Looking back, my first sip of beer was an O.V. or Old Vienna. OV was a sassy beer, even as a 4 year old walking with his mom down a country road. I remember a lot about that time in my life. I was living in what's technically Royalton, NY in an old farm house. I lived there with my mom, my aunt and grandparents before my mom met my former stepfather. It's super easy to look back at times with rose colored glasses. My grandfather had retired from truck driving soon after I was born but my grandmother was still working at a GM radiator plant. The girls lived at home and I felt like we were a close family unit - until my mom met my stepfather. I remember going to dinner on Friday night with the grandparents, stuffing myself on dinner rolls and fried fish. As I write this, I'm trying to text my aunt to remember the name of the places we went. Oddly enough, some of those places still exist. Restaurants from my neck of the woods in Western New York (as well as other Rust Belt cities) can bank on tradition. We have places like Chef's in Buffalo that which is just a "red sauce" Italian restaurant with no real special flavor, yet has stayed open generation after generation because that's just where the family went for pasta. Living in Portland, Oregon - you'd be hard pressed to find places like that. Not only are the inhabitants relatively new, there's something about being the cutting edge, offering something new at every turn. Barely any tradition at all. However, Murph's back in Middleport would offer simple diner food at an easy price. As a kid growing up, all I heard about was my grandparents taking my aunt and mom to a local "gin mill" called Brauer's in Pendleton NY. Just as you may expect - it is still operational! I wouldn't be surprised if they barely changed anything about that place. It lived in mythical lore, because my grandparents stopped going when I was a kid. After a few years as a legal drinker, I revisited Brauer's with my aunt and had a drink for Norm & Mary!
Speaking about generational things, Labatt Blue is one of those things. My grandpa drank Genesee "Genny" beer and Honey Brown (from the same brewery.) I'm not quite certain what my mom drank growing up, O.V. for sure though. Me, though, it was either Molson Canadian or Labatt Blue. My first case of beer pilfered was Molson Canadian. Me and my longtime friend paid a comrade in the take-out portion of the grocery store we worked in to buy cases of that amber hooch. I had to drive the guy all over Lockport because he said he was ex special forces, but worked in subsidized housing and didn't have a car. Whatever. Just needed that sweet drinking juice. This would continue until my 21st birthday where I magically become old enough, as deemed by the State. My first legal drink was a Black and Tan from O'Lacy's in Batavia, NY. To this day, it is my de facto favorite Irish bar, if not favorite place to drink. Mes Que in Buffalo is close to first in my book. Anyway, money being an issue, my new favorite drink became the Labatt Blue, which is a Buffalo staple. Because Buffalo is a den of iniquity, Labatt Blue is the easiest drink to order when you're absolutely shit-faced. Or you order it because of of your draught options are scarce. But it was incredibly easy to slur out "BLOOO" in a large, noisy bar as opposed to, let's say, a Ninkasi Total Domination. A Blue isn't going to tip the scales in drunkness. A Labatt Blue is between 4 and 5% alcohol by volume. It would take an army of Labatt Blues to put you away and that's usually the case.
Writing this now, I can look back laughingly at the past. At 33, I want to judge my 23 year old self as a drunken, depraved asshole in a perpetual hunt for pussy. Getting loaded up on cheap Labatt Blue and driving to a bar with friends to find someone to hook up with was incredibly irresponsible, but in a weird way, it was incredibly fun. Through all of it, forces greater than myself or just simply the odds didn't catch up with me and I survived those incidents without either venereal disease, a DWI on my criminal record or hurting anyone outside of a few feelings. I'm not an overly religious man nor superstitious, however I would like to think my grandparents are somehow looking after me.
Through it all, everything is just a learning process. The hope is that through heartbreak and mistakes that we learn something that makes us better people. For the most part, I can draw a line from my 20s and 30s, developmentally. My 20s were a hedonistic era, seeking novelty. New friends, new beers, new girls. Nothing was ever enough. I even enjoyed my Dostoevskian poverty. I reveled in being piss poor, drinking shitty beers and waking up on 3 hours of sleep to grind out 12 hours worth of workday in order to party once again. Being Blue meant being the working class guy I revered my grandfather was. Ol' Norm. A man's man. A sportsman. A hardworker. Someone you could trust for anything but someone you could also enjoy a few drinks with.
Needless to say, I look back at my Blue period fondly. I hope, you the reader, enjoyed this 4 part series. I know that it's not quite how I expected it to turn out, but that's kind of the fun of this website. Over the next few days, I'll let you know the direction of this website. As always, feel free to leave comments here on the website as for what you'd like to see in 2017.
Na Zdrowie, bitches.
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