Some time ago I remember reading something somebody else posted online, I think maybe it was Waldo, saying that if any of the true stories about George Felix Allen's "adventures" in Charlottesville ever got around, they'd be kind of embarassing. Well, they are starting to get around.
Yesterday, after work, I made my way down to Brown's Island for Friday Cheers, the last Friday Cheers of this season. Edwin McCain was the headliner. I met up with my older brother and his wife and a bit later I ran into a couple of friends from the Webb campaign who were wearing Webb stickers. We were standing around when up walked another friend of mine who was hanging out with her mother and some other friends. My friend's mother noticed the Webb lapel stickers and they began talking about the election.
For a little while I bounced from group to group and conversation to conversation, visiting with my brother, getting another beer, and then talking to my friends. I had just finished another circuit when my friends from the campaign waved me over. "You've got to hear this!" they said.
So I walked over and my friend's mother told me the following story:
"In the August of 1985 my family traveled to Charlottesville to attend a wedding. A family friend was marrying a CPA and the accounting firm he worked for had done some work for the law firm that George Felix Allen belonged to: George Allen was a guest at the wedding."
"The wedding went off without a hitch and the wedding party proceeded to the reception, where things began to get out of hand. George Felix Allen was drinking heavily and he wasn't handling his booze well. Towards the end of the reception the time came for the bride and groom to leave under a shower of bird seed. Standing with the other guests, George Felix Allen had a plate of meatballs covered in barbecue sauce, a staple of wedding buffets."
"Perhaps one of his cronies had handed him the plate of meatballs hoping to get some food on his stomach and prevent his alcoholic binge from getting even further out of hand. If that was the case, it couldn't have gone more wrong."
"As the bride and groom made their way towards their limo, the assembled guests began throwing handfuls of birdseed at the happy couple, still dressed in their wedding clothes. As they moved along the line, they came to where George Felix Allen stood. Allen, suddenly realizing that he didn't have any birdseed, did what came naturally: he began pelting the bride with barbecued meatballs."
"As one might expect from a quarterback, even a third-rate college quarterback, Allen's aim was quite good. To the horror of the assembled guests, Allen scored several hits on the bride, splashing her heirloom wedding gown with barbecue sauce and ruining it before hsi friends could knock the plate out of his hands and pull him away. Allen continued drinking and subsequently passed out in the middle of the reception--he apparently had to be carried out."
"Ever since that day," she told me, "my children have referred to George Allen as 'the Meatball Man.'"
At the time of this incident, the loutish George Felix Allen had already been a member of the House of Delegates for two years. As we get even further into the election cycle I am sure even more stories about George Felix Allen's adventures will emerge.