How Beer Saved the World
Page 6
“Oh, okay—” and so, after introductions, there began a most spirited and earnest conversation that revealed Mac to be a voracious reader of everything. From romance (“Hey! Guys like love too!”) to folks like Allende, Marques, Kafka and the paranormal (had all the episodes of The X-Files on DVD) and science fiction (had all the episodes of Star Trek) and everything else in between.
So we sat at a table at the opening of this new coffee shop and it soon became very obvious that we had a lot to talk about. And as the evening began to move into the night and, to the closing of the coffee shop, Mac said, “Lumber Jack Tavern just down the street. Beer? We can talk more. But first—”
“Oh, yeah—”
He trotted off to use the facilities.
Then, to the tavern, local dive with bright red planking up the front. To the right and left of the door, big windows with neon art for Skagit Porter and Coors in the right window. The left side held a flashing “open” sign in red letters in a circle of bright, vision-numbing blue neon.
For a Sunday night, it was crowded, but after a minute, a table against the wall opened up. Sturdy, high-backed wood chairs, Formica tabletops of interlocking, green triangles over white background.
“Used to be a café,” said Mac. “They just kept the décor when it became a tavern.”
Smiling waitress came over, long chocolate hair, dark eyes, and business-like. “Beer for you guys?” she slapped down a coaster for me and then Mac. “Somethin’ ta eat?”
She then stood straight. I surmised that beneath that oversized plaid shirt she wore, she was, as they say, weight and height proportional. But had that look of someone who was used to dealing with just about anything when it comes to customers.
“No,” I said, “for now, a Cascade Stout would be fine.”
“Skagit Porter,” said Mac and the conversation continued on, punctuated by frequent trips to the bathroom for Mac. At one point when he came back he sighed, “Curse of the Horace family—small bladders though I notice it more when I drink beer. Don’t know why unless it’s something about beer. But—” He grinned, sitting back and taking a big gulp of brew, “not about to stop. That’s for sure.”
I laughed, held my glass up. “A toast to beer. One can only guess how many relationships cemented and wars averted by sitting down and having a glass of beer.”
Mac grinned. We clinked glasses. “Amen. To beer.”
And before long and several more beers later, and feeling pretty tipsy, we both had to go but, after some minutes and polite knocking on the door to the one bathroom—
“Fuck,” said Mac. “Fuck me but I gotta pee.”
“You and me both. Whoever’s in there must have passed out. Well—”
Mac motioned with his head. “Patch of woods out back beyond the parking lot.”
We made our way through the Lumber Jack. Once outside, wove through parked cars and to some tall trees just beyond the parking lot. The moon was out, making our task a bit more in need of cover. After finding convenient trees, we, as they say, let fly.
Funny what things you notice during such times; especially when feeling the effects of fine beer, the coolness of the air, Whitehorse, shining like a ragged, icy ghost just a ways away, and, just finishing my task, I pointed skyward. “Shooting star! You see that?”
The shooting star abruptly slowed but kept coming and then—stopped shooting. It just sat there as if suspended in mid-air.
Mac, still zipping his fly, began stepping back out of the trees, looked up, kept stepping back. “I don’t think that’s a shooting—”
A blaze of light. And a smell like a burned clutch.
Next thing I knew, we were lying flat on a yielding surface in a small room suffused with a faintly golden light. Along one side, a shelf or counter. I stood, then went over to get a better look but each step sent me a bit airborne. “Shit, Mac—gravity—”
“Lack of it.”
I pointed to the counter. He came over. “Probes,” he said, as we gazed at what appeared to be highly-polished medical-looking instruments.
We both looked at each other. I am sure we both shared the mutual look of abrupt understanding: alien abduction.
I don’t know how someone’s face can turn so white, but Mac’s face was certainly white. “Oh, God!” he whispered. “What do we—”
“Don’t know. Never put any stock into alien abduction stuff,” I whispered, “but this sure looks like—”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Shit. We gotta do something before someone or something wants to get friendly with us and wonder how we tick. What’s worse—”
I looked at him a long moment. “You gotta pee.”
He nodded his head vigorously. “I gotta pee.”
