Someone drunk-dialed me a few nights ago, and I got to wondering. What did people do when they were drinking and it was late, but there was no phone on which to call a friend in another time zone? Did they write letters, or leave the house and knock on a local friend’s door wanting to talk? Did they talk to empty air? Or do people only now have the compulsion to drunkenly reach out because it’s become possible to do so?
Men went outside some person’s domicile and bellowed drunkenly.
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If the proprietors of Philadelphia’s historic City Tavern are to be believed, they wrote Declarations of Independence.
my cavemen used to throw stones at the windows back in the day …
– drunk wigwag – just jerk a sheet around aimlessly over your head
– drunk semaphore – similar but using two sheets or blankets
– drunk smoke signals – similar but set the sheet or blanket on fiire
– drunk gunplay – not much different from sober gunplay
– drunk yodeling – how could you tell?
[snip] *O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil’s kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are you, that can’t slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil excretes, and your army eats. You will not, you son of a bitch, make subjects of Christian sons; we’ve no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, fuck your mother.[/*snip}
Said to be Stalin’s favorite painting, although only a lunatic would emulate it by writing one to him.
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Apparently morse code translators are a thing on the internet!
=IREALLYREALLYLOVEYOUMAN
=BACKATYOUBABE
What’s Frank Morgan doing there and why is he wearing red?
I would bet that there were many letters written drunk and posted that were later regretted or even briefly forgotten about.
Do you have a dormant talent, hidden away for decades, waiting for the perfect opportunity to shine?
Well, those many evenings I spent in 1980 with my dad and brother attending ham radio classes at the Red Cross finally paid off. I was able to read those two notes without resorting to online code translation.
It somehow makes it all worth it now.
You stagger off to your nearest Western Union & Telegraph office post haste, and dispatch a drunken telegram to a random party. 
Mead-pillaging?
Guilty.
Caves had windows?
When I read the title of this post, I had a visual of a man sending smoke signals…and stuttering in smoke. Very funny!
No, no, the pillaging comes before the mead. Otherwise you might end up pillaging the same place that you just pillaged and that’s embarrassing. You charge in screaming, “Give us your treasure and your women!” and they all say, “You took our treasure and women two days ago, we don’t have anymore.” Then you just have to slink off, drunk, alone, and treasureless.