Club Meeting

Every couple of weeks, I attend the "club meeting" of my local chapter. No, our regular meeting place isn't a board room, a "clubhouse" or a sterile meeting hall where the Rotary or other professional group meets. Our members (the two of us, myself and my friend, Matthew) meet at a local pub for a gathering of the "Centurian Club." Members of this elite club are those who have sampled a selection of at least 100 different beers and completed a punch card tracking these efforts. The reward for completion is a personalized mug to hang on the pub wall, but more importantly, the satisfaction of completing an ambitious task AND bragging rights. Although the club is open to any lover of beer, only the most diligent succeed in making it to the club.

I like to think that we are already part of the "club," however, Matthew and I still have around 15-20 select beers to go. It's only a matter of time considering that we've only been working on our goal (100 beers) for eight months. Don't get me wrong, it's not that we couldn't complete our task within a shorter time, it's more that in order to consume that many premium brews, it also takes money! Matthew is in the Army (a faithful beer drinker, if ever there was,) and I work in non-profit (underpaid, but of German heritage, need I say more about my love and prioritizing of the brew.) And club members generally spend anywhere from $500 to $750 on annual "dues." However, after some budgeting and estimating, we will complete our new member "initiation" within the next 4 to 6 weeks.

Last week, we club members celebrated the arrival of fall with some Oktoberfest brew. The pub had just tapped a keg of Spaten which was served in liter mugs (the kind you only see being carried four at a time by a hefty "Helga" wearing lederhosen.) The delicious amber ale of the gods served in a barrel of a mug warranted three "checks" on our beer club membership card. So, of course, we indulged with no regrets (except for the sore forearm muscles caused by lifting the nearly seven-pound glass repeatedly from the bar top.) The beer was yummy, and Matthew and I proudly hauled our mugs around with the ease of any brawny fraulein at Oktoberfest (the real one in my homeland of Munich, not the faux ones held in every Midwestern American town that boasts a German heritage.)

As I enjoyed my giant beer during "club," I thought about my dad and how proud he would be of me for my accomplishment. See, my dad and I share a lot of things, our dry wit, our stubbornness and our mutual love of good beer. When I'm home to visit my parents, my dad and I share a few beers (the good stuff, if I'm lucky,) while no one else in the family much cares for the stuff. And when he's in town to visit me, I always seek out places with the best beer list to take him.

So, during club last week, I sent my dad a picture of me enjoying my gargantuan liter of German beer (with a mug that mostly covered my face) and the text, "Just trying to make Daddy proud..." And I have no doubt that he is. Afterall, this is a man who has only once really shown his disapproval to me, that was when I snuck one of his really good beers, his homebrew, of which he was so proud. I was just getting a quick "sneak-peek" taste out of one of the plastic bottles that stored the beer when my dad saw and scolded me with the words that will live on in my beer-loving head, "For God's sake, Erin....... get a glass!" And this was the only time I can recall my dad ever "punishing" me.

So, with the arrival of "Oktoberfest" in Germany and around the world, I celebrate my dad, our German heritage, our mutual love of beer and Dad's sage words that will forever make me regret those college days drinking "Natty Light" (Natural Light. Do they even still make that swill?) in a plastic Solo cup (which may or may not have been taken from the top layer of the trash can and rinsed out in the sink... I'm just sayin...)