t. Beer had a bad reputation among my cohort--not as bad as coffee, but bad. It was one of those mystifyingly gross beverages adults drank. Yet I found it rather pleasant. Strange, but not anywhere near as bad as the coffee I'd sampled at the Presbyterian church basement.Fast forward to 1984 and my sixteenth year. My friends and I had managed to acquire a six-pack of Budweiser, of which we drank three. A chaste one beer each. I was living in Salt Lake City and was the only non-Mormon in the group, so naturally it fell to me to stash the remainder. One day I came home from school and found my father there--an unprecedented event. I had a sense that all was not right, and when he dangled those three beers from their plastic rings, I saw why. He said, "Well, I always got caught, I don't know why you thought it would be any different." Ah, I thought, this is not the end of the world.
Indeed, the act of beer-drinking is something that has been handed down from father to son for centuries. My dad, who was born in 1930, never took to good beer. He's still a tin-can man, a partisan of whichever brand is on sale. I tried to convert him, but he never developed a taste for good beer. If he was in the mood for something stronger than Busch Lite, he went for Jim Beam. Still, beer is one of the many gifts he has offered me over the years, and I love him for it.
Gene Alworth is eighty today. Raise a glass with me and toast his good health.
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Cheers Gene and happy birthday!
ReplyDeleteI just shared your entry with my dad. It's eerily similiar to my upbringing. My dad's motto when asked what his favorite beer is has always been "Whatever's cheapest." Thanks for sharing your story and Happy Birthday, Gene!
ReplyDeleteNice story . . . well told.
ReplyDeleteThis evening a colleague or two and I will toast Gene.
"Cheers, Prost, Saluet, Skål, Slainte, Mr. Alworth. Be Well."
I just want to say, I love that picture.
ReplyDeleteFlashback to my own youth...
Good read, Jeff. It strikes me that those of us a generation behind you may have had a slightly different introduction to beer. I was born in 1982, and the beers I remember my father drinking are Widmer Hefeweizen and the occasional Dos Equis. I wonder how general my experience was, growing up in a time when craft brewing was already strong. An idle comment, really, so a cheers to your father, indeed.
ReplyDeleteThanks all for the nice wishes.
ReplyDeleteAnd Soggy, are you trying to imply that I'm old?
Happy birthday Gene! To your health! *raises glass*
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday Gene Alworth!
ReplyDeleteI remember a similar tale when I was about 12. I decided to try a can of my Dad's MGD, but after one sip I got grossed out and dumped the rest out in the backyard. I'm not sure how my Dad found out, but he gave me a stern lecture that amounted to only four words: "Don't drink MY beer!" (heavy emphasis on the "MY") Around the mid-90's he got into microbrews, and his advice to his teenage son was:
"Life's too short to drink shitty beer!" So, those were the seeds planted in my mind and I thank my Dad for them. Cheers!
Not at'all, Jeff.
ReplyDelete