Days of Beer (A Review and a Personal Essay)

Days of Beer, the Review

“Charles Granlich is George Thorogood without the guitar. You know the song, “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”? This short book is in the same genre. It’s a collection of stories telling of how Charles became a beer drinker (they start ‘em early in Arkansas), how he had love affairs with many cheap brands, and how he eventually came to realize that too much beer came with too many consequences. A “love ‘em and leave ‘em kind of man,” Charles left his drinking life behind, preferring the love of his wife over a cheap bottle of booze. There are a number of funny stories here, such as dealing with the police, raiding beer from others camping nearby, and bootlegging beer across state lines. Luckily, he didn’t get caught; there would be nothing more shameful than being caught bootlegging Coors, which in my opinion is one of the worst excuses for beer in the world. If there was only Coors and water, I’d become a teetotaler and take the pledge! Charles shares some lessons learned from beer. Drinking beer can have a negative impact on one’s love life, but it can also give you some humorous stories to tell (if can you can only remember them). Days of Beer is cheaper than a cheap beer (unless you happen to be in Vietnam). It’s short, just a page shy of 50, and is available as an ebook for 99 cent. I read it on a Nook. My only complaint is that occasionally a word would be split up (without a hyphen) and a letter would be on the line above or below. But that wasn’t too much to deal with considering that I did get some laughs at Charles’ expense (Don’t feel too bad for him; I paid the 99 cent). I should acknowledge, in a desire that my review being unbiased and all that, that I have gotten to know Charles through the reading of his blog and his comments on my blog. But I still had to pay the 99 cent! ”

Days of Beer, Part 2

Like Charles, I grew up in the South, but in another part.  I have never really been one to drink heavily and I didn’t really become a beer drinker until later in life.  When I was younger, I’d occasionally have a beer on a hot afternoon, but in the circles I ran, most of us who drank preferred bourbon or scotch.  Charles notes that in general Southern women aren’t impressed with beer drinkers and I knew more than a few who considered beer to be low class, but had no problem with their guys drinking whiskey straight (as long as it was in a glass and not straight out of the bottle).   So I cut my teeth on the harder stuff, only occasionally having a beer.   Charles could have his affairs with the St. Pauli Girl while I was best friends with guys like George Dickle and Johnny Walker.  (But before you get any wrong ideas, we weren’t lovers, just acquaintances.)  This all changed in late summer 1986 when I left the South for Pittsburgh to study theology.  I was once again a poor student, made even poorer by the house payment for which I was still responsible.  With that burden over my head, I moved into the dorms to save money.  Although I had my own room, dorm life with the hockey games in the hall didn’t set well with me.  I would have gone crazy had it not been for Jim, my next door neighbor in the dorms and the only other guy on the hall not right out of college.

I’d arrived a day or two before Jim and had my room all set up when he arrived.  It was late one afternoon and he popped his head in my room.  I was spread out on the bed reading, but invited him in and I told him there was some ice tea in my fridge if he wanted some.  He poured himself a glass and took a seat at my desk and began to talk.  Jim was a great talker.  He was telling me all about himself when, in midsentence he stopped and said something like “Holy Cow,” although that may not have been the exact words he’d used.  As he talked, he’d been looking at my room, at the books I’d hauled up from North Carolina, the teddy bears that had been a gift of my girlfriend at the time, Cindy, whose picture was also pasted around the room.  But what caught Jim’s eye weren’t the books or the pictures or my old typewriter (I’d be another year before I got a computer).  Under my desk was a box containing the remnants of my liquor cabinet.  There were bottles of single malt, of various bourbons and whiskeys, a bottle of Southern Comfort (just because) and some pretty good liqueurs like Drambuie and Grand Marnier.     Jim’s worst fear, enrolling in a school full of temperance pledgers, had just been shattered.  That night we went out for the first time and for the next year, we would explore all the ‘burgs in Pitt through their local taverns. 

Pittsburgh is a beer drinking town.  Over the first few weeks at school, I became acquainted with Iron City and “IC Light” (which sounds like icy light, when ordered).  Then there was Rolling Rock, made with the refreshingly pure waters of Latrobe, a myth that survived until I made my first trip to Latrobe and failed to see any water source that looked refreshing or pure.  Nonetheless, Rolling Rock would be a beer of choice for most of my time in Pittsburgh.  Except for when I was hot and sweaty, I never got to where I could chug beers like the natives, which may be why I survived the first year of studying while Jim didn’t.   Down South, when drinking bourbon, you learn to sip it and to nurse it along.  Otherwise, you’d end up in the gutter, a destination I avoided.  I did the same thing with beer, sipping and nursing it along.  This often meant that by the time I had drunk a bottle of beer, the last of it was room temperature and not very good as I am not a European and haven’t found anything pleasant about warm beer.  Rolling Rock had the answer, a seven ounce pony.  It was the perfect sized bottle and I could drink it all before it warmed.  And since the bottles were reusable, they appealed to my environmental ethic.  A case of 48 ponies cost only nine dollars (plus the four dollars and eighty cent deposit, an initial investment as I kept the case and returned the empties for a refill).

