The funk eased a bit as the week progressed. I am reasonably Not Funky today, although none of the underlying causes of Monday's blahs have been resolved. Perhaps, to paraphrase the late Senator Moynihan, I am simply defining funkishness down. Whatever.
At any rate, I was watching the Mets game on TV the other day, and had a little semi-Proustian moment of remembrance. As anyone who watches a televised baseball game knows, much of the action is shown from a camera behind home plate, which points towards center field. At Shea Stadium, the center field wall is 410 feet from home plate, and ever since I can remember, the 410 painted on the wall has looked the same. And I have been a Mets fan ever since I could remember.
So, for whatever reason, seeing this "410" the other day triggered a memory of a young me watching a Mets game with my father. Or, rather, a memory of me watching the game with him either dozing or watching or reading or doing all three, with a beer and a cigarette, of course, while sitting on his green easy chair in our living room in The Ancestral Homeland. (Dad died when I was 10 or so, and we moved shortly afterwards, and so the decidely Not Magical hometown has had this sort of special hold on me ever since, but I digress.)
And his beer was not Bud or Schaefer or Rhinegold -- no, Dad was a fan of Hedrick's. He used to get it at the wholesaler by the case, until we bought a new fridge, which he converted into a refridgerated tap, and installed it in the garage, at which point he switched to buying Hedrick's by the keg from the wholesaler. Hedrick's was bought by Schlitz, I think, sometime after Dad died and we moved, and I never really thought too much about it after that.
At some point much later, a friend loaned me Ironweed by William Kennedy because he found something amusing about the main character. (Well, it's a long story.) I enjoyed it, but enjoyed Kennedy's Legs (a fictionalized story about gangster Legs Diamond) much more, and found myself wrapped up in Kennedy's works, which were all set in the same milieu.
As some of you may know, the political boss in Kennedy's fiction owned a brewery, and "Stanwix Beer" was therefore sold in every bar that wanted to avoid problems with the police despite its poor quality (according to some). I found out not too long ago that "Stanwix" was Kennedy's code for "Hedrick's." I wonder how my father ended up drinking the stuff. Acquired the taste as a lad, since that was what was available?
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2 comments:
As we share a similar Ancestrial Homeland (though for my family it was more the place we moved to in order to escape the Ancestrial Homeland), I'll note that my dad also had a fascination with William Kennedy books. I'm embarrassed to call myself Albanian (ok, I've never called myself Albanian, or even an Albanyite. Albanoriginese? Anyway, I've never read a William Kennedy book (I think I picked one up at some point in high school and never finished it). You have shamed me into doing so. Dad loved Legs. In more ways than one. He did not, however, drink Hendricks (?). Genny Cream Ale all the way once we moved to upstate NY.
It was actually "Hedrick" not "Hedrick's." http://www.albanyinstitute.org/collections/objects/beer.htm
I think that my father died before the Kennedy books came out, but he was more of a Louis L'Amour, John D. MacDonald, John Jakes reader anyway. As for suggesting one of the Kennedy books, I always hesitate to make recommendations, but I would suggest either Legs or Roscoe (his most recent, I think). His non-fiction book, Oh, Albany!, is also very interesting.
Re beer, I have no idea how Dad ended up with Hedrick. His side of the family wasn't from Albany. And my uncle was a Utica Club man. Who knows?
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