Today’s blog is written by Gene Upchurch, a retired Progress Energy executive who spent many a year as a legislative lobbyist:

Videos of state senators throwing footballs and dancing on the Senate floor this week were certainly undignified, and prompted suggestions that it was the first activity on the Senate floor this year that didn’t harm the state’s citizens.

Anyway, there’s something about the end of an interminable legislation session that turns the place into a frat house.

Decades ago, a prominent legislator “encouraged” me to develop a well-oiled hooch-smuggling scheme that was perfected during a handful of legislative final nights. I would mix Aristocrat and orange juice in a dozen one-gallon milk jugs at home and slip the forbidden concoction to the legislative telephone center, which was then on the second floor just a few convenient feet from the door to the House chamber.

For one night only, the telephone center was transformed into a clandestine speakeasy. Legislators, staffers and lobbyists who knew what was going on could get their telephone messages and a paper cup brimming with joy juice. We would open the bar early enough on the final night of session so those who wished could get drunk, sober up, and get drunk again as the legislature’s long night wore on.

The only difference between those days and today: everyone respected each other and the legislature enough to never speak of our enterprise, and the only cameras belonged to newspaper photogs who were in line to get their own paper cup of happiness.