The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
The holiday that changed me ‘I drank myself into jail – at 14’
The actor and writer Dan Aykroyd on the teenage road trip that taught him the value of moderation
I’ve had many life-enhancing travels, but my life-changing vacation was one weekend in 1964 or 1965, when I went to Massena, a little town in Upstate New York. I was 14 years old and living in Hull, Quebec, with my parents and younger brother, in a village called Val-Tétreau at the bottom of a highway that my father – who was a road engineer – had helped to build.
The school I went to, St Pius, the 10th Minor Preparatory Seminary for Boys in Ottawa, had a rigorous education programme and turned out priests for the Catholic Church.
It was our summer term and we had just finished our exams, so we boys needed to blow off some steam. At that time, you could not consume alcohol in Canada until you were 21 years old – but across the border in New York State, you only needed to be 18.
So one Friday morning, seven of us crammed into a Vauxhall Viva – which is not the most commodious car – and drove to the US border just south of Ottawa. We didn’t even have to show ID. They didn’t ask for it. It was like, “OK, boys, have a good time!” Then we drove the two and a half hours to Massena, through the spectacular St Lawrence River Valley.
Free from the seminary, what did we do but buy a big bottle of Fanta and a gallon jug of vodka? We mixed it all up and went into a farmer’s field and had a lovely afternoon, over-consuming. We were laughing and having a great time, when all of a sudden out of the woods came the farmer, shooting rock-salt pellets through a doublebarrelled shotgun at us, driving us into the road.
We decided to weave our way back into town to get something to eat at a diner. We were throwing hamburgers around and laughing and putting up a display of terrible drunken behaviour. Eventually a woman called the police, and I’ll never forget the guy who walked in. His name was Chief Tommy and he was wearing a .357 Magnum in a brown holster with a 12-inch barrel. From that moment on, there was no question who was in control.
Chief Tommy had seen it all, and he handled us beautifully. The seven of us were drunk, disorderly and generally obnoxious, but he was graceful. He single-handedly arrested us and took us to the jail. He kept saying to me: “Now, you look younger than the others,” and I kept replying, “I’m 18, I’m 18, I’m 18.” And he said: “You know, I could get in a lot of trouble putting you in jail if you’re not, because we can’t lock up minors in New York State.” And then he gave me a little lecture. He said: “You know, you can go two ways in life. You can take the route that you guys were doing today and do that all through your college years, and get sick, like you were in my jail, or you could take another route and think, before you start, what you are consuming and how much. It’s just that simple.”
My dad had to come down there to pick me up, and he was a little upset with me. He’d given me an electric lawnmower the Christmas before this, so once we were home I was chained to that lawnmower for weeks. I mowed all the lawns in the neighbourhood. It was a laborious summer – gardening, hauling stones – but it taught me a work ethic, too. Show up, do the work: you’ll get compensated, and you’ll get satisfaction from having done something meaningful.
That was the weekend that changed my life. It was that night in that jail, realising that consuming in excess has consequences and you have to deal with them in a certain way. The combination of the trauma of the alcohol withdrawal in that cell and that lesson from Chief Tommy led me to a career where I’ve been able to open nightclubs and be in the alcohol business and never overconsume again.
Chief Tommy also inspired some of the characters I have written – such as Burton Mercer in The Blues Brothers (played by John Candy), who was just easygoing and even-handed. No raising of the voice, no “Get your asses against the wall”, and yet there is no question it is going to go his way.
If I can, I’m going to go over to Massena next summer, see if the Old City Hall building is still there and find out what happened to Chief Tommy. I’m glad we were arrested and we didn’t just drive out of there and get away with it. Who knows where my life would have gone?
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (in which Dan Aykroyd appears, in addition to his role as executive producer) is in cinemas from Nov 18. Aykroyd is the co-founder of Crystal Head Vodka, an additive-free corn-based vodka from Canada, which is available from Selfridges (selfridges.com)