“Well—” Exasperated, I looked around as if looking for a place to do that and came to my senses. “I’m sure whoever has abducted us has probably had all sorts of stuff spilled on the floor from their examinations. Go ahead and piss.”
He turned, went to the nearest wall and began to let go—and stopped. “My God!” He pointed, “my God—”
I came over to look. Where he had pissed on the wall, that part of the wall—had melted. Eagerly, I tried. Not as much came of my effort but certainly part of the wall where I had done my duty had obviously softened.
“Yeah,” I said, “whatever that beer does to your piss sure doesn’t work for this place.”
I saw Mac relax and I smiled. A weapon?
Dong in hand, Mac went over to the counter with all the formidable and weird medical-looking paraphernalia and said, “No, no, not tonight, dear. I don’t want an examination.”
And he promptly aimed a forceful yellow stream all over the equipment and the shelf.
Wow! I don’t know what beer did to Mac’s pee—maybe it was coincidental, I dunno, but the instruments acted like they’d been hit by a laser; everything just— melted, shriveled up and gave off a God-awful acrid odor of piss as if mixed with sulfur and garlic. The metal shrieked, squealed as if they were living entitles that had somehow taken on static forms of instruments.
At that point, part of the wall yanked back, revealing our captors who looked like somehow feminized lizards: big dark, soulful eyes, more or less set as if to give binocular vision, no nose, grayish-green skin and dressed in some sort of body-hugging, synthetic wrap, almost as if sprayed on. They looked around, pointed and squealed, I assume in shock.
We turned and faced our abductors directly. Mac still had his “weapon” in his hand. I pulled down my zipper and found my own, guessing that our friends had seen the damage Mac had done, I could only assume I could do the same. We approached. Then stopped, raised our formidable weapons and made like we were going to fire.
Our friends screeched. Blam! The wall slammed shut. Golden light.
And we found ourselves flat on our backs on the parking lot outside the Lumber Jack. We looked up in time to see the star streak away at high speed eastward. Suddenly, I imagined a vast armada of glowing ships heading toward Earth, then abruptly stopping as if hitting a wall—then suddenly retreating. For a few minutes I guess, we both conked out, maybe from shock or relief combined with the effects of the beer. Anyway, when I came to, Mac was trying to sit up.
“You get a picture in your head before we zoned out of a bunch of ships in retreat?” I asked. “A mass-mind telepathic command to am-scray?”
Smiling hugely, Mac slowly got to his feet and gave me a hand.
“Yup,” he laughed. “Maybe having a small bladder ain't so bad. Maybe what beer does to me ain’t so bad either. Certainly saved the world from alien invasion tonight.”
“That it did,” I said, “that it did. Suggest we celebrate and have another round.”
“Sounds great,” said Mac, “but first,” he turned his back discreetly.
“I know,” I laughed. “I know. But first—you gotta pee.”
MAD GUS MISSTEPS
From the ‘Legends of Beer’ Catalogue: Volume 17, Canto 210
The following is transcribed from an interview with extremely aged (1) German pig farmer Gustavo Dourtmundschtradel, conducted in English(2) by Roland Halifax, an oral history researcher from Bisonford University in Littleville, Iowa, (3) originally recorded on November 22nd, 1993 at Gustavo’s ancestral farmhouse in the hamlet of Frauschlesundmunster. (4)
RH: Thank you for agreeing to speak with me, Herr Dourtmundschtradel.
GD: A man of my age is of no further use with the pigs, Herr Halifax. It is good to have some other occupation—and to hope, of course, that some of my ancestral lore may be preserved... For some more appreciative audience, perhaps, than my dummkopf (5) son, who never believes a word I speak... and his even dimmer offspring with their video games and little music players. (Thoughtful pause) I must confess to fearing that the Dourtmundschtradel line is failing. Soon, our stories may be all that remains of us.
RH: Ah... Well then... What story would you like to start with?
GD: It is always best to start at the beginning, ja?(6) So I will tell you first, Herr Halifax, the oldest story in my family’s possession. A tale of the liberation of Durn in Schkerrinwald—the place from which my line originates, too many centuries ago to count now.
