Growing up at the City Club, beer was the staple of the business. I think in the 1920's, a nickel would buy you a 32 ounce beer and snack food. I'm guessing at those numbers but the point is that I was always around beer and beer consumption.
I know that all the bartenders would "jockey" to avoid having to go into the basement cooler to tap a new 1/2 barrel of beer. Beer was pumped from the barrels up to the spigots behind the bar. Many "free beer baths" were received when new kegs were not tapped properly because of all the pressure required to pump beer.
For me, as a kid, beer meant money. I would get paid for stocking the coolers behind the bar with bottle beer and for getting rid of the "empties". I kept track of my time, put a required time slip into the cash register and Myrna would pay me regularly. My beer money started early.
After Grandpa Chalk died and Myrna married the assh--- from Latrobe Pennsylvania named Charles Lavan Andes, beer money continued to roll. Myrna bankrolled a beer distributorship for Chuck under the Champagne Pilsner brand. That meant several trucks and regular routes delivering Champaygne Pilsner in middle Wisconsin. Champagne Pilsner was made in Lomira, Wisconsin. During the summer, I would ride with Chuck over to pick up beer inventory in cases and kegs. Chuck did very little. I was always up in the box of the truck stacking or unstacking beer cases while he was in the office settling money matters. Beer trucks get very hot in the summer. Chuck never had semis but he had big box single axle trucks. I was 11-12 years of age at the time. When we delivered beer to taverns, Chuck would buy the whole bar a drink and consume a few drinks himself. Imagine, here I am riding down the road with a drunk who was blind in one eye, delivering Champagne Pilsner beer. The pay off (beer money) was $15-25 per week. That was pretty good money for a kid at that time. Also included was all the soda (no not beer) I could drink and all the potato chips I could eat. I don't know if the beer distributorship made any money? If it did, Chuck Andes drank it away.
Chuck eventually dropped Champagne Pilsner and took over a Weber beer distributorship. Yes, I rode "shotgun" delivering beer again. I worked my ass off. I did "hang on" to a lot of the money with a savings account.
As I got older (14-15), Bucky got a job as manager of Hickory Hills Golf Course in Chilton, Wisconsin. We would commute up to the golf course daily and my job again, was stocking shelfs with beer and disposing of empties. The empties actually dropped down a chute to a sorting table in the basement. It sounded efficient but lots of the bottles broke while dropping. I got paid based on time and I golfed free.
The big beer names when I was growing up were Blatz, Schlitz and Pabst "Blue Ribbon". The poor man's beer was Kingsbury made in Sheboygan. You could get "smashed" on Kingsbury and it would clean you out the next day all at an affordable price. I don't know if Blatz is even in business anymore. I know that Champagne Pilsner and Weber beer are defunct.
So you see, beer served me well in my early days. It provided a steady steam of cash.
I guess the lesson is that I always had sources of income and the beer business played a part of that. Hey, we live in Wisconsin with all the Germans and Polocks. Beer is part of the heritage.
Love,
Dad
I had no idea our Dad was manager of a golf course. He was a very versatile person. At 37 he should have really started living! What a waste