Owing to the title of this book, I suppose it’s only fair that I actually discuss beer, at least in passing.
I was never much of a fan until my boss Rich Crispin, a veteran engineer who started out in the Apollo program in the Sixties, began meeting with me at a local pub after work. He introduced me to European ales and lagers, head-and-shoulders above the domestic swill I’d occasionally sampled in my youth.
And today, I regularly meet my buddy Scott LaJoie at World of Beer, where we indulge in just those ales and lagers.
My dislike of domestic swill, however, is well-earned.
I had my first sampling in late 1977, when Amalgamated Meatcutters Local No. 343 – of which I, as an employee of Kroger in my hometown, was a member – went on strike. That meant that I, who was already earning 83 cents an hour over minimum wage (no small distinction at the time), had to man a picket line along with all my fellow employees.
And just as we went on strike, the Blizzard of 1977 hit.
That meant that instead of walking a picket line, we were sitting a picket line – in our cars, with engines running, outside the store. Even when it was closed.
Thus there came an evening when I was sitting in Dan Taylor’s car after hours – Dangerous Dan, who stocked the toilet paper aisle – listening to the radio and not speaking, there in the dark, with the engine running, amid mountains of snow. No other cars, no other people in sight...
...until Dave Roberts drives up alongside Dan. Both roll down their windows.
Dave Roberts is the assistant manager. And, as management, he is of course the enemy. He and Clarence, the top manager, all want us to vote for the anemic counterproposal that the main Kroger office in Cincinnati has offered in response to our strike. So he’s showing up to chat with Dan, who has absolutely no influence whatsoever with the rest of us, to talk up the counter-offer and hopefully persuade Dan to support it.
He’s holding an open beer.
“Here,” he says to Dan, “pass that over to Scott there.”
I’m 16 years old. I’ve never had alcohol of any kind. Bad enough Roberts is driving at night with an open beer, but giving it to a minor? Dan hands it to me without a second thought, utterly indifferent, but in hindsight I’m dumbstruck that Roberts was that stupid. Today, he could get fired or even arrested for such a thing.
So Dave continues lecturing Dan, and both are ignoring me, and I’m holding a beer. I’m terrified. What if I don’t drink it? What will they think of me if I just sit here holding it?
I weigh my options.
I could take a stand for propriety: “Uh, Mr. Dave, as manly as I might appear to you, I’m actually just 16 years old – still a minor in this state by quite some years. You shouldn’t be offering alcohol to a minor, just as a matter of adult responsibility, and especially in your capacity as a representative of Kroger management. Why, I’m of a mind to have Dangerous Dan here write you up with Cincinnati.” Nah, Dan’s gonna be less than wild about that.
I could take a stand on moral principle: “Mr. Dave, I really appreciate the beer, but alcohol is something we don’t do at my house. If I were to drink this, my conscience would overwhelm me, I would confess to my parents, and then they wouldn’t love me, my siblings wouldn’t love me, my grandfather wouldn’t love me, and most important, Jesus wouldn’t love me.”
Dave doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would understand that sensibility.
No way out.
I close my eyes, scrunch my nose, and take my first big swig of beer.
I want to say it was a Budweiser, but memory betrays me, and I’m forced to concede it may have been a Michelob, or possibly a Pabst. My only certainty is that it wasn’t Coors. In any case, it was the worst thing I’d ever tasted in my life – sour, putrid, unclean. I couldn’t swallow it; I felt myself about to wretch.
Dave rambles on, using his imagined powers of persuasion on Dan. Dan, I feel certain, is thinking of ways to kill himself.
I am feeling something similar. My mouth is full of what seems like toxic waste. I can’t swallow it; and I’m loathe to open the door and spit it out into the snow. That would be even more humiliating than declining it would have been.
And then... salvation!
I remember that my brown cotton gloves are in my jacket pocket. Holding the beer in my left hand, I reach into the pocket with my right and pull out the wadded-up gloves. Then, turning away from Dave and Dan, I just drool the mouthful of beer into the ball of brown glove, which soaks it right up. Problem solved!
Dave eventually runs out of wind, our relief eventually arrives, and I get out of Dan’s car and drive home – where my first order of business is to wash the beer out of my gloves, lest my parents smell it and put two and two together.
I realize my little brother, all decked out in his Star Wars jammies, is standing there watching me. I struggle for a plausible explanation.
“You peed on them, right?” he asks with all innocence.
Mercifully, I never had to sit the picket line with Dan again; the strike was quickly wrapped up. And I would one day put the whole traumatic affair behind me, becoming a connoisseur of fine European ales and lagers.
But I never made my peace with domestic beer. And now we know why.
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