Brewery Tour

The origin of some traditions are often dubious, sometimes unpleasant, or only fun when taken out of the context of reality and put into the isolated experience of just my Dad, so such is the case with the brewery tours. These events on the trips have become another annual occurrence that involves full participation and precise ritual, and since it has become one of the mandatory events, all of us have come to expect. However, extreme caution and careful handling is required. To explain this, one needs to understand certain behaviors that manifest in Dad sometimes, habits and traits we've come to recognize during certain times. Things like when Dad is too generous, too friendly, too talkative, too happy... and that almost always spells trouble. A good example of this is, in certain and specific restaurants like The Hamburger Hamlet or Regular Jons', (irritatingly called "Pizza Joes" by Dad) something will trigger this behavior, it might be that fatal glass of wine, a big screen TV playing free old movies, or a special menu item that causes Dad to become overly interested in the cuisine. What then happens is Dad will refuse to leave the restaurant, even long after closing and the staff is vacuuming and patiently waiting for Dad to finish. Dad's eating habits take on a precise and maddening ritual that can only be described as deliberate torture with no reason other than to piss everyone off. Every bite of food is carefully and slowly manipulated into exact portions, each bite split into successive smaller and smaller portions. Bites turn into half-bites, and those half-bites turn into half-bites, and so on... until the last minuscule bite which can often stay on the plate for hours. This stalling tactic is interspersed with confrontational topics of conversation and long trips to the restroom, (which are actually visits to the cocktail lounge in order to work in additional drinks). The later the evening gets, and the more impatient the rest of us become, the more intense this behavior grows. Even after the restaurant has long closed Dad will continue to order additional items like glasses of ice for his beer or slices of lemon to garnish his carefully portioned food, and even when every morsel had been eaten, Dad will not allow the dish to be taken away until he meticulously scrapes the residue off the plate with his fork or a lemon peel, then sprinkling the lemon peel with potassium salt he brings with him, eats the peel. Paying the bill then becomes a drawn-out procedure that has literally taken an hour to accomplish, Dad uses this time to prolong the occasion and further anger the wait staff. And during all this, Dad truly believes everyone is having a wonderful time.

But I digress... The point of this particular story is how the brewery tour tradition got started, and hopefully you will see the connection.

We arrived in Olympia, Washington, home of the Olympia Brewing Co. makers of "Oly" and those cute little cans of beer I talked about, and also Hamms and Rainier brands of beer. Taking the tour was free and seemed like an interesting idea to pass the time, so all of us got in line and formed a group for one of the tours of the facility. The tour itself was slightly interesting for kids but I think Ted and I quickly got bored and could've taken the abbreviated version of the tour, Dad however found everything fascinating and lingered as long as possible at every station of the tour. It took about an hour to complete, but at the end of the tour came the Pièce de résistance - free samples of their beer. This was the trigger that set off future incidences of unpleasantness and arrogant behavior later on. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the early time of day to consume alcohol, but whatever the case it switched Dad from Jekyll into Hyde for the rest of the day. I think Mom knew the inherent danger from the beginning but this was unavoidable since I think this was Dad's intention from the get-go; free beer. This was the most important part of the tour and included some audience participation, tasting the different brands and quality, and although Dad wasn't chosen by the tour guide to show off his beer-tasting prowess, he still watched enthusiastically. Eventually everyone was offered to partake (except us kids of course, who where given cups of root beer or 7Up) and partake Dad did! Taking advantage of tasting every sample the brewery had to offer until the next tour came through and we were forced to be cut off. Jokingly the tour guide said the only way to get more samples was to take the tour again, which Dad seriously considered, but even this went beyond reason and Dad was forced to sip his last free beer for the day.

This didn't mean we were leaving the brewery just yet, there was still the gift shop to peruse, and due too the recent free lubrication, Dad was uncharacteristically open and excited about shopping in this tourist trap. Mom recognized this and immediately went into angry bitch-mode, trying to discourage us kids from taking advantage of this unusual situation of alcohol induced generous Dad. She put up with the shopping spree of T-shirts and funny hats for a few minutes and angrily went to wait it out in the car, all the time Dad was joyfully laughing and enjoying the tension. Now, this is where it started to get unpleasant. Dad found that the gift shop sold pool cues with the different beer brand logos printed on them. This made perfect sense since beer and pool went together, and we had a pool table back home. So Dad thought it would be brilliant and fun if we were to start our own collection of Olympia beer pool cues. At first all of us kids were excited at the prospect of buying such high-quality items in a gift shop, since usually we were lucky to get out with a cheap key chain or postcard, and also it seemed favorable for us taking advantage of Dad's temporary generosity. So enthusiastically we went to picking out a set of cues to go with our pool table back home. For us kids the choice was easy and we made our decisions in about 10 seconds - 3 cues, one for each brand, we didn't care about the color of the handle. But the decision wasn't so simple for Dad, who had to second-guess every choice and question every decision anyone made. The combination and choice of colors was vitally important, and also to consider was the future choice of additional cues, since Dad had already decided this was going to be a continuing tradition every time we visited a brewery tour gift shop. The choice and decisions went on for quite a long time and Dad would consult us kids about our opinion, but would shoot down our choice for some reason or another. I finally became tired and exasperated with this process and abandoned Dad with the pool cue selection. This only angered Dad by my lack of enthusiasm and participation and he chastised me for being ungrateful about his generosity, threatening to take away my privilege of using these new fancy cues when we got home, and relegated to use the old crappy warped ones instead, essentially forcing me to endure the pool cue selection process. By now, already two subsequent tours had come through behind us and we were still in the gift shop quibbling over which color and style of beer cues was the most appropriate for our cheap Sears pool table that hardly anyone played on anymore, and the people working the gift shop were starting to wonder about Dad's sanity I'm sure. Also, I was getting nervous that Mom was still waiting in the car, seething with anger and temptation to drink herself with every given minute. Even Ted was beginning to get impatient and suggested that Dad should just pick out the stupid cues already so we can get going. The whole pool cue idea turned into a major production and everyone began to think it wasn't such a good idea after all, taking Mom's advice and waiting in the car seemed like the best decision after all. But eventually, after a great deal of pain and frustration, we became the proud owners of official "Olympia" and "Hamms" beer pool cues.

