Welcome to Thebeerchaser. If you’re seeing this post through an e-mail, please visit the blog by clicking on the title above to see all of the photos and so the narrative is not clipped or shortened. (External photo attribution at the end of the post #1) 

Now I’m not trying to start the year off on a negative tone, but I thought this observation from my file collection reeked with wisdom:

“Denny’s has a slogan, ‘If it’s your birthday, the meal is on us.’ If you’re in Denny’s and it’s your birthday, the chances are excellent that your life sucks!”

Bar Profitability (#2)

I recently read a short article by a guy (probably an Economics major at an SEC school) that stated, “After pouring one shot of liquor, the income from the rest of the bottle is pure profit….”  He should try telling that to one of the hundreds (or thousands) of bar owners who have gone out of business since the pandemic.

To lend credence in refuting this idiot’s assertion, I came across the following which itemizes the actual cost of a martini in five cities.  https://vinepair.com/articles/martini-cost-breakdown/ For context, I mentioned martinis in my last post about the great bar – The Holy Ghost in Portland, Oregon – where we had martinis which cost $14 each.

The article gives the price for the patron at classy bars in five US cities – New York City $20, Charleston $14, Los Angeles $16, Phoenix $15 and Chicago $16. (#3)

It then gives an overhead calculation for each city.  To illustrate, let’s just take the operating costs for the Chicago martini at the classy Club Lucky with the price of $16.

Ingredients: $3.23
Labor: $4.64
Mortgage: $0.86
Food: $4.16
Supplies: $0.49
Miscellaneous costs: $0.93
Total Cost: $14.31
Profit: $1.69  (#4)

So, for the guys who slowly nurse their drinks over conversation about the plight of the Chicago Bears, it takes a lot of customers to keep this establishment afloat.

A poignant quote about economists is from John Kenneth Galbraith:

  “Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.” (#5)

But if you want to know about economic viability, I advise that listening to a financial expert rather than some guy who probably played linebacker at the University of Alabama is wise.

College Memories and the King of Cool

Followers of this blog may remember a number of posts where I’ve related fond memories of my SAE fraternity days at Oregon State University.  The bonds established during those four years have continued over more than fifty years (gads, am I that old…?).  

Whether it was learning how to study (which I largely ignored in high school) by having mandatory study tables from 7 to 10 each night as a freshman (unless achieving over a 3.0 GPA), we learned about accountability as a “rook” by getting up each morning at 6:30 AM with members of our class when we cleaned the heads or helped cook breakfast.

We learned to adapt by slumbering in one of four twenty-five bed sleeping porches.  The lessons ingrained were not imparted in classes in Western Civ or Intro to Sociology.

And there were lasting memories such as football games including the incredible upset over the #1 rated USC Trojans led by OJ Simpson in 1967 – the year of the OSU Giant Killers.

We can’t forget concerts by entertainers such as Three-Dog Night, Petula Clark and Lou Rawls, house dances with pre-functions, the Inter-fraternity Sing, intramural championships and the Civil War game.  Comraderie with my fellow NROTC midshipmen and even second-term Calculus (not!) are part of the recollection. (#6 – #7)

I even learned from my room-head when I was a freshman that it was cool to blow your nose in a dirty undershirt (he maintained that no-one would ever know) – a practice I sustained for years until the first time I tried it after getting married.  Janet informed me that if I ever did that again, I would do all the family’s laundry forever.

And these friendships have been sustained throughout the years including some great Beerchasing events, attending football games in Corvallis and sadly, memorial services including the last two years for SAE Brothers Duane “Thumper” Barton and Charlie “Buck” Adams where we serenaded the departed bros with the SAE song.

Now, some might say, “Dirt (that was my college nickname), you are living in the past;” however, I would remind them of Helen Keller’s statement:

“So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.”

Now as an example, take my fraternity brother, Craig (The Dude) Hanneman (a former Beerchaser-of-the-Quarter, who I first met when he came to the SAE house as a freshman on a football scholarship in 1967.  He was involved in football and I in NROTC and with the normal college schedules, we didn’t get to know each other well until winter term of 1968.

Each class slept on sleeping porches with bunks – and we also had four-person study rooms with a desk and closet for each guy.  There was a bench-couch and table at the end under a window where we put the hi-fi so we could play vinyl tunes.

We were assigned these rooms each term by the House Manager and Hanneman was the youngster in the room and I was one class ahead as a sophomore.  I knew he was a guy (with a rural background) from Turner which I originally thought was a truck-stop somewhere in Eastern Oregon or Idaho.

My 33LPs were of popular groups like the Four Seasons, the Mamas and Papas and The Temptations.  I assumed Craig would favor country-western icons like George Jones or Merle Haggard, but on the first days I came back from class, he was playing Dean Martin.

When I questioned him, he pointed out that Dino was known as “The King of Cool” and maintained that I too would learn to love him.  Well, that didn’t prove to be the case, except for one song, which I played over and over while we both sang along – Thirty More Miles to San Diego…(#8)

I subsequently learned that the song was track 10 on the album “Happiness is Dean Martin” – a title that didn’t comport with my perceptions.  That said, I also liked the song “Open Up the Door – Let the Good Times In” which we adopted as our motto in Room 2 although it had a negative impact on our GPAs.

