| Beer |
| My family always liked beer... except my mother. I remember when my Great Aunt's son, my "Uncle Art", and his wife would come over to visit on sunday nights, everyone in my grandmother's house had a glass of beer. I used to ask to try a sip, and found that i liked it, and the way it made my tummy tingle. (until my family realized they were giving me multiple sips! i was two...i remember.) In High School, my German, and World Regions teacher Andrew Pollinger, invited us to join him at the OKTOBERFEST in Kitchner, Ontario. Mr Pollinger told the management of the beer tent that "these are my sons" (They allowed parents to allow teenagers to drink beer.) Back in the early 1960's, my dad was a railroad engineer for Bethlehem Steel's South Buffalo Railway. He moved steel from the Lackawanna plants, to Ford, and Chevy. In 1962, i was 5 years old. Dad listened to WBEN on the clock radio in the morning, and i remember various commercials for electra-gas, and sweet-cleen. The commercial that always gave me a feeling of foreboding, was the Miller High-Life "The Champagne of Bottled Beer" commercial. Though it was musically beautiful, the chorus of female voices always made me feel sad. This commercial was always played in the minutes before my dad would leave for work, and when i had to rise, to dress for kindergarten. Contemporaneously, or perhaps earlier, in the car, i remember my dad commenting to my mom about the song "a summer place"... that he didn't like the sound of it...my mom didn't understand, until he pointed out the military percussion underlying the song. I remember radio discussions about the movement of Naval vessels, and this made me puzzle why belly buttons had anything to do with boats... I even visualized a political cartoon to that effect...when i was five. I asked my parents about this strange association of navels and of boats, and this made my dad laugh...a bit. This was during the time of the Cuban Embargo. In November of 1963, i was listening to an educational radio program at school. i was in first grade. The program was interrupted to tell the events of Dallas. The teachers began crying, and they sent us home early with the news. When i got home, my family called me a liar....and a bad boy for skipping school...until their "stories" were preempted by Walter Cronkite. They never apologized...they were crying too hard. I understood. My dad died February 7th 1964, of kidney disease. He was 38. i was six. |
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