Drunk as Dad

I am an alcoholic, the son of an alcoholic father. During the early morning hours on a summer day in 1967, my drunk father dropped his meal as he stumbled up the walkway. The contents of the container was raw, closed clams brought from the gin mill, which now littered the slate steps leading to our front door. Later that morning, I crushed the clams with my baseball bat, fearing they might open and bite me as I had seen in a cartoon. I was 3 years old, the youngest of nine children.