Well, thankfully the so-called “Beer Summit” is over and no one got hammered or started slugging it out on the White House lawn.
It being the summer and all I just suppose there isn’t much to talk about except how hot it is and speculating on whether or not the Beer Summit did any good after all the talk about the circumstances leading up to said summit.
Not surprisingly beer companies started raising hell when the White House revealed what everyone would drink. I think Henry Louis Gates Jr. had originally ordered the Jamaican Red Stripe but after the American brewers started their own brouhaha he chose as Samuel Adams. I think since he was one of the guests of honor he should have been given whatever he wanted for Pete’s sake. I mean, this is the White House!
I must admit I would find myself troubled to attend a White House beer summit these days because there are just too many beers to choose from. Although I attended many a beer summit in my younger days — mostly during the Navy and in college — I don’t drink beer much these days. And I suppose it is irony for me to complain about having too many beer choices.
There were times in college but mostly in the Navy when I was perpetually poor that the choice of beer had to do with the price. I am mostly talking about drinking in bars. Thanks to the humanizing policies instituted by our prior Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt, we could buy cans of beer for 35 cents from soft drink machines in the barracks, or BEQ (Bachelor Enlisted Quarters) as they were called.
I didn’t buy a lot of beer from the vending machines. I suppose that it had to do with the selection — probably Schlitz or some such. (As one of my favorite Texas singers, Robert Earl Keen, recalls: “Schlitz beer. I haven’t had that since elementary school.”)
Since I worked most of the time during college I didn’t worry so much about price although most of my college friends did. I do remember that day during my last semester — the one semester I felt like a real college student — my friend Warren and I rejoiced over the switch to Busch being the draft served during happy hour at our real one and only bar in Nacogdoches, the Crossroads.
I digress but these days I just get astonished when I walk by a beer selection in a store or liquor store and see all the choices. Talk about making your eyes glaze over. You got your Santa’s Butt, Fat Tire, Arrogant Bastard, Drink Till You Puke On Your Shoes, Who Stole My Good Sense? and other great brands. (I made up the last two but the others are real.)
It is kind of amazing to me that some people stick to one brand of beer all of their life. Looking back on the days of my beer summiting I tend to characterize a favorite brand in conjunction with a place or time from that era. I think of Miller ponies at Jim’s Lounge in Gulfport, San Miguel or Olympia in the Philippines, Swan beer in Perth, Western Australia, Coors when you couldn’t get it east of Colorado, Coors Light in El Paso when a bartender told me you couldn’t get lighter than Coors and Busch at the Busch 4th of July shootoffs.
But now it’s decisions, decisions. Oh well, to each his own. Buuuurrrrppppp! In case you didn’t know, that was a burp from going through that long list.
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