Hometow n By Bill Fields

The Suds Chronicles

W h en a col d one comes in dow nr ight h an dy

By Bil l Fiel dS Some

people abstain from alcohol during Januar y, but I don’t think I will be one of them this year.

A f ter get ting a COV ID -19 break through infection in November and isolating at home for 10 days, one of my first stops upon recovering was for a beer in the tap room of my loca l — and excellent — craf t brewer y, A spet uck Brew L ab. A long w ith the comfor t of seeing familiar faces was the welcome taste of my favor ite, Turbidit y L ucidit y, an A mer ican IPA.

T he brewer y says of Tu L u t hat “t h is c it r usy smo ot h, cr ushable IPA is c app e d of f w it h a double dose of dr y-hops a nd Simc o e a nd Mosa ic lupu l in p ower. Cit r us -for ward a nd cr isp.” I just k now t hat I l i ke it.

T he pleasure of that pint, the first I’d had in t wo week s or so because I got sick, star ted me think ing about my beer life. It star ted with a sly (or so I thought) sampling of my father’s stash. I was 12, and Dad was in the hospital for a few days. W hile Mom visited him one evening, I built up the ner ve to open one of the Budweisers on the bottom shelf of the ref r igerator. So bitter and unappealing was the taste, I doubt if I consumed 2 ounces of the lager. I poured out the rest and put the empt y in the outside trash can. I fig ured Dad wouldn’t notice there were now four cans in the f r idge instead of five.

“I see you’ve been into my beer,” he said upon coming home.

“Didn’t like it,” I replied.

T hat would change in the ensuing years. I wasn’t much of an underage dr inker — Dad being a police of ficer probably had some thing to do w ith that — but sure wouldn’t ref use an occasiona l beer f rom a f r iend when we lef t the Castle of Dreams disco on Tuesday teen night.

Upon t ur ning 18 in 1977, a couple of f r iends and I were happyhour reg ulars on Fr idays at 21 Club on West New Hampshire Avenue in dow ntow n Souther n Pines. A cool, dimly lit place on a hot summer evening w ith $1.50 pitchers of Bud to pour into f rosted mugs just about defined high liv ing at that point in our lives. Quantit y tr umped qua lit y when it came to beer consumption dur ing college in Chapel Hill, whether at Troll ’s, Har r ison’s or He’s Not Here. Only the place w ith the g reat name has sur v ived the decades, but I’ll a lways remember a Fr iday af ter noon jour na lism “class” at Har r ison’s w ith the v isiting jour na list Tom Wicker. T he Nor th Carolina native, UNC g raduate and New York Timesman held cour t for three Heinekens and lots of stor ies before excusing himself to at tend another engagement.

I painf ully had (way) more than three beers on a Sat urday eve ning in 1985 in Cincinnati, pr ior to photog raphing the fina l round of the L PGA Championship the next day. Nanc y L opez won the tour nament by a whopping eight strokes. My v ictor y was mak ing it through the hot af ter noon despite a letha l hangover. It was a va luable lesson for the rest of my years on the golf tour nament photog raphy trail: a ll things in moderation, par ticularly on Sat urday night.

I’ve had beers in the den of Cur tis Strange, the first person I k new to have a keg in his home (being on the Michelob staf f had its advantages, and there was no doubt he believed in the product). I drank a Rolling Rock on A r nold Pa lmer’s jet and went to a chickenand-beer place (it’s a thing) w ith my South Korean hosts on a business tr ip there. Work ing at the Tok yo Oly mpics last year, our activ ities were restr icted because of the pandemic. For t unately, there was a 7-Eleven in our hotel complex that wasn’t of f limits. A 7-Eleven in Japan is stocked w ith many items, including dif ferent k inds of beer, which wasn’t a bad thing to have on hand while watching Oly mpic row ing or table tennis at night on the Japanese channels.

T hat Yebisu tasted much bet ter than the Budweiser I had 50 years earlier. PS South er n P in e s n at ive Bill Fi el d s, wh o w r it e s about golf an d oth er things, m o ve d n or th in 1986 b ut h a sn’t l ost his a ccent.