Monday, March 27, 2006

Beer Can Collection

This weekend I went up into my parents attic and retrieved my brothers beer can collection. He asked that I send these too him in Georgia. As I was looking through the collection my father noticed that back in the 70’s beer was still being sold in tin cans. It was interesting to look at the different labels and I wondered what happened to my collection.

I remember my neighbor Ron, my brother John and I scrounging around the high school looking for the cans from the prior teenage party. I must admit that we had a good time doing it. I think that beer can collecting has faded into the past since I never hear much about it anymore.

A friend of mine said I should have a party with all of the beer cans on display, so next month I will be having a small party where we will sit around, swill good beer and reminisce about the “Good ol’ days”. After that the beer can collection will be put back in the box, taken to UPS and sent to my brother. His kids will get a kick at looking at the cans and I am sure it will bring memories back for John.

3 comments:

Dr. Downing said...

My friend, Honus used to have a tremendous beer can collection in his Bradford home.

Then he got married and had two children and the beer cans were relegated to a big box in the basement.

By the way, wasn't Bradford at one time the home to the House of Foos?

Just asking...

Dok

Ralph said...

Remember Old Frothingslosh? I think the Flastaff Bicentennial was also one of my favorites. Come to think of it, Jim, maybe we should drink really bad beer in cool-looking cans. Do you think you can still get Billy Beer in certain parts of the south - or do they serve it as regular fare at conservative gatherings?

Ralph said...

One more quick beer can story: The year was 1993 and the Bills were in the midst of their fourth consecutive Super Bowl Season (We won't mention what happened once they got there.) The Bills are 7-1 heading into a Week 11 Monday night game at Pittsburgh. Keep in mind, one of the hallmarks of our Super Bowl teams was our ability dominate Pittsburgh. The previous year, for example, we had beaten them twice, including 24-3 at Pittsburgh in Cowher's first playoff game. In 1991, we had a memorable 52-34, which was one of the high-points of the K-Gun's offense.

Well, I show up at my buddy's house to watch this Monday game, fully expecting our dominance to continue. My buddy said he would handle the beer and greeted me at the door with an Iron City Franco Harris commemorative can in hand. That's all he had to drink. As I choked down that swill, I watched as the Bills were annihilated (excuse speeling)23-0. They still show this incredible hit that someone made on our WR Don Beebe as he was going out of bounds. Just lit him up! Since that day, we have not beat the Steelers that I can recall. This includes a painful 40-21 loss in the 1995 playoffs - a game that Bruce Smith missed the flu and we absolutely could not stop the Steeler offense. Things hit rock bottom of course with the late 2004 loss against the Pittsburgh third-stringers that knocked us out of the playoffs. We even hired their offense cooridnator as our head coach, which I'm certain cleared the way for the 'Burghers to win last year's Super Bowl. You're welcome Pittsburgh fans.
And to think, it all started with a Franco Harris Iron City commemorative beer can..