BILL CADY Word Count: 149,227 - At My Friend's Place

Bill Cady, The Early Years … by Bill Cady 298
specialty was emptying a draft glass faster than anyone would believe possible. I even
had a scheme set up to encourage people to bet. When asked how fast a man could
consume a twelve ounce draft beer, some morons even started at three full minutes.
More common was a minute.
Some of the “wiser people” would tell me thirty seconds, maybe even twenty. I
always knew I had a real mark when he‟d start out at fifteen, or even ten seconds, so I‟d
try to negotiate a bet. A lot of suckers thought they‟d really conned me when it got down
to five seconds. I wouldn‟t even get into it at those “quickie times” for less than a
hundred bucks, which was a fortune when you consider gas was 20¢ per gallon.
Sometimes I‟d even let the real “con artists” back me into a corner and make me
bet I could do it in three seconds. That was my “always and anytime” duration, meaning
I could be guaranteed to finish in three seconds, unless I was sick with some illness when
I started. I never once, not ever, barfed from chugging beer. If really pushed, my best
time ever, with my own stop watch keeping track, was one and a half seconds.
Nobody dared believe that was possible, sometimes not even after they‟d seen me
do it. Once, in 1967, at a place called Les‟s Pub on South Waverly near M-78, I drank
four ten ounce drafts in fifteen seconds. I won $120.00 and four cases of beer, which we
all consumed the next night at “The Stuck”.
So, I was being called to perform my speed drinking. One of my friends had
negotiated a bet, which would be half mine for doing the drinking and half his for putting
up the money. I don‟t recall it being unusual, so it was probably a ten or twenty dollar
bet. Of course, I won. Need you even ask? Then my friends and I went to a booth to
Leviticus, Limited 33-0505963