Travels with Barley
A Journey Through Beer Culture in America
Introduction: Why Beer, Why Me?
They who drink beer will think beer. -- Washington Irving
I was eleven years old, sitting on the front porch steps next to my father on a summer's day, when I took my first sip of beer, Pa holding the can for me so I wouldn't get carried away. Maybe he knew something. It was a Falstaff and it was warm. We lived in a hot, sweltering place in Louisiana's Cajun Delta way below New Orleans. A cold thing cracked open didn't stay cold long down there.
I didn't care. I took a big swig anyway.
Pa drank Falstaff because, cold, it wasn't all that bad, and because it was cheap, and mostly because Falstaff sponsored the Major League Baseball Game of the Week every Saturday afternoon on television. I was one of six brothers, and all old enough to talk were rabid baseball fans. We'd just gotten our first TV, a piece of heavy dark furniture with big, yellow-trimmed plastic knobs and a tiny screen in the middle. Out where we lived in the country, the reception was iffy. But if somebody went outside and tw ... read full excerpt from: Travels with Barley: A Journey Through Beer Culture in America ebook
