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.