Your Thirst is Done

Saint Paul, 23 January 2005

For Uncle Walter

  • I. Schaefer pleasure
    • Walter drank a shit-load of beer
    • Always Schaefer and always cans
    • The empties needed Atlas-strength to crush
    • And the top had to be opened on two sides
    • With a church key – his term
  • II. Doesn’t fade
    • I would excavate rusty Schaefer cans
    • In the lot next to our house at the Shore
    • Some cans still had the gold and red logo
    • But most were rusted to dark chocolate
    • And in varied states of disintegration
    • Even amateur archeologists could make out
    • The two triangular voids
    • Stamped on the top
  • III. Even when your thirst is done
    • It might have been the Lucky Strikes
    • Choose your own synonym
    • Hankering, hunger, yearning or yen
    • You can pine for or die for
    • I’m not sure his thirst ever left him
    • Even after he was ransacked by cancer
    • A man short of fifty
  • IV. The most rewarding flavor
    • He must have craved the flavor
    • But the rewards come down to this --
    • A hopped-up mallet in a can
    • Meant to stave off any inclination
    • Of facing the world as it was
  • V. In this man’s world
    • A veteran of Korea
    • And a vigorous bachelor of 40
    • In the summer of 1966 the Jersey Shore
    • Would have been this man’s oyster
    • If not this man’s world
  • VI. For people who are having fun
    • He had a quivering out-of-control dark side
    • When he’d switch out Luckies for Tiparillos
    • After the flag pole on the dock was bent in half
    • A dark side that said to me as a boy of seven
    • “What in god’s name have I done?”
    • But he did his best to arouse fun
  • VII. Schaefer is the
    • He married some middle-aged Mcarchek
    • Not hitting on all cylinders, if any at all
    • He worked for a trucking company
    • But this bleached out pushrod
    • Took him for some kind of
    • Moneyed gravy train -- it didn’t add up
    • But one thing was clear as a cold pour
    • Schaefer was his real love and mistress
  • VIII. One beer to have
    • He had a pin-up in his closet
    • Some big-lipped blonde like Jane Mansfield
    • Wrapped in skimpy white fox fir
    • And with legs like Doric columns
    • You imagined this heifer he’d actually married
    • Might have resembled the Mansfield pin-up
    • As they coalesced in some boozy Shore tavern
    • Only to turn into - herself - as they
    • Each returned to brief lucidity in the homily
    • Of the late Sunday morning mass
  • IX. When you’re having
    • You can’t imagine him drinking another brand
    • Other than the milk he’d down
    • Before going to Murphy's in Seaside
    • Beer was all I ever saw him drink
  • X. More than one
    • He never had -- just one
    • He was always having -- more than one
    • Many, many more than one
    • Walter would rather have had none
    • Than have had just one

Notes:

Each heading by the roman numerals comprise the popular east coast jingle for Schaefer beer.

This jingle was played on radio and television. It permeated my pre-pubescent psyche.