 Oddly, in Pennsylvania (at least in the 80s), you couldn’t buy beer in a grocery store.  You had to go to a bar, where you paid a premium price, or to a “beer distributor” where you could only buy beer by the case.   The good news is that beer by the case is cheaper.  After looking around, I discovered the best distributor to be a drive-in arrangement in Sharpsburg, across the Alleghany River.  This was a quite convenient arrangement.  You drove in and popped your trunk and they’d fill it up for you and after paying the bill, you’d drive off with your front tires barely touching the pavement.   There was always beer in my refrigerator, but most of my drinking time was spent in pubs and bars around the city.  My favorite was just a few blocks away, where beers were still fifty cent a glass and the most expensive bar drink was two bucks.  But Jim and I also explored the rest of the city, stopping in clubs to get a feel for the variety that the city offered.  

I should write more about beer and Pittsburgh and maybe I’ll do that later.  But there is one more story I’d like to share, one about Sapporo Beer (a beer Charles refers to in his memoir).  In the room across the hall from me was Ken, a student from Japan.   A couple weeks after school started, I came across a place that sold beers from around the world.  I think it was the Original O (or the Dirty O) a well-known hotdog and french fries establishment in Oakland, across from the University of Pittsburgh library that also had a collection of beers from around the world in their bar.  Seeing a beer from Japan, I brought a six-pack thinking Ken would be thrilled.  He wasn’t.  Those beers weren’t drunk until I was out of American beers.  Back in the ‘80s, when we were concerned that Japan was going to surpass the United States economically, beer was the one import from the Land of the Rising Sun that didn’t make a dint in the American market.  

Jim and I often talked about writing a guide to the bars and pubs of Pittsburgh, but we never did.  Maybe this is a start… 

In Siberia (photos and a book review)

Siberian Village (photo taken from train)

This post is mostly a book review.  But I added some of my own photos from my summer trip that took me from Beijing, through Mongolia, on to Ulan Ude, Russia and across Siberia the Urals and on to Moscow and St. Petersburg.  These photos were used in the posts that I made in the blog I kept during the summer.

Sunset over Lake Baikal

Colin Thuborn, In Siberia (1999, HarperCollins ebook, 2009), 270 pages

During the Soviet era, much of Siberia was closed off from the West.   The Soviets utilized this vast area (which contains nearly a fifth of the world’s landmass) as the Czars earlier: a place to exile criminals and political prisoners.  During the Second World War, industry began to develop in Siberia, far from the reach of Hitler’s tanks.  It is a place of great resources—minerals, oil, timber, wheat—and great hardship—the coldest temperatures ever recorded in inhabited place is in Siberia.  After the breakup of the Soviet Union and two years after the end of collective farming, Colin Thubron set out to explore this region.  Thubron, an Englishman, was familiar with Russia, having spent time there during the Cold War and having written on the nation.   In his travels, he takes the Trans-Siberian Railroad as well as the BAM (Baikal-Amur Railroad), a line that runs north of Lake Baikal, and a steamer up the Yenisei River to the arctic.  In the East, he flies to remote locations.  In all, he covers the region from the Urals to the Pacific, from the “Altai Republic” along the Mongolian border to Dudinka, beside the frozen waters of the Arctic. 

 Siberia, Thubron suggests was “born out of optimism and dissent.” (22)   Starting in the 1750s, Siberia became a place to exile criminals (just as Britain exiled its criminals to Australia) and although the number of criminals outnumbered the political prisoners, the later served as a “leavening intelligentsia” for the region (162)   Ironically, Siberia with its vastness was also a place of freedom.  In the 18^th Century, those who moved there had a saying, “God is high and the czar is far off.” (22)  In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Siberia was a stronghold out for the White Russians who fought against the Bolsheviks.   Thubron tells of talk in Irkutsk to build a statue to honor Adm. Kolchak, a leader of the White Russians who was shot by the Bolsheviks at Irkutsk and his body pushed below the ice.  He doubts the monument will be built. (This summer I discovered a beer brewed in Irkutsk with his name on it, which to me seems a fitting tribute.)

