Measuring my life in beer sips

I have not committed a lot of poetry to memory, but for some reason, the phrase “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” a line from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” has always stuck in my mind, which, incidentally, I have begun to envision as a rapidly shrinking object with brain cells flaking off like gray dandruff. However, if I apply Prufrock’s line to my life, I would have to change the line to “I have measured out my life in beer sips,” for it to have any personal significance. In the goal-less, hedonistic days of my late teens to mid-twenties, which I admit is an embarrassing stretch of time to devote purely to pleasure-seeking, especially since I seldom found it. Beer drinking, I guess because it required little effort, became an important goal in itself.

In high school, my weekends were always awash in suds. There was never any social event where beer (occasionally displaced by or enhanced by liquor) was not a powerful catalyst for a more enjoyable experience. And a cheap experience at that, since, in the beginning, I could go to the Seaside (later, called the Old Side), a bar on the Isle of Palms, and get an all night buzz on with three beers for about $3.00. This was back in the late 50s. In a few years, my capacity increased, as did my waistline, but having a beer gut was something to be proud of according to the non-familial values of my social circle, and I developed a reputation of being someone who could really “pack away the Pabst,” “fill it with Falstaff,” or “bloat up with Black Label,” as we used to say.

Then came my father’s most foolhardy financial investment, paying for my college education at The Citadel, a sting which not only stalemated my ever expanding beer-drinking prowess, but my conscientiously acquired beer gut. The endless tour-walking, shortening of my God-given weekend beer-drinking time, and having upper-classmen yell in my ear every Friday and Saturday night as I abortively tried to wend my way inconspicuously back to my room. “You been drinking again, dumbhead?” set me back a whole year (fortunately for my father, I flunked out in that amount of time, ending our collective agony). I like to compare this period in my beer career to Ted Williams having his accomplishment curtailed by spending those years in the Marines.

I recovered almost immediately, however, got my “beerings,” and sallied forth on what was to be a wish—I could say—unconscious non-stop seven year quest for beer-swilling immortality. I got a job in 1959 at a small industrial supply company owned by a friend’s father. I was nineteen years old, and still living at home, which enabled me to devote my entire $37/week salary to preparing myself for the inevitable enshrinement in the Brewski Hall of Fame. This also was the beginning of a life-long relationship with Big John’s Tavern on East Bay Street where, over the next seven years, I probably ate 75% of my meals, consisting entirely of roast beef sandwiches and boiled shrimp, a diest, or rather diet deficiency, that resulted in tan splotches all over my torso and arms and the endearing name among friends of “Pinto Boy.” Happily, I was able to remedy this simply by adding some vegetables to my menu. Had the doctor told me it was an allergic reaction to beer, I would still today be answering to something like “Old Man Pinto.”

The beer, in retrospect, seemed much colder in those days, even the pitchers, which were around $2.00, allowing me to stretch my $37 a long way, even with the sandwiches and shrimp, which were around $1.50, I believe. I really looked forward to the weekends, since I didn’t have enough money to go out on weeknights. I hated Sundays, because the Blue Laws were in effect then and you couldn’t buy beer. Even now, Sundays are kind of dolorous to me, despite the fact that anybody with a retail license sells the stuff now. It’s like I never got over the beerless Sundays and have some sort of vestigial depression, or maybe it’s a mild case of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, or more specifically, PTBS (no, I’m not going to say it). There were occasional victories such as when I would win a case of beer at The Seaside or Harry Raben’s for having the week’s highest electronic bowling score. Then suddenly Sunday simply became a glorious extension of Saturday. You young whippersnappers don’t realize how lucky you are that you can march right into any supermarket or pharmacy on Sunday and buy all the beer you want. Try doing that in Teheran on any day. God Bless America!

I only won a case of beer on maybe three occasions but, without a doubt, the most serendipitous experience in my “Days of Beer and Pretzels” was in the late 60s when a sales rep came into bar where my two buddies and I were drinking to introduce a new beer, Old Milwaukee. My God, I’m older than Old Milwaukee. He was giving it away, going from bar to bar, so having no pride in matters of this kind, we just followed him around all night. Even though, by that time, I think I must have been pulling down at least 50 big ones a week, free beer all night was a big deal.

I think the most beer I ever drank was 36 cans, but as with many seemingly impressive records, there sometimes is an asterisk, and in this case, it would be followed by “in a 20 hour period of time.” It occurred when a friend and I went on our yearly camping trip to the Huger campgrounds. We’d take a bunch of sausage, bread, and cheese and a couple of cases of Bud. We’d sit around talking about girls we had known till our horn-o-meter reading reached the danger level, and we’d decide to drive 30 miles to the Sea Side just so we could see a female, then realize it was a half hour after closing time. So, we’d talk ourselves down by discussing asexual subjects such as politics or old school teachers or re-channel our libidos into whittling or carving witty statements such as “B. Coskrey killed a beer—6/12/63” into the log cabin wall. The inscription was still there when we returned a few years ago. It’s to the right of the fireplace at about five feet, if you want to check it out, but I pray that your life is not that empty.

At one point during my peak years, I actually started keeping a log of my beer consumption, and during the 65-66 season, I was averaging a little over 10 beers per day, of course factoring in spillage and the very rare occurrence of barfing in midstream, but continuing to paddle, so to speak.

During a brief but dire economic phase of my life, I experimented with homemade beer, getting the recipe out of the back of some magazine, probably a “Hustler” or a “Gent,” and making the concoction in a huge metal milk can. It was pretty horrible, with a strong metallic taste, a sign, no doubt, that the loathsome liquid was interacting with the can itself, which could, incidentally, explain my occasional blackouts and inability to name all of the starting New York Yankee shortstops from 1927 to the present.

Soon after marrying in 1966, my wife pulled the emergency brake on my runaway freight train to perdition, when she explained that maybe I should consider goals more conducive to the welfare of our relationship, more acceptable ones such as college/loans, a car/payments, a home/mortgages, and a job/responsibilities. This did not mean, certainly, that I gave up drinking beer. I still love it, but I only consume about a six-pack a week, unless there’s a special occasion such as a weekend. Just kidding, but I feel I must always have at least a six-pack in the fridge, you know, in case the terrorists blow up all the breweries. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, my beers per day average is probably down to a pitiful .0027.

Look, even Michael Jordan had to retire—a few times. Hey that’s it, I, Bob Coskrey, the Michael Jordan of beer drinkers, is making a comeback, and you read it here in Charleston’s Free Time. Sip, sip.

(originally published July 2004)