Sunday, May 18, 2014

Beer!

Another nice Sunday.. not too warm, not too cool, just right.  These are the kind of days when my grandfather would "go to church on the radio."  He would spend his Sunday mornings scanning the dial until he found a service he liked.  He would listen to any he could find until the baseball game came on in the afternoon. 


He and his friend Joe Cronin would sit in front of the radio, staring at the  yellow dial light and experience every game as though they were there, at the ballpark.   While they watched, they would do the "beer thing", which I have mentioned before.  Under the table on which the radio sat, was sometimes hidden a case of Dawson's Beer.. a locally brewed lager beer.  This was not known by my grandmother for many years.. She had been the official piano player for the hymns that were sung at the weekly Temperance Union meetings and she had tried to keep my grandfather away from booze for all of their married years.


While my grandfather and his friend watched and listened to the game, they were also attuned to where my grandmother was located.  When she was not nearby, they would each sneak drinks of their beer, which was in cans shaped like bottles, and sometimes bottles shaped like cans.. but never cans shaped like cans, or bottles shaped like bottles... that came many years later.   Right now, I'm talking Depression  Years (1930's).


When the containers were empty, they would slide the window screen over and throw them down into the alley,  8 or 10 feet below.  Over the  years, the alley amassed a mountain of empty beer containers, never noticed by my grandmother because my Aunt Marjorie would wash that window when it was needed. 


However, one Sunday my grandmother decided to wash the window herself, after my grandfather and Joe had slipped off for a walk in the sun (actually to go to the nearest pub.)  As my grandmother leaned out to wash the outside of the window, she saw the pile of containers.  I had never heard my grandmother yell like that before, and I sure did not know that she knew all of those cuss words!


Dawson's Beer was brewed in New Bedford, Massachusetts for many years.  In the late 1950's I got to taste it "in the rough."  While I was finishing my degree at Boston University, I spent my evenings driving a cab in New Bedford.  One of my steady customers worked at the brewery and invited me in to have a drink while I waited for him.  The potable in question was retrieved from a rusty faucet over a not altogether clean tub.  But it apparently ran through refrigeration of some kind and it was cold and GOOD!  Of course, today, I would never dream of driving after wetting my beer whistle like that.  Times change.



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