Along the Trans-Siberian (old water tower)

Traveling in the years after the breakup of the Soviet system and the end of state-sponsored atheism, Thubron is surprised to find religion so alive.  “Russia’s atheist past seemed no more than an overcast day in the long Orthodox summer,” he noted. (56)  As he traveled he witnessed new and renovated churches opening.  At the dedication of a monastery outside of Omsk, he asked himself, “Why had this faith resurrected out of nothing, as if a guillotined head had been struck back on its body?  Some vital artery had preserved it.” (59)  Not only does he explore the resurgence in the Orthodox faith, (who seemed to be profiting from the ability to import and sell alcohol and cigarettes tax free (56), but also Buddhism among the Buryat (165ff), a dying Jewish settlement in Eastern Siberia (208ff), Russian Baptist (220f), Old Believers  with their insistence of the correct way to cross themselves in prayers (175f), and even a few who were trying to revive traditional shamanistic practices (98ff).    In each situation, he meets with religious leaders.  One of the more interesting interviews was with an Orthodox priest in Irkutsk, whose father had been a communist and whose mother was a Christian.  He told about how in the Army, he began to be convicted of his sin and came to God through his guilt.  This priest feared a war between China and Russia and also felt that America was a godless land (156-7).

Dining on the Trans-Siberian

But not all of Siberia is teaming with religious revival.  Many of the encounters were with people who had lost faith in communism or who felt their world had been pulled out from them.  There was a woman who had been sent to Siberia by Stalin, yet still refused to criticize the Communist Party.    Toward the end of his journey, in northeastern Siberia, he visits Kolyma, the location of some of the most deadly camps.  Being sent here was a death sentence.  In the winter of 1932, whole camps (prisoners, dogs and guards) froze to death.   It is here that the coldest inhabit place on earth is at, where the temperature has dropped to -97.8 F, where ones breath will free into crystals and twinkle onto the ground, a phenomenon known as the “whispering of the stars.”  (254)  Yet, despite such harsh conditions, they produced nearly a third of the world’s gold in the 1930s.  It is estimated that one life was lost for every kilogram of gold produced.  Over 2 million people died here.  (251f)  The condition of the camps horrified Thubron, who seems concern that the residents of Siberia accept the camps of the past without much thought.

In his last collection of Stalin horror stories, Thuborn tells of the prison ship, the SS Dzhurma, which got caught in ice in 1933 with 12000 prisoners on board.  All the prisoners froze to death and half the guards went crazy, according to Thubron.  This would also be the most deadly maritime disaster ever, in terms of life lost.  When I read this, I thought it sounded like fodder for a horror story and I did some checking and from a couple sources on the internet, found that there are some questions of the validity of this tragedy.   Two things don’t fit according to these sources.  First of all, the ship that became known as the Dzhurma wasn’t even sold to the Soviets until 1935.  Secondly, it was only a little over 400 feet long, making it nearly impossible to have had 12,000 prisoners onboard.  However, in 1939, another “death-ship,” the SS Indigirka sank with its human cargo trapped below deck. (256)

Along the Trans-Siberian, note kilometer marker (km from Moscow)

I really enjoyed this book and wish I would have read it before traveling through Siberia last summer.  At that time, I read Ian Frazier’s excellent travelogue, Travels in Siberia.  Thubron’s book is a little out of date, but it is also excellent.  His writing is engaging and never boring as he weaves together a story about this vast and unknown landmass.   I found reading this book on a e-reader both pleasant (it’s nice and light) and also a little troublesome as I wasn’t able to easily flip back to the map at the beginning.  However, the map doesn’t show up that well and when I was home, I found myself dragging out an atlas to locate places Thubron traveled.   I recommend this book.  

Novoibisk Station

Groundhogs, roadkill and sore shoulders...

Last night, after an evening of playing basketball, I was driving home and almost ran over a groundhog.  The over-sized rodent waddled out in front of my truck and I slammed the my brakes, thinking it might be a bad omen to do in a groundhog the evening before his special day.  Of course, the idea that animals are running around at night like that in the heart of winter is a testimony to global warming and the fact that the ground here isn’t frozen, isn’t snow covered and it feels more like the first of April than the first of February.  But I’ve already complained enough about the weather. I know they’re saying that Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow down in Pennsylvania, but I can assure you that that rodent I saw last night (If he lived till morning, which is questionable since he’s playing in the streets) didn’t see his shadow!

