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.