Well, I wish buying the pool cues was the end of the fun, but it wasn't. Actually it was about to go from bad to worse, to worse-er. The stage was set with Dad and the few free beers had successfully turned him into a happy but belligerent ass. For the rest of the day Dad and Mom were to be confrontational, with Dad having the clear advantage. Dinner was awkward and much of the same behavior prevailed with Dad being both generous and unreasonable. We found a motel and Mom promptly retreated into seclusion allowing us kids to fend for ourselves against Dad's obnoxious and smart-aleky behavior. Looking for the motel we noticed a movie theater close by, and we all thought it might be a good idea to leave Mom by herself and the rest of us go see a movie, that ought to keep both us kids entertained and Dad out of trouble. The movie playing was "Bad News Bears", which I had already seen but wasn't opposed to seeing it again, and it was a good movie for my sister who needed time away from Mom as well. So Dad packed the three of us in the car and took us to see "Bad News Bears" for the rest of the evening. The theater had a balcony, which was always the best seating, but Dad always preferred the seats down below off to the side, and it wasn't all that unusual for Dad to sit somewhere else during movies, so us kids sat up in the balcony and Dad was somewhere else, unseen for the rest of the show. The theatre was full of kids, the building itself was old and the atmosphere was quaint and seemed like a scene out of the 1950's. Halfway through the movie there was an intermission and the theatre had a raffle matching the numbers on your ticket stub, giving away candy and snacks from the concession stand. After the raffle, a guy playing on an old organ gave a rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" the organ platform slowly lifted up from under the stage in front of the screen, and while playing the song the raised platform reached about 10 feet up, stayed for a minute, and then slowly went back down under the stage again. Ted thought this was hysterically funny and had never seen anything like this before, making fun of this scene for days, I had to agree that it was strange and unfamiliar, but thinking back, sad that nobody appreciated it.

The movie ended and we went to the lobby to meet Dad so we could go back to the motel. Dad wasn't around so we searched around the theater to see if we could find him, but he was nowhere to be found. It never occurred to us that Dad would leave early during the movie, but apparently that's what he did, and we sat uncomfortably in the lobby for about an hour, wondering what could've become of Dad. The three of us stayed put while the theater closed up, some of the people working stayed around since we were not accompanied by our parents, and Ted and I considered calling the police. The theater agreed to let us stay a few more minutes before calling the authorities when Dad finally pulled up outside in the car in front of the theater. Relieved we thanked the theater people and rushed to the car. When we got in Dad sat there smiling as if nothing was wrong and was unaware he kept us waiting for an hour. Upon further observation we realized that Dad was about as drunk as anyone could be and still be conscious, that he spent the last 3 hours in a bar adding fuel to the free beers he had earlier.

In a round-about way Dad admitted he was too drunk to drive, (which he clearly was). Ted laughed nervously and offered to drive, but being only 12 years old was only slightly safer than having Dad drive drunk-as-a-skunk. Dad happily announced that we were going to play a game called "Navigator" Which meant us kids were going to give directions, and Dad was going to steer. This was not a good game at all and meant that Dad had no idea where he was or how to get back to the Motel, relying on us kids to figure out the directions to the Motel. All of us kids really didn't pay much attention getting to the theater and we only had a vague idea how to get back, but at the time was the only practical way for us to return to the motel without involving the police. So off we went. I sat in the front and Ted and my sister sat in the back with Ted leaning over the front seat to better give directions. It became necessary on a few occasions for me or Ted to grab the steering wheel in order to avoid crashing. Dad thought it was a lot of fun, and we pretended it was fun so not to alarm Dad. We would bark orders like "Turn here" and Dad would take the directions literally and turn up a curb sending Ted and I scrambling for the steering wheel to correct the turn and avoid us crashing into a storefront. Dad would calmly react by saying we told him to turn "here", so that's what he did, and it was our fault that he drove up onto the curb. Panicking a bit we would explain that we meant him turn at the next street, not onto the sidewalk, so from then on we were extremely specific about our directions. We went around many blocks nobody really agreeing as to which was the correct way back, I was getting extremely upset and thought we were going to die, Ted on the other hand managed to take control and direct Dad down the correct street. By some miracle of God we found the motel and Dad clumsily parked the car in front of our room. Ted was laughing nervously telling Dad in a subtle way that he was an idiot, I was relieved we got back without serious injury or involving the police, my sister was crying. Dad on the other hand was having the time of his life and continued to tease us by wanting to go somewhere else, All of us were begging dad to shut up and go to bed, but he continued to ramble on and find more mischief to get involved in. At that point I wished the police had arrived.

Back in the motel room Mom was passed out herself and completely unaware what had gone on that evening. At some point Dad had found his way back to the room and passed out, the rest of us kids nervously fell asleep eventually.

The next morning all of us got up and continued on the trip as if nothing had happened.