Thinking about Groundhog Day reminds me of a favorite movie of mine, Groundhog Day.  I’ve seen it a half-dozen times which really means I’ve seen it a few hundred times for the movie is just 15 minutes (of fresh material).  The producer kept splicing together copies to make it a feature length film.  That said, I like Bill Murray (Phil Connors).  He may be ugly, but he’s funny.  He’s also not the reason I’ve seen the movie multiple times.   Let me share you a secret.   I really like Andi MacDowell (Rita in the film).  She has ties to the Old North State.  Unfortunately, she was born in the lesser of the Carolinas, but she spent her summers in North Carolina, which was obviously a blessing that she used to refine her gracefulness.  Andi is beautiful and I fall in love with her again every time I watch one of her moves. Personally, I just don’t think it’s fair that Bill Murray gets umpteenth opportunities to both sow his wild oats and still get Andi MacDowell at the end of the movie!   The way Andi smiled at the groundhog in the movie, I’m sure she’d be impressed with my quick reflex that saved that rodent from becoming one with the pavement last night. 

Just one final question as I move the heating pad over a bit, "why am I still trying to play basketball with guys half my age?" 

January 31 (tennis and The Last Station)

It’s the last day of January.  I took off work while it’s still daylight.  I should have had enough time for a couple of miles of cross-country skiing; after all I am living in Michigan.  But what did I do?  I hit tennis balls with my daughter.  And I’m not talking about making the familiar 30 mile drive to a big city where she takes tennis lessons in an inside tennis center, but at the courts at the local high school.  Yep, that’s right, it was 52 degrees  (11 degrees Celsius for my non-USA friends).  I played in shorts and a long sleeve sweatshirt.  Of course, we didn’t have a net (the nets have been removed for winter) but we did have the courts to ourselves.  After dark, I took the pooch for a walk around town.  When I came back home, I watched for the second time The Last Station.

If you haven’t seen the The Last Station I recommend it.  The movie is based on the final year of Tolstoy life as seen through his last secretary, Valentin Bulgakov.  Valentin goes to live at Tolstoy’s family home, where he witnesses the struggle between Chekhov to Tolstoy’s wife Sophia’s battle over the rights to Tolstoy’s work.  He also sees the bitterness and the love between Tolstoy and his wife.  At one point, the author is frustrated with his wife’s complaining and says, “You don’t need a husband, you need a Greek chorus.”  Chekhov, who dislikes Sophia, tells Tolstoy’s wife, “If I had a wife like you, I would have blown my brains out…  or gone to America.”  Even though there is tension, you do get the sense that Tolstoy and his wife are in love even if they can’t live together peacefully and the elderly man finally decides he has flee.  Tolstoy leaves on a train until his health fails and he is taken into by the station master at a remote station and given a place to die.  The small town in inundated with reporters wanting to know what’s happening to the world famous author.  During this time, Chekhov and one of Tolstoy’s daughters conspire to keep Sophia away from her husband.  They are successful until the very end when the daughter relents and allows her mother to see him one final time. 

In addition to the drama around Tolstoy, Valentin also has some drama of his own.  As a Tolstoian, he is trying to live the ideal life based on the ascetic principals of his boss, yet he finds himself having an affair with Masha, a young Tolstorian.   In a way, you get the sense that what Valentin and Masha are experiencing in their love mirrored the relationship between Tolstoy and his wife when they were younger.

The movie deals with how we create idols out of our heroes.  Around Tolstoy are a group of disciples trying to live as he has taught.  At best, Tolstoy is amused by this and his wife is repulsed by it.  Tolstoy takes a liking to his new secretary, confiding in him that he’s not a very good Tolstorian himself.  In another scene, one in which Chekhov is present along with a lot of reporters, Tolstoy kills a mosquito.  Chekhov denounces this, saying that it doesn’t look good for him to kill anything.  Tolstoy counters, telling Masha that Chekhov is a better Tolstorian than he is.  At the end of the movie, Valentin confronts Chekhov, charging that he is creating an icon out of Tolstoy and that the image is going to look more like Chekhov than Tolstoy. 

The scenery in the movie is lovely.  The birch forest reminded me of being in Russia this summer (even though much of the movie was filmed in Germany).  Of course, the train scenes were also pleasing to my eyes!  This is a good movie that shows how the perceived lives of our heroes often differ from the reality.  It also shows how people attempt to control others for their own gain.  This is a good movie.  It’s romantic, but with a twist.