RH: Can you give me even an approximate century in which to place this account?
GD: Ach du Lieber Himmel. (7) No, lad. My tale comes from a time before centuries had been invented. This is from the... How is it in English? ... The Jahren sehr lange Geschichten. (8)
RH: Good heavens! (9) That’s quite an old story! However did you come by it?
GD: I had it from my father.
RH: And... do you know how he came by it?
GD: Had it from his father, of course—who had it from his father, and so on. I am 91 years old, Herr Halifax. The time we have is maybe short to waste on such trivialities, ja?
RH: Sorry. Do go on.
GD: Well, as you will no doubt have heard, Europe was a dark place to be living in those days. But even by such standards, the isolated village of Durn was darker than most. It had many nicknames then, all of them words for misery of one kind or another.
RH: I’ve never heard of any Durn Village.
GD: Of course not. It was gone not long after this story transpired. The meager valley to which it clung was but an inhospitable rent in the high mountains of Schkerrinwald.
RH: Where is Schkerrinwald, exactly?
GD: Gone as well—a mere century or two after Durn. The whole empire of Vorkenfast was never more than one of many tenuous experiments in kingdom-craft back then.
RH: I must confess, I’ve never heard of an empire named Vorkenfast either.
GD: How could you have? I would never have heard of it myself, were my people not descended from the place. (10) And yet, out of Durn, meanest village of Schkerrinwald, least kingdom of the tenuous Vorkenfast Empire, came the greatest blessing ever bestowed upon Europe.
RH: Which was...?
GD: Why, beer, of course! (11) And my own many-times-great-grandfather was the man who first brought that golden gift into the land of Germany.
RH: I’m sorry... Did you just say... that your family introduced beer to Germany?
GD: Ja. (12)
RH: (Unintelligible sounds of surprise and/or confusion.)
GD: Before you inform me once again that you have never heard of this, Herr Halifax, allow me to concede that any tangible evidence of this claim vanished with my ancient ancestors, which is why I have never elected to tell even my disappointing son of this secret handed down through so many of my forefathers. I have no doubt of the tale’s veracity. Neither my father, nor any of his fathers were liars—or fools. (13) My son, alas, is the first of us for that. But I am German,(14) and my people do not so much enjoy playing the laughingstock as do those of your young country, so I have kept silent until now. You seem a pleasant fellow, wise enough to value the past more than most, but if you think my tale too improbable, let us leave it and proceed to some other.
RH: No, no! Please, Herr Dourtmundschtradel, continue. I’m quite fascinated.
GD: Very well, then...
The valley of Durn, as I was saying, had been oppressed for decades by a tyrant who styled himself Lord Augustus Stephenson of the Brown Feather; (15) a paranoid bombast who kept a small army of henchmen stabled like cattle in his heavily fortified manse upon a steep rise at the valley’s southern end. This pretense of a castle squatted like a guardhouse between the village and a great waterfall that marked the valley’s only navigable passage to the outside world. No one came or went from Durn without Lord Stephenson’s leave, which is to say that almost no one ever came or went from Durn at all—except as prisoners or exiles. (16)
This self-styled ‘Lord’ was universally referred to by the valley’s unfortunate inhabitants as Mad Gus—never within his hearing, of course—for few in Durn had not suffered frequent outrages at his unpredictable whim. Mad Gus saw punishment as a preventative measure. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ was not just his favorite Bible verse; it was the only one he knew. He liked it so well that he had it carved upon his coat of arms. (17) A week did not go by without someone’s wife dragged from the house and sold to slavers in remuneration of some petty debt to Stephenson, real or imagined—or someone’s home or barn torched in the middle of the night as warning against whatever wrong Mad Gus imagined was being contemplated in their hearts—or someone’s child abducted and caged up at the castle until he or she grew old enough to serve Mad Gus as yet another henchman or kitchen drudge—or someone’s husband beaten just for entertainment in the fields or village square by the tyrant’s ‘peacekeepers.’ Neither loitering, truancy, gossip, nor public play or celebration were allowed in Durn. Only labor was tolerated there, and Mad Gus took all of whatever anyone’s labor produced beyond the little required by them to starve through another winter without actually dying. (18)
RH: What a grim situation... Why did these people not revolt? It doesn’t sound as if they had much to lose.
GD: It was the beer, Herr Halifax.
RH: The beer? I... don’t quite see—
GD: The one exception to Mad Gus’s insane selfishness and cruelty was the beer. Or so it seems, at first glance, ja?
RH: Ah. Right... First glance at... what, exactly?
GD: Understand, Herr Halifax, the people of Durn were allowed one male goat or cow and one female. Any kids or calves produced were confiscated just as soon as they were weaned, and taken off to grace the royal table—as was any milk not used for making cheese. Mad Gus’s subjects were encouraged to make all the cheese they wished, but not allowed to eat a bite of it. Off to the castle with that too, straight from the molds. Folk kept just half a bushel of whatever produce they might eke out of the rocky soil. All the rest was seized as ‘tax’ upon harvest and sent up to the tyrant’s bulging granaries and cellars against some rainy day. His rainy day, of course, not theirs. BUT! Strangely enough, folk were allowed to keep all the hops and grain that they might wish—just as long as it was brewed straight into beer. You would expect that once the work of brewing had been done, all that beer would vanish up into the castle with the rest, ja? But to everyone’s carefully suppressed astonishment, no! Mad Gus allowed the folk of Durn to keep their beer as well. As much as they could make and store and drink.
RH: Why?
GD: Mad Gus claimed to hate the stuff. With a passion—as one might expect of such a tyrant, ja? What other kind of man could hate such divine elixir? One might even surmise that this deviant abhorrence was the very cause of his degraded character. But the truth is otherwise, I think. Mad Gus was likely not so mad as that.
RH: But still...why then? It makes no sense.
GD: Does it not?
RH: Why are you smiling that way?
GD: All in good time, young man. First, you must know something about how beer came to be, for, as I said, it came to be right there in Durn. No one else had ever tried—or thought of t
rying—to make beer then. (19) Why would they have? Beer begins as pretty noxious stuff prior to the miracle of fermentation. Its first manufacture in Durn was just an accident—the result, in fact, of Mad Gus’s own relentless greed.
It is said that some poor farmer, whose name is sadly lost to us, had tried to cheat Mad Gus out of his excessive ‘tax’ by hiding a few scant ingredients for bread and herbal soup within his little hovel, thinking that the tyrant’s henchmen would not notice such a small omission. But Mad Gus had trained his men quite... passionately, let us say, and they were not deceived. So, when the poor man saw them ride into his yard, he poured all his illicit grain and herbs and yeast into the only hiding place at his disposal, an extremely large urn of water, unfortunately still half full, then jammed a rag into its mouth in hopes that his assailants would not look inside. They did, of course. That urn was likely the only object in the hovel worth examining. When they saw the soupy mess he’d made of his ill-gotten grain, they shoved the rag back into place and left the mess to rot. The man himself was left to rot as well, inside Mad Gus’s dungeon.
Somehow, though, the hapless man survived Mad Gus’s hospitality, and three months later, was released—which was not so great a favor as it may seem at first. Winter was well arrived by then. The valley was all hunkered down to starve until the spring, and the paroled farmer, already weak and hungry from his ordeal, had no one to assist him. Amidst the snowdrifts that had blown into his open hovel since they’d taken him away, he found nothing but the water urn they’d left, still containing all the food he had possessed. Without much hope, I imagine, he removed the rag and peered inside. Have you ever seen the afterbirth of fresh beer, Herr Halifax? (20)
RH: I fear I haven’t.
GD: It does not smell too bad, and it gives off a certain heat in fermentation, so it was not likely frozen, which was doubtless fortunate, but it is otherwise a most unappealing sight. Still, a man starving in winter might try anything. It seems he drank some of the fizzy, clotted broth into which all that grain and yeast had composted in his absence, likely hoping it might still provide at least a trace more nutritional value than could be derived from the frozen clay of his packed-earth floor, or the weathered wooden lintel of his doorway. (21) It must not have tasted too badly, for it seems he drank enough of it to experience a strange and wonderful euphoria.