lot.

J.J. and me and Ryan looked at each other in disbelief. This had never happened to us before. It was something we knew was possible, but we had never encountered it up until this point in our lives.

"You got your keys?" J.J. asked Ryan.

'Um, uh-huh, yeah, I do, I got them right here," Ryan said fiddling with his car keys in his fingers.

"Let's get our beer then," I said.

Ryan jumped in and started his car, the orange 1970 Ford Mustang with the 5.0 engine. I was in the back and J.J. was riding shotgun.

And the chase was on.

The big burley guy I had handed my twelve dollars to could be seen about a block out of the lot in the distance in the back of the black pickup truck. He was wearing orange sunglasses now which matched his orange straggly facial hair and the orange paint of Ryan's car. Our rectangular cardboard box of Busch beer cans was set squarely under his left arm in the back of the truck where he sat.

Ryan peeled out of the parking lot following them as the car's engine roared.

It was a nice piece of driving by Ryan C. who pursued them through the town, past the Safeway, and the Rite-aid, past the Shell Gas Station, passed the barbershop, the banks, and the other business establishments in the town of McLean, Virginia.

The good ole' boys from parts down South in Virginia came to the edge of the town of McLean in their truck and they proceeded to leave the town -- driving onto route 123, Chain Bridge Road, in the direction of Georgetown, in Washington D C.

Ryan's car was faster than theirs, and he had no problem catching up with them. He was cruising along tailing their truck.

The good ole' boy with the orange facial hair and orange lensed sunglasses stayed propped up against the back of the cab of his vehicle as if he might be asleep, or as if he was the redneck rendition of Bernie, from the movie, Weekend at Bernie's or something. I was surprised, it looked like his tongue might even be hanging out of one side of his mouth, as if he had fallen asleep back there siting among his firewood in the bed of their pickup truck. Ryan gunned it as the two vehicles barreled down the highway along route 123.

J.J. and I were discussing what we were going to do next.

"Now if they come to a red light or have to stop for any reason, we jump out and go for our beer," J.J. told me, "Now be intimidating, Pat. I know you don't like to fight, but make it seem like you get in a fistfight like every single day. And you love beating people up Pat," J.J. said.

It's true, my fistfight record was a mere 2-1, only three fights, except for another one in North Carolina on a beach against a much bigger kid which I won also, so 3-1. J.J., on the other hand, was known as a street fighting badass.

I didn't go to the public high school in McLean but the people who did would often tell me things like, "J.J. beat somebody else up again today," like every single day. Usually, like, he beat up football players, or guys who were much, much bigger and stronger than J.J. People would tell me.

(J.J. recently explained to me on Facebook that he never fought anyone who didn't insult him or disrespect him or his family I think is how he put it, and I know that is true).

The Central Intelligence Agency is located on the outskirts of McLean, Virginia, known as Langley, and in front of it is where the big burley beer drinking thieves encountered their first red light.

They had to stop right in front of Langley, which was not renamed after President H W. Bush at that time who was still president then.

[Hey! Can we rename their C.I.A. Headquarters there after President Donald J. Trump now? C'mon, H W. Bush did so many bad things for America which most people don't know about. He even did real bad stuff that affected me as a child. And he was only the Director of the C.I.A. for one year only, one year only, in the 1970s. No offense to his son President G.W. Bush who I like and who I would bet does not know half of the way-bad things, and illegal things, his father, H W. Bush did as president and before H.W. Bush was president -- things which semi-wrecked America.]

The beer bandits had to stop, and they weren't foolish enough to run a red light directly in front of C.I.A. Headquarters.

So, me and my good friend J.J. jumped out where Ryan had pulled over in the gravel on the shoulder of the highway, and we started chugging it on foot towards the beer thieves' pickup truck.

"Remember, act like you beat the hell out of guys like these every day," J.J. coached me as we ran up to our prey sitting in their truck, (or he said something like that).

We got up in the good ole' boys in the back of the truck's faces, and we were about to attack; I forget what we said to them, but the guy tried to act nonchalant -- the guy who had wanted us to think he was dozing during the car chase.

He handed over our case of Busch beer without saying a word, still looking like he was the Good Ole Boy version of the actor, Bernie, in the movie Weekend at Bernie's. We returned to the orange Mustang with the case of beer.

Well, J.J., Ryan, and I proceeded to 'Head for The Mountains of Busch. . .Beer," as their old television advertisements used to go.

Not really -- we actually headed for a little strip of woods with a creek running through it and a rope on a hill to swing on. We met some of our other people there. And we had a party.

That's what friends, and what drinking buddies are for Luke. And being alive ain't no suicide, Academic or otherwise Brother John.

That's how it is and that's how it goes.

This has been War Story #8, brought to you by RockNRollConcerts.com, and Patrick Tyrrell (c) copyright 2025.

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