I also pointed out to Craig that thirty miles north of San Diego – besides being the location of Legoland – was a drive of 16 hours or 989 miles from Corvallis, so the likelihood of us having a beer there rather than Price’s Tavern in downtown Corvallis was minimal.

While his taste in music was questionable, I immediately learned that the Hanneman’s sense of humor was robust.  As I mentioned above, freshman (rooks) at the house could garner demerits from the House Manager for missing or showing up to morning work or study tables late. 

Upper classmen told us that these demerits would be recorded on our college transcripts and could keep us from getting a job or into grad school and eventually heaven.

I still have in my files, the most cherished demerit from those years that was authored by Craig Hanneman during an all-house work party to get the house in shape for homecoming weekend.  It speaks for itself.   

Joel McDonald, the House Manager, was a wonderful guy and after college became a minister.  We were glad to know that this demerit didn’t keep him for gaining admission to seminary…..

None of us knew at that time that Dude would go on to become an All-American defensive tackle and then play for the NFL – first with the Pittsburgh Steeler’s including the playoff game with the Immaculate Reception – which has a Craig Hanneman element in itself https://www.steelers.com/news/a-mistake-that-turned-out-to-be-immaculate

Or upon retirement from the NFL because of injury, own and manage a 200-acre farm and forest operation for seven years before being elected County Commissioner of Polk County, Oregon in 1985.

He followed with a career as a corporate executive at Willamette Industries, Weyerhaeuser and at the Oregon Foresty Industry Council for a combined twenty-two years. Now, I will probably be admonished for the preceding by my old friend because he’s very modest and tries to avoid accolades, but he was also a great family man.

And while his career achievements are admirable, what endears him to his friends is his sense of adventure and expanding his horizons – that and his loyalty to friends.  Dude and his football teammates ran with the bulls in Pamplona (picture below) has ridden his Harley thousands of miles on road trips on multiple continents and rafted serious rivers.

Oh yeah, there was also his summit of Mount Everest in 2012 – one of the Seven Summits which he completed in 2019.  In fact, he is one of the few members of the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame to be inducted for two sports – football and mountain climbing.

I stay in touch with Dude and we have periodic Beerchasings – with the SAEs including the one below from the Gemini pub in Lake Oswego.  

And, of course, Dino and our favorite song comes up.  For example, this e-mail after I congratulated him on the Mount Everest climb:

“Okay, I’ll admit it, all those late-night sessions playing “flinchies” (that’s another story…..) really hardened me up to climb Everest!   And to prove some things never change, you’ll be pleased to know I had plenty of Dean Martin tunes on my iPod Nano to help drown out the noisy wind at night.”        

Flash Forward

On the afternoon of October 31, 2024, I was trying to figure out how to surreptitiously transfer to my desk drawer, some of the Snickers candy bars we had for youngsters coming to our house on Halloween.

While I was in my office trying to keep Janet from seeing my clandestine depletion of what I thought was detrimental to youngsters’ dental health, a text popped up on my phone with the following two photos:

I was aware from an e-mail two days before from Dude telling me that he was departing on an adventure that would take him through Southern California and stating:

“Dirt, I’m driving through San Diego tomorrow night….and leaving tugged a tad at my heart thinking of the good memories of our time in Room 2 listening to Dean Martin and only thirty miles to go.  If I see a road sign that says SD thirty miles, trust me, I’m taking a picture.”

Well, the picture on the above left is not of a road sign, but of Craig’s GPS, which caused him to bring up the golden oldie on the right.  Go figure!

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=sjrVIU1u1LU

With my elevated mood, I was much more generous with the candy that night than usual.

Cheers and Happy New Year (#9)

External Photo Attribution

#1. Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Birthday_cake.jpg)  Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.  Author: Fir0002.

#2.Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bright-Field_Lighting.jpg) Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.  Author: Kyle May – 17 November 2007.

#3. Public Domain – Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dry_Martini-2.jpg) This work has been released into the public domain by its author. This applies worldwide. Author: Dry_Martini.jpg: Original uploader was Hayford Peirce at en.wikipedia. 8 September 2009.

#4.  USARestuarants.info     (https://cdn.usarestaurants.info/assets/uploads/c9924fee793df3d25760cdeea8a7102c_-united-states-illinois-cook-county-chicago-691299-club-luckyhtm.jpg)

#5. Public Domain – Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dollar_sign_capitalism_logo.svg)  This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Author: OwcaGierka – 13 November 2022.

#6. Albany Democrat Herald (https://democratherald.com/news/local/anniversary-of-the-giant-killers-famed-osu-team-beat-usc/article_b8be0757-0fcb-5091-a984-72075eb7d5ca.html)

#7.  Public Domain – Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Memorial_Union_at_Oregon_State_University.jpg) I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide. Author: user:Owen – May 2005.

#8. Public Domain – Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dean_Martin_-_publicity.JPG)  This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in the United States between 1930 and 1977, inclusive, without a copyright notice. Source: Original studio publicity photo of Dean Martin for the film Bells Are Ringing (1960).

#9. Image courtesy of